WDC Blog - From the Front Line

I have to say that the UK Government has traditionally been great on protecting whales on the high seas. Indeed, when it comes to anti-whaling the UK is one of the best countries around when it comes to taking on Japan, Iceland and Norway at the IWC annual meetings

The UK has also been a keen advocate for dealing with climate change. So whats going on here in the UK when these two issues mix. It seems these policies are put to one side in the race to exploit more oil.

The UK Government has indicated that exploration for oil and gas is likely to be allowed in the Moray Firth Special Area of Conservation. This is a European level protected area that is supposed to protect the dolphins that live part of their lives here. This, of course, threatens a vulnerable, unique group of bottlenose dolphins that WDCS has been studying and protecting for over 15 years

Malcolm Wicks, the UK's Energy Minister has announced that whilst Cardigan Bay in Wales (thats the Welsh Whales - it's not a spelling mistake), also a Special Area of Conservation for bottlenose dolphins would be spared, oil and gas exploration in the Moray Firth was 'more likely' to go ahead. 

Whats going on? This is a ridiculous and highly damaging move.

This is where you can help. The UK Government has announced a public consultation period. This is your chance to have your say and save the amazing dolphins of the Moray Firth! Please have a look at this part of the Campaign site to see what you can do.

This week has been a busy one for WDCS, and for me personally, and it’s only Wednesday so far.
One of the joys of working in the not-for-profit sector is that everybody just kind of mucks in and helps with whatever needs to be done. This week has been a lot about that. First of all, we’re working on a video for a new campaign we’re launching (shhh, don’t tell anybody yet) and I’ve been up to my eyes in video editing and animation this past week. Hey – check out our page on YouTube for our Stop Bloody Whaling videos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk2SfDpBsNM - and watch out for the new video next week!
Elsewhere, we have two teams who have just started fieldwork projects; one in Salt Cay over in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) studying humpback populations (you can read Sue Rocca’s Fieldwork Blog here: http://uk.wdcs.org/fieldblog/; and the other led by Simon Keith is just kicking off in the Moray Firth of Scotland. Hopefully he too will be posting to the Fieldwork blog this week, so keep checking back.
So before, during and after fieldwork teams go out, it’s a busy time for us technical people. There are computers, cameras, GPS units and other silicon wizardry to check and if necessary repair – quite often after the team has left base, as was the case this week. Sadly, the rise of the Internet and remote access technology mean that I didn’t get flown out to TCI for a week to fix the GPS unit - it was all attempted remotely at 3 in the morning over a dialup connection. There was a time when fixing a GPS in the Caribbean could easily have taken, oh, a week to 10 days? But not they have Remote Accesss protocols over the Internet we can just log in from home! Ya, great. I mean, not all technology is progress, is it? Sadly, turns out that the software drivers for this particular beastie just weren’t going to play ball with Windows XP SP2, so they are currently down one GPS unit (see, I don’t think a plane ticket was an unreasonable ask).
What else? Oh, a small network outage at HQ in Chippenham, more work on the new website (it rocks – and it’s coming soon), and - hey did I mention I have a cold?
Just another regular week saving the whales…

Japan has threatened to build even more whaling vessels. Iwata Tsuyoshi - deputy director of the whaling division of Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, was quoted as saying that whaling would continue indefinately and that Japan was looking to replace the ageing industrial factory whaling ship the Nissin Maru with a bigger such factory ship that could last another 40 years.

So here we go again. Some countries think that we should compromise with Japan and give them some form of legitimised whaling - which, and I may be repeating myself, but 'isn't that just what Japan wants?' Some people think that Japan is willing to trade its so-called scientific Antarctic whaling for some form of endorsed 'coastal whaling'. I hate to tell you but there not much difference between the two so-called types (its all commercial whaling anyway) and actually one whale dying by harpoon in Antarctica is like another whale dying by harpoon off coastal Japan. Well actually not quite true, as a huge fin whale being killed by the same armament that is used to kill a much smaller minke whale is a major concern.

But what I mean is, politically it's the same to Japan. Any legitimised whaling is a victory and opens the door to more whaling in the future.

Japan recently used the threat of whaling on humpbacks to try and get some compromises and a few countries seem to have fallen for this deception. Now it seems its willing to threaten the building of more vessels. So what is to happen? Will countries fall for this? Or can they see that Japan does not mean to honour any such agreements, just as it has never honoured the moratroium. If Japan was ever willing to deal and give up high seas whaling (thats the deal some people are willing to force on us) why would it want to build such a factory ship, and if it never intended to deal honourably (gosh, shock, horror) then why is it using such heavy handed tactics? See if you are smarter at working this out than some countries.

The UK is often described as a nation of animal lovers and indeed many people want to get close to whales and dolphins. Just look at the multi-million pound industry that is the cetacean captive display business with its entreaties to come 'swim-with' and 'touch' programmes. In the UK we have no such facilities thanks, but we do get solitary dolphins around the UK coastlines. These lonely creatures, separated from their own kind, build up a false relationship with humans thinking we are part of their social grouping. This can be disastrous. What looks like a wonderful experience for the humans involved can turn into an early death sentence for the animals involved. The UK’s Telegraph newspaper has covered this issue and I think it’s worth a read.

These are wonderful wild animals, but that exactly what they are, wild. Lets leave them be.

Our congratulations go out to the Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and the people of Costa Rica for making a strong statement against all cetacean hunts.

On Friday President Oscar Arias along with Environmental Minister Robert Dobles signed a decree that would protect whales and dolphins from being hunted in the large Costa Rican waters.

The decree details that any pursuit, capture, injury, netting or commercialization of any whale and dolphin groups in the Costa Rican sea boundaries is forbidden, and now against the law.

Strike one for the whales and dolphins.

Many years ago, when I first joined WDCS, I traveled to Japan to meet the proponents of whaling to try and understand what motivated Japanese people to continue this practice. What I found was surprising and rather awkward in some ways. I could not find any real public demand for whaling as a sense of national identity. Of course there were a small minority involved in whaling (for most of whom it was a part time activity), but this was a generation who were slowly giving way to the reality of a world that had moved on from such practices. So who is in favour of whaling then?

Actually there does not appear to be any one person leading the charge for a resumption of whaling - or continuation of whaling, to be truthful, as Japan has never honoured the moratorium.  It appears that Japan has, as a vestige of the 1930's, a mixture of civil servants, industry and elected officials who all seem to have some interests in maintaining the whaling industry. And a media that, in the majority of cases, does not wish to hold its government accountable for this disastrous policy.

What was really scary was what appears to be a viscous cycle whereby civil servants from the Ministry of Fisheries helped keep whaling alive and then 'retired' into the very whaling and fisheries companies that they were supporting from their years as civil servants. And when pressed some of these civil servants would say that that the continued pursuit of whaling was a waste of Japanese effort, - but as long as someone kept pulling the strings to keep it alive, they would keep advocating for a legitimizing of their existing whaling, even if it was 'just' a coastal quota. For don't be fooled. Japan will do almost anything to get an endorsed form of legalized whaling, - and from that point onwards the world's oceans are their bank balance.

I was reminded of that trip because of a BBC article that I came across today. Chris Hogg reporting from Tokyo speaks to the point of splits between the various Ministries in Japan - with an embarrassed Foreign Ministry having to deal with the machinations of their colleagues in the Ministry of Fisheries. I leave you to make up your own mind, but read his article and see what you think

Welcome to what I hope will be a regular column for WDCS staff and colleagues to talk and chat about what's going on at WDCS and in the world of whale and dolphin conservation.

Firstly I should say thank you to Lindsay for getting all this underway. Though I do think that he looks like he's enjoying himself far too much rather than talking photos or filming - there again he was on holiday/sabattical and what does he choose to do with his precious time away from the servers and computers, he goes and sees more whales. Says something about the people here.

Lindsay filming whilst on a field trip.

There's something inviting about a clean, white page that just begs you to scrawl all over it. Being WDCS UK's IT Manager, and this being a brand new blog that we've set up for WDCS staff (strictly speaking, that should be stakeholders as we have lots of highly valued volunteers too) to communicate our thoughts and ideas with you, Dear Joe Public - I get to try it out first! Lovely.

So welcome to our blog site. Here you can read the thoughts and challenges that individuals working on behalf of WDCS face, what we’re doing to save whales and dolphins around the world, and what type of ice cream we like to eat whilst out on fieldwork with the animals (maybe not that last one).

I think our Chief Executive will be along shortly to give you some more useful insights – but don’t worry, I’ll check back with my own updates often, so please come back daily for the latest in WDCS news, gossip, and musings from the frontline of Marine Mammal conservation.

Ta ta for now.

Lindsay Bruce

UK IT Manager

P.S - for the record, I like mint choc-chip.