Author - CEO

This is a few days late but I wanted to pass on a message we received from our colleagues Paul and Helena in Canada.

'December 11th marks the 39th anniversary of the capture of a family of northern resident orcas in Pender Harbour, British Columbia. The captured pod, known later as the A5s, was very nearly destroyed when six, half of the pod’s members, were forcibly removed and sent to various aquaria around the world. Corky, then just five years old, is today, the sole survivor of those captured. Most died within a few years.  Corky’s fate was to watch her fellow captives die one after the other.  Corky later suffered seven unsuccessful pregnancies. Her story is a sad tale and a sorry commentary on how our relationship with Nature can be bent and distorted for self-gain.

But Corky’s story fortunately has had more than one chapter. Over the years, and while Corky has circled endlessly around the confines of her concrete tank, thousands have acted on her behalf during protests; by painting and mounting cloth squares for her very long banner; reading, writing and witnessing her story in the press, films, on TV, and in books; singing her song; wearing her name on tee shirts and hats, hanging posters and bumper stickers; cheering boats and buses carrying her message; and voicing supportive opinions on the web. It has been an amazing effort in the face of her captors’ continued intransigence.

The broadcast of Corky’s story has helped ensure that there will never be another capture of orcas in the Pacific Northwest, and hopefully, eventually in the rest of the world.
As people have come to know Corky, they also have come to know about her family in the wild and have become advocates for their welfare as well. Corky was captured at a point in time when almost nothing was known about the natural life of orcas in the wild. Orca research has come of age in the intervening years. It is now understood that orcas are bonded together for life in their families, and that they have long, unbreakable traditions, passed from generation to generation. Corky, along with every member of her family, retains these traditions for life.

But like Corky, the plight of her wild family is less than secure. Corky is reaching way beyond the normal longevity for captives, an admirable testament to her strength as an individual and ability to survive.  Concern for wild orcas is growing because several populations rely entirely on the yearly migration of salmon, and this migration is being severely threatened by disease, parasites and a failure to thrive due to a confluence of factors that includes; increasing number of fish farms, commercial and sport fishing, logging and other industries, pollution, increased ocean noise, loss of habitat and global warming.

The orcas forged their diet preferences during thousands of years of abundance. Whether they now have the ability to respond to the need to change remains unknown.
We have only ourselves to blame for creating this situation and the orcas’ precarious future. Corky still “wears” the badge of her pod, and any effort to return her to her family must now surely include an effort to reverse the great harm we are doing to her ocean world and her family’s ability to thrive.'

Please light a candle for Corky and her family this Christmas.

Every year when WDCS attends the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting we encounter arguments from the pro-whalers as to why they should continue killing these remarkable creatures. Sometimes the arguments appear as pseudo-science (our ’research whaling’ will eventually reveal how many animals are out there, honest) through to spurious science (The whales are rampantly eating all our fish and eventually will come into our fish markets and eat all the fish there too)

The worst of it though is when the Japanese ultra-nationalists come into play. Anyone that does not agree with them is a racist. Anyone that questions their so-called ‘science’ is an imperialist. Have a look at the work of Kobayashi Yoshinori if you want to see unbridled hatred to anti-whalers in full flow. Articulate, creative some may believe it to be, - but dripping with anti-western sentiment it scares me to think this is what some people actually believe.

It reminds me that I had the ‘pleasure’ of attending the Kyoto IWC some years ago. Now Kyoto is a beautiful city, and if you ever get the chance to go there, please do so. It has great restaurants and beautiful buildings, and the people are wonderful. What wasn’t so good was the busloads of black clad right wing idiots that were parading up and down screeching hatred at us – I am not sure if they were shin-uyoku or just uyoku dantai or some version of the above, but they cheered one of my colleagues, because she is blonde and they thought she was Norwegian – but the rest of us felt like, well to tell you the truth, it reminded me of stories of 1933 all over again. If you didn’t look like them or think like them, you were made to feel less than human.

I guess I am remembering those experiences because I note that the Guardian is quite rightly covering the case of the Greenpeace Two. The article refers to their treatment at the hands of the 'the Tokyo metropolitan government, led by rightwing governor Shintaro Ishihara', is now trying to demonize the recent Greenpeace investigation of whale meat smuggling, whilst pandering to these jingoistic nationalism of commercial whaling.

Our thoughts go out to Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki and their families as they make this stand.

Japan may have many reasons to defend its whaling; it may wish to ruin its international reputation for the few remaining hundreds of jobs that are involved in killing these mammals; it may believe that it can buy its way to 'being right'; but it cannot allow this crude nationalism to continue to define its position on whaling.

It struck me that when we changed the WDCS websites we most probably made it harder to get access to some of the older postings. One of the most popular was the 'Life sized Blue Whale'. Yes we can make a life-sized Blue whale appear on your desktop as if by magic. If you dont believe me then take a click. If you do believe me do it anyway.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Japan thinks it will get what it wants from the IWC and will no longer have to rely on its sponsored acolytes in the Caribbean. Sir Ronald Sanders writing in the Antigua Sun ponders what will happen if the IWC gives Japan its coveted commercial whaling.

The IWC is meeting in secret session this week, - well 24 nations of the IWC’s membership, are meeting in Cambridge in the UK, to try and force through a secret deal that the outgoing US administration seems desperate to achieve. Not content with unwinding other environmental protection, it would seem that the Bush administration is focused on giving the whalers some form of commercial whaling as a parting gift.

Sir Ronald notes ‘If, indeed, the outgoing Bush administration and the Japanese government manage to agree a package that gives Japan what it wants, Japan will have no further requirement to recruit countries to support it at the IWC. Once Japan no longer requires such support, there will be no need to continue to give incentives to any country in return for its support. So the Japanese might get their way, and the leverage of the small Caribbean countries might disappear as would the blandishments of the Japanese.’

Sir Ronald poses some relevant questions. So, will the Caribbean nations change their position before the sell out or will they go down with the deal? Without Japan to help them out how many of them will remain part of the IWC in these difficult economic times? Because these small nations  are committed to conservation aren’t they? – So they must be intending to stay even if they have to pay for attending to support an industry that does nothing for them or their growing whale watching industry. Or is their idea of preservation the preserves you find in a Japanese pickling jar! Interesting times, especially when Japan is reported in other fora to be reluctant to 'become the ATM for the world' when it come to climate change. Seems they don't mind when it directly benefits them and whaling.

I have been thinking more about Tomohiko Taniguchi comments that we discussed here last week, and further to a comment from my colleague Kate, I think we should send our used toothbrushes to the various Japanese embassies to mark our distaste at their continued whaling.

So, maybe that's the next campaign tactic. So if you are so inclined, send your old toothbrushes to your local Japanese embassy, with an offer to buy a new one from them if they stop whaling. You can find your local Japanese embassy address here, if this idea takes your fancy.

Let's see if they clean up their act and finally give up this archaic and unnecessary industry. I am thinking what we can send/do for Norway, but I would suggest that we continue to refrain from bying Icelandc fish that is in any way connected with the whaling company Hvalur hf. Last year WDCS ran a campaign with other NGOs to persuade supermarkets not to stock Hvalur fish, and the majority agreed. If you are buying fish and it's Icelandic, make sure it's not from this company that mixes whaling and fishing. Your purchase could be subsidising whaling, so beware.