The pace of the first day of Plenary carried through to the second day. The commissioners had a closed meeting from 9am until almost noon, during which time the NGOs caught up on email, read part of their 10 lbs of handouts and reports, or chatted amongst each other. When the meeting resumed, the agenda was changed so that Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW) was moved to Thursday morning and we started off with a report from the Future of the IWC working group. IWC Chair Bill Hogarth presented a document summarizing the procedural changes at the IWC. There were three primary changes:
1) Proposals for schedule amendments, draft resolutions, and changes to rules of procedure must be submitted to all commissioners 60 days prior to the meeting. This change was an effort to not “surprise” any members and to keep the IWC meetings non-confrontational.
2) Although English will continue to be the official IWC language, Spanish and French will be added as “working” languages. This means that any literature produced by the IWC must be translated into all three languages.
3) New countries to join the IWC must wait 30 days before receiving voting rights.
Fourteen nations spoke in support of this new plan for the IWC. The great majority of comments were congratulatory to the Chair, optimistic that this will make the meetings run more smoothly, and/or cautionary that this is only the plan and there is still a lot of work to do for implementation. For the most part, there were pats on the back and congratulations all around.
Only China, Korea, and the Russian Federation expressed reservations for the language changes. They voiced worries over the financial implications of having to make all resources available in three languages, but also over the fact that the other languages were not acknowledged.
After lunch, we shifted to the topic of Whale Watching. We watched a presentation from Argentina about whale watching in their country. The Chair of the Scientific Committee (SC) reported that they are concerned about reports of disturbance to whales from whale watching efforts, so they are going to embark on a worldwide research program to study these effects. The final proposal for this project will be presented next year.
Many countries (16 to be exact) made positive comments about the Whale Watching report. Most mentioned that they are extremely supportive of whale watching as a non-lethal, economically advantageous “use” of whales. They encouraged the SC’s research to determine the effects of whale watching on whales and also emphasized that there should be a code of conduct for whale watching programs to minimize impacts. Norway, Iceland, and St. Lucia commented that whaling and whale watching are not mutually exclusive; all three countries engage in both and they do not conflict. Korea expressed that they have not had success with developing a whale watching program.
Although the discussion of ASW was pushed until Thursday, two scientists from Greenland gave a presentation on their ASW program and proposed quota increase. Their proposal maintains the number of fins (19) and minkes (200) taken in their hunt, but increases their bowhead (2) and humpback (10) quotas. The presentation reviewed the latest stock assessments for both bowhead and humpback whales in Western Greenland. Bowheads are present in their area at a time when other species are absent, so adding this species to their quota will ease the hardship for their people during this time. This new proposal will produce approximately 694 tons of whale meat, which is 36 tons short of their stated “need.” Most of the whale meat is distributed locally to families, markets and community institutions (such as hospitals); however, a small amount of whale meat is sold to one company that distributes it to grocery stores in a wider area. They emphasized that the money from this sale goes back into the local community. (On a side note, Greenland produced a publication in direct response to the WSPA publication I mentioned in my last blog. The Greenland publication talked about how whalers need to pay their mortgages and bills just like everyone else and they pay those bills through the sale of whale meat. If I can be a biased observer for a moment and say that of course everyone needs to pay bills and selling whale meat is a way to do that, but that is also called commercial whaling NOT aboriginal subsistence whaling. Back to the summary…) ASW is defined by the IWC as that in which the products are consumed by the local community. Greenland pointed out that the term “local” is not defined and they apparently view all of Greenland as their local community. The commission was not allowed to discuss this issue until Thursday, so the subject dropped after Greenland’s presentation.
Next on the agenda was a report on the Revised Management Scheme working group. The IWC has not asked the SC for anything in this working group for a couple years, so the SC Chair reported on only a few items where the work is ongoing. The report was filled with acronyms and lingo that I won’t pretend to understand, but overall nothing major is happening on this front.
We finished the day with a brief return to Welfare Issues; the Head of Science reported on progress on the issue of whale entanglement. They are planning a three or four day working group just after IWC 2009 to discuss entanglement prevention, disentanglement, and euthanasia of whales that can not be disentangled. Sweden commented that they hoped the conclusions from this meeting will benefit small cetaceans as well.
We finished the day a little behind schedule and the agenda completely shifted around. At this point, the Chair seems to be pushing off possibly contentious issues until later in the week. Although the atmosphere in the meeting room is congenial, just outside there is a lot of literature passing back and forth between the “like-minded” (anti-whaling) and pro-whaling NGOs. These documents deal with a wide variety of issues including:
• Greenland’s proposed schedule amendment
• Japan’s scientific whaling
• Japan’s dolphin drive fishery
• High mercury levels in dolphin and whale meat
• Crew members on Japanese whaling vessels apparently taking whale meat home to give away or sell on their own
• Iceland and Norway exporting whale meat to Japan
• Proposal for a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary
• And many more…
I will try to include information about these as the topics come up on the agenda.
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