A dead whale is sliced in to whalemeat
Like Japan, Norway has managed to keep on whaling in defiance of the moratorium. Taking advantage of a loophole in the whaling convention which allows member countries to file objections to IWC decisions and so technically remain unbound by them, in 1982 Norway lodged an objection to the moratorium decision. In 1993 Norway recommenced commercial whaling and ever since then it has simply ignored the ban despite opposition from the majority of IWC members.
Norway likes to portray its whaling as small-scale and traditional but this isnﾒt the case - its home market for whale meat is small and already saturated. The real driving force behind Norwayﾒs whaling policy is the desire to resume the lucrative international trade in whale products. Blubber sells for up to $41 dollars per 100 grammes in Japan, and whale meat is worth even more.
For this reason Norway has been lobbying very extensively to overturn the international trade ban on great whales agreed by CITES, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species. At each of the last three CITES meetings Norwegian proposals for a resumption of trade in minke whale products have been rejected by increasingly large margins.
Despite this clear signal from the international community, on 16 January 2001 Norway exercised a reservation to the CITES agreement and announced a unilateral decision to grant export licenses for whale products. This was meant to allow its whalers to fulfill contracts with Japan and Iceland worth almost $1 million. Fortunately the deal ran into problems because the Norwegian blubber contains levels of PCB contaminants which exceed Japanese safety limits, making its sale illegal in Japan.
In the last year of the whaling campaign we've seen a definite escalation of effort and resources by the whalers - they are not content with the current status quo (i.e. the killing of 1,000 whales each year under the 'scientific' and objection loopholes) anymore than we are, but are seeking a return to whaling of the scale which so devastated whale populations in the past.
For the whales this would be the worst possible outcome, and it is one which Greenpeace will oppose at all costs.
