Posted by Willie — 18 July 2011 at 4:18pm
-
Comments
The contentious thing at this year’s International Whaling Committee (IWC) annual meeting wasn’t whaling, but bizarrely it was the issue of ‘consensus’.
Posted by jossc — 24 June 2009 at 2:02pm
-
Comments
Sara Holden, our International whales campaign coordinator, blogs from the 61st International Whaling Conference in Madeira, Portugal. Even though for the first time in years the anti-whaling nations have a decent majority on the IWC, genuine protection for whales still remains low on the agenda.
As metaphors go, how about this? The IWC meeting is being held in a
casino - and anyone betting on a good outcome for the whales would be
unlikely to win. Equally aprt, just a few minutes before the opening of the 61st International Whaling Commission meeting, a large rat was seen scuttling through the hotel and out the door. Not a bad illustration of what's going on here.
A Greenpeace volunteer in front of an Icelandic whaler
Commercial whaling during the last century decimated most of the world's whale populations. Estimates suggest that between 1925, when the first whaling factory ship was introduced, and 1975, more than 1.5 million whales were killed in total.
Today two giant eyeballs delivered a message to the Japanese Embassy in London imploring the Japanese Prime Minister not to send his whaling fleet to Antarctica to hunt minke whales, and to let Japan know the world is watching. The message delivery is part of a Greenpeace global day of action against whaling.
Less than two months after returning from its expanded North Pacific hunt, the Japanese whaling fleet has today set off from its home port of Shimonoseki towards the Southern Ocean Sanctuary where it intends to kill a further 440 minke whales.
