WDC Blog - From the Front Line

As the drive hunt season continues, and comes nearer to its end in April, we are still left with the challenge of how to expose these hunts, and work for their end.  International protests, embassy meetings, media exposure, on-the-ground negotiations and dialogue, and even an Oscar award-winning documentary seem not enough to change the course and put an end to these hunts.  All sorts of creative and inspired ideas have fallen short, as the hunts are a complex combination of nationalism, pride, pest control, food, profit, tradition and most importantly, resistance.

And yet, there has been some response to the pressure, however frenetic and temporary. The reaction we have seen from the fishermen and local authorities ranges from at times  releasing  some of the dolphins after selecting others for slaughter; developing a ‘new’ killing technique that may actually prolong the suffering of dolphins, but is an attempt to keep blood out of the water; and even trying to round up dolphins offshore, out of view from the killing cove. Ultimately, the only response we will accept is for the killing to stop.  And whether the government of Japan will continue to ignore world opinion, and the growing preferences of its people, and continue the hunts in spite of all of us, will define the long road ahead.

Being on the ground in Taiji, being present, is important. Showing the world what is happening in Taiji is necessary, and the spotlight needs to continue to shine on these activities.  However, bearing witness is only part of the story, and what is happening behind the scenes is even more important.  Video footage of the slaughters has been coming from Taiji for decades, along with direct action.  WDCS has been on the ground in Taiji, and continues to be, including most recently through our support of Hans Peter Roth.  However, often it is the quiet back story of campaign work not often seen by the public, that is the critical component in the work to change the hearts and minds of Japanese authorities and the Japanese public.  Outreach and engagement through our diverse Japanese partners is guiding our attempts to connect with hearts and minds in Japan, to open the dialogue, to instill the love and appreciation for these animals that will bring about change.

WDCS will continue to work for an end to these brutal drive hunts.  We have been active in confronting the dolphin drive hunts in Japan on a number of levels, from raising awareness of the hunts, taking part in peaceful protests and visiting Japan to document them.  We have worked with the marine mammal scientific community to garner a public statement against these hunts, and helped secure a congressional resolution condemning the practice.  WDCS has also worked to secure the acknowledgement of the public display industry of its complicity in fueling the dolphin drive hunts through the demand generated by marine parks and aquaria that either directly, or indirectly, source live dolphins from these hunts. And within Japan, we have developed an educational campaign with our Japanese colleagues to educate the public about whales and dolphins, their beauty, their biology and the threats that they face.  And most recently, we contributed to the development of the Beautiful Whale Project, an attempt to bring art, science and communities together in search of common ground in our love and appreciation for whales and dolphins. 

So what is the answer?  Don’t give up. It will take all of us, and all of our solutions and strategies working in that hopeful elixir that eventually can move mountains and eradicate inhumane practices and traditions that have plagued humanity since its inception. We will continue to expose these hunts, resolute in our call for their end on the grounds of welfare of the animals, the complex ecosystems being devastated by these activities, and the human health implications of consuming mercury-laden meat. These practices wear the cloak of tradition, but ultimately destroy our humanity, and the amazing web of life that sustains us all.

And in the end, the only thing that may stop Japan killing whales and dolphins is the realization and acknowledgement that its people no longer want these practices to continue.  The tide will turn when the Japanese policymakers face the full force of international pressure and also look inward to what the people of Japan want and need for the 21^st century.  And that change must happen in Tokyo, not just in Taiji.

Many of us have had the opportunity to come to know the individuality and character of dolphins, to know their personalities and stories behind their lives, and as campaigners, we are compelled to honor their intelligence and sentience with our humanity and best efforts toward their protection.  Because of these videos, and the personal accounts of individuals in Taiji, the dolphins are not just statistics and numbers.  It is now not just thousands of dolphins dying every year in Japan, but rather individuals, babies, mothers and families thrashing against the nets, crying out as they are lifted out of the water for marine parks, or as they are separated for slaughter.  Dolphins have complex social lives, have families, and science has shown us that they even have culture and traditions, too.  The videos and images coming from Taiji provide us with the stories of these individuals, and all of us become campaigners as we continue to call for an end to these hunts.

Albert Schweitzer said that a thinking person must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo.   We should not give up, and opposing cruelty on ethical grounds alone does not require an explanation or even justification. Traditions and cultures evolve, and we are hopeful that the hearts and minds in Japan will move towards a kinder and gentler future for dolphins.

 

The videos coming from Taiji, Japan are horrifying.  They are posted to YouTube and circulated through our networks around the globe on a daily basis.  They are posted by Sea Shepherd, and Leah Lemieux, and through the vigilance of a multitude of other individuals that have traveled to Taiji to bear witness to the activities of a handful of dolphin fishermen, and to spread the images that have disturbed and saddened so many.   And they are enough to make even a seasoned campaigner come to her knees again and again.   Many of these current videos can be seen on Leah’s YouTube channel, and they are more than difficult to watch.  

The dolphin drive hunts occur every year from September through April, and are a brutal reminder that we have a very long way to go towards securing a safe and humane future for all cetaceans. The hunts involve the corralling of dolphins at sea and driving them into the confines of small coves in Taiji and Futo, Japan.  They are then slaughtered for meat or kept alive for sale to marine parks and aquaria across the globe. This is not a subsistence kill but a small industry regulated by the Japanese government. Yearly quotas for both villages are in the thousands, where small cetaceans of several species including bottlenose dolphins, striped dolphins, spotted dolphins, false killer whales, short-finned pilot whales, and others, are taken. Futo has not conducted a hunt since 2004.

 Many did not know that these drive hunts were taking place until The Cove brought the issue to the movies and won an Oscar. Almost a year after winning the Oscar for best documentary, it is a natural question to wonder whether The Cove has made a difference, and whether it is making a difference, particularly when the hunts continue unabated.  However, in fact, these hunts were first acknowledged by the media in the 1970s when activists and filmmakers shared the killing with the world. Filmmaker Hardy Jones initially exposed the dolphin drive hunts at Iki Island, Futo and Taiji throughout the 1980s and the hunts were the focus of a National Geographic filmed entitled ‘When Dolphins Cry’, shown worldwide in 2004.  Although only a part of Japan’s larger hunts that kill up to 20,000 small whales and dolphins annually, the drive hunts are particularly controversial, if only because they can be witnessed so near to shore. What is hard to accept for most of us is that despite the decades of exposure, and despite the recent and intense scrutiny and attention, as a result of The Cove, the hunts continue, and perhaps with more determination than ever.

As a campaigner who has been to Taiji and witnessed the hunts, spoken to the fishermen as they poked their fingers in my direction within inches of my face, and tried desperately to convey the passion and concern for the dolphins, I searched for a way ‘in’ to a common understanding, a way to communicate that there can be another way--and a way out.  And I am still searching, along with many, many others.  The problems in Taiji are complex.  What appeared to be a practice in decline, conducted in only a few coastal towns in Japan, has been revived by the demand for live dolphins for marine parks in Japan and elsewhere.  And because Taiji is the birthplace of whaling, it is steeped in the politics of whaling, and the drive hunts are just a piece of this larger political and psychological drama.

What The Cove did do, and continues to do, is catalyze a grassroots movement that has been felt the world over.  It has launched thousands of individuals into action, from sending postcards and heartfelt messages to authorities in Japan, to staging protests and peace picnics, to showing up and documenting these heart-wrenching scenes.   Local communities are even challenging the construction of new captive dolphin facilities in Japan, such in Kyoto where an aquarium has been approved, and will likely hold dolphins from the Taiji drive hunts. And more importantly, it is not just westerners showing up at the cove in Taiji and questioning the hunts, but the Japanese public, too.  

 

A dolphin, taken in the drive hunts, on display at the Taiji Whale Museum (c) C. Vail

The Wikileaks pieces on Norway and the US remind us that Norway has so far gotten off pretty lightly in recent years as compared to Japan and, increasingly, Iceland.

Dr. Sidney Holt reminds us that it was Norway that helped pioneer the art of sleight of hand and misdirection at the IWC. Sidney is far too polite and others may be tempted to use other language.

In the various US cables we see Norway’s deliberate continuation of the myth of Norway's objection to the 1986 moratorium on a matter of 'scientific principle'.

Poppycock!

Dr. Holt is right that the historical record tells us what really happened.

In a paper on this website, Dr. Holt details that Norway's real objection is to the 1985 classification by the IWC of the Northeast Atlantic minke whale stock as a "Protection Stock" with zero catch limit, because it was found to be seriously depleted.

"That action was taken on the basis of a consensus advice from the IWC Scientific Committee from which even the Norwegian scientists (from, at that time, the Bergen Laboratory) on the Norwegian delegation, did not dissent."

Their actions did not agree with their Government’s policy, and they were subsequently removed from being in a position to give advice and replaced by a more, let us say, ‘politically aware’, scientific grouping.

So let's be clear, Norway did not object to IWC decisions on the moratorium because of 'scientific uncertainty', but because the science did not fulfil its political demands.

In recent years we have seen the same approach, in that the Norwegian Government has set the desired political whaling quotas and then it's scientists have sought to justify the numbers.

This has been a scar on Norwegian fisheries and environmental policy for decades.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, many IWC delegations don't have the institutional knowledge to remember what the whalers have done in the past, and the whaling interests seem to be happy to play the long game until someone more naive and pliable comes along.

The US and others cannot afford to be so short-sighted or so easily misled.

This was originally posted on the WDCS US blog, but we thought that you would be interested in the thoughts of WDCS's Kate O'Connell.

The US Embassy in Oslo, Norway has now joined the ranks of other US embassies in whaling nations who have had cables leaked about the US policy, giving an even clearer picture of just how unmoving the whaling nations have been when it came to discussions on developing a compromise at the IWC

In a  12 December 2009 cable entitled "Norway Uncompromising on Whale Catch Limits" the embassy in Oslo spoke of a formal diplomatic protest made by the US to the Norwegian government in advance of President Obama's visit to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, and that "The Ambassador urged the GON [government of Norway] to show flexibility on catch limits to enable a compromise reform of the International Whaling Commission."

Yet despite the fact that Norway was said to be uncompromising on its whaling quotas, the US went on to invite Norway to participate in the compromise discussions on whaling that it had been trying to move through the IWC, that would have allowed for commercial whaling to continue.

What is most frustrating about this cable is that it comes only months after an in-depth analysis of the Norwegian whaling industry  by the Embassy in Oslo indicated that the whaling industry in Norway was facing massive problems.  Comments in the analysis such as  "Today Norwegian whaling struggles ….with demand for the product and questions of the industry´s viability"  and "With whale meat filling only a niche market domestically, most objective observers today would assess the demand for whale meat in Norway as marginal at best" leave little room for doubt that the US knew that whaling in Norway was on its way out.

So why did the US opt to throw the whaling nations a life-line of support in the form of a deal that would have accepted commercial whaling at just the time when a "hold strong" stand in support of the IWC ban on commercial whaling could have made a real difference?  Maybe it’s time for President Obama to strengthen the moratorium, not undermine it.  The US public certainly expects that he will.

2012 is quickly racing towards us. It’s a crucial year because the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development set internationally agreed targets to establish extensive networks of MPAs around the world by 2012.

Whether the 2012 target turns out to be to ambitious will soon become clear as many of the proposed MPAs will need to be on track during 2011 to meet the 2012 deadline.

Daniel Cressey writing in Nature (Vol. 469, No. 7329, 13 January 2011) quotes Tundi Agardy, the lead author of a paper published in Marine Policy (35, 226-232 (2001)) [one of the other authors is a friend of WDCS, Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara],  warning of ‘blind faith’ in the ability of MPAs to stem biodiversity loss.

Agardy is not opposed to MPAs. Indeed it appears that the paper is highly supportive of MPAs, but is critical of policy makers who end up designing MPAs that are too small to be effective and that create an illusion of protection when none is actually occurring. The paper also points out that poor management and the fact that degradation of waters outside an MPA can mean that the MPA is ineffective.

The paper goes onto illustrate the MPA for the vaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California has not been successful because the paper claims that it missed a major area of the species core range.

WDCS is campaigning for MPAs for cetaceans around the world, but some policy makers seem ready to repeat the list of mistakes that Agardy and her colleagues outline. I am concerned that proposals for MPAs that policy makers may accept will be too small and too limited to make a difference.

In the same edition of Nature the lead editorial calls on policy makers to think big when considering protected areas. Whilst the leader looks specifically at terrestrial national parks and the impacts of climate change, it also notes that ‘landscape scale’ conservation initiatives are necessary to adapt to the impacts of climate change where many species will need to be able to move to adapt.

I remain concerned that policy makers may believe that the oceans of the world are ‘big enough’ to allow for such movements and adaptations by cetaceans, but how will small protected areas be flexible enough to accommodate such changes? Only if we look at larger ocean landscape protected areas - that address multiple threats to cetaceans - will we really begin to create the necessary frameworks to manage human impacts and so allow these creatures to flourish in such highly dynamic environments.

 

I have to say I have a lot of time for Bruce Parry. His enthusiasm for the people he meets around the world is infectious and his friendliness is well rewarded by those he meets.

Now, I was especially interested to see his latest program on the BBC where he is visiting Arctic peoples. I must admit I approached it with some trepidation, as I was not particularly looking forward to any glowing endorsement for the hunting of marine mammals.

However, Bruce has taken a very objective view. Whilst recognising the needs of true indigenous hunters he contrasts this with what he finds in some parts of the Arctic, including Greenland.

In an interview on the BBC website, Parry discusses filming in Greenland where he spends time with indigenous hunters.

"I don't normally question stuff too much," says Parry. "If I'm in the middle of the jungle with a group of people and they shoot a monkey, that might be a controversial thing to eat, but they're living an incredibly traditional life." But the Inuit are more integrated.

"They're living a traditional life, but they're accepting fuel and boats and vehicles and heating from the outside world. That comes with opinions about the larger picture of the animals they subsist on."

This comes at the same time that climate change is causes dramatic changes in Greenland. New Scientist reports this week that new data and models show that Greenland's ice cap, the world's second largest, is on track to hit a point of no return in 2040.

What all this means for the people and wildlife of the high Arctic is to be seen, but maybe people should be thinking carefully about not commercializing the hunting that takes place there and, in doing so, adding further pressure on the Arctic’s disappearing wildlife and habitats.

Various news sources are reporting that BP has had to shut down the pipeline it uses to transport oil from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, forcing it virtually to close down production from what is North America's biggest oil field. There is no reports of environmental damage yet, but I am sure this is one headache that BP could well do without after 2010. Let us see how they handle this one.

WDCS founder and long time wildlife conservationist Kieran Mulvaney, has just published his latest book. In what's being described as a 'fascinating, up-close look at virtually everything interesting, important, or culturally relevant about the birth, life, and death of the polar bear' Kieran brings his own unique experiences of the Polar regions to this exploration of what his fascinating and increasingly threatened species, - officially classed as a marine mammal, polar bears are the world’s largest land carnivores

Having founded WDCS at the tender age of 16, Kieran, a prolific writer, has gone on to lead three expeditions to the Arctic, as well as Project Thin Ice 2006: Save the Polar Bear - the successful first attempt to reach the North Pole in summer and draw attention to the impact of climate change on polar bears. The publishers promotional literature states that this book 'blends natural and human history, myth and reality with scientific and personal observation, to tell the story of these remarkable animals, the region in which they dwell, and the rapid changes overtaking planet Earth.'

We are hoping to bring you a full review of the book soon, but in the meantime our congratulations go out to Kieran for this latest offering.

And if you want to get a copy of the book its available from all good book retailers including this one.

You may have mixed opinions on the Wikileaks US cable releases, - whether they are in the public interest or just publicly interesting - a concept responsible journalists wrestle with all the time. However, there have been some 'revelations', or confirmations to some of us, of the true negotiating positions of several country delegations.

Of particular note is the backroom negotiating style of the US Government. It appears that the US, in trying to appease Japan into accepting a 'deal' that would allow for the legitimising of commercial whaling, sought to trade northern hemisphere humpback whales for Japan's compliance.

Despite being fully aware of the increased commercialisation of the Greenland hunt the US was willing to campaign for the killing of humpbacks in the northern hemisphere.

The US was desperately trying to get Iceland to reduce its self-allocated quota and was looking for issues that may engage Japan to ‘help’ deliver a deal.

The Cables report that Japan stated that there were factors outside the current ‘Future of the IWC’ [the deal] negotiations that would influence Japan's negotiating position and that the ‘First, a negative outcome in the vote at next year's [2010] IWC intersessional meeting on Greenland's proposal to catch ten humpback whales could derail the work of the Support Group. …and another rejection at the IWC plenary meeting could make the overall compromise being discussed impossible.’

The US IWC Commissioner appointed by President Obama, Ms. Medina, is reported in the cables to have said  that ‘she hopes to work out differences with the EU on Greenland's proposal on humpback whales prior to the March 2010 IWC intersessional meeting and include the issue in the overall agreement.’

Indeed, as the IWC meetings then revealed, the US played an important role in driving through the final Greenland whaling quota that included humpbacks.

What is also striking on reading the cables is that the US appears to have been mistakenly staking its negotiating position on the fact that Iceland was the only blocking player in their campaign to achieve a resumption of commercial whaling and  Wikileaks reports that the US requested of the ‘MOFA [Japanese Fisheries Agency] State Secretary Fukuyama and Fisheries Agency Deputy Director General Yamashita to press Iceland to lower its proposed quota for whaling in order to facilitate an overall agreement on whaling’.

The US negotiating position was that for a resumption of whaling to be achieved, all that was needed was for all countries ‘to take [a] reasonable approach’ - very different to their public anti-whaling position.

The US negotiations with Japan about Iceland appear to have been predicated on the argument that Japan could not absorb all the whale meat that Iceland was taking, not that the hunt was irresponsible and should stop.

Whilst we welcome the recent moves in the US that may result in the USA certifying and sanctioning Iceland, one must question why the US, which has been publicly opposed to resumption in whale meat trade, appears to have been willing to open up discussions on trade, and we have to ask, were they implicitly ‘agreeing’ to accept future trade in whale products? Indeed, the US is reported to have said that it ‘did not recommend Japan take any measures to restrict trade’.

Humpbacks, future trade, one must question what was the US was not willing to negotiate away? Read the cables and see what you think.