WDC Blog - From the Front Line

The opening of IWC 63.

Monday 11th of July.

The hall of the annual whaling Commission looks much the same as ever as delegates gather. Some are moving into place to sit behind their national flags and name plates. Others are milling and chatting in the aisles. The NGOs are vying for seats at the back at the room but (and this is very exciting) this year they have tables, water and electricity sockets (thank you Secretariat). The seats at the further back being the most popular as no one can read your emails and skypes over your shoulder (well not directly from the screens anyway).

Note books are poised, lap tops precariously perched on laps (and tables), and outside the raucous calls of gulls high overhead punctuate the muted rumble of the traffic on the streets of St Helier.

Press interest has been building over the last few days and scattered around the hall are a handful of reporters (recognisable by red badges), many of whom know this forum well and what to expect. Indeed, there are many people here who have been attending the IWC meetings for years, in some cases even decades. But there are new faces too. Several of the European Commissioners are new, including the UK’s Commissioner, Richard Pullen, today flanked by his minister, Richard Benyon MP. Perhaps this year the latter will get to speak. Despite coming all the way to Agadir last year, because the Commission rapidly went into secret session for three days, he was not able to say anything, although of course a ministerial-level presence from the UK was noted.

We are also pleased to welcome a new canine delegate. Following hard on the paws of her distinguished colleague Giles, the guide dog who used to accompany the UK’s previous Commissioner, the formidable Richard Cowan, comes Vicky. She will be assisting the UK’s legal expert. Hopefully Vicky will be less mischievous than the redoubtable Giles and especially when in buffet areas and receptions, where Giles’ loyalties were clearly sometimes torn between attending to his master and answering the call of his stomach.

Anyway, we are now under ‘starter’s-orders’ and further to the preceding months of preparation and closed meetings, we wait to see if anything will change this year.

And they are off… stay tuned.

Following the remarkably heavy rains of the end of last week, the weekend has been bright and sunny here in Jersey. Many delegates have been able to escape from their various co-ordination meetings and joined the bustling streets of St Helier. The town boasts all the usual chain stores found in European cities but also some speciality retail outlets for the produce of the Channel Islands. There are also many art galleries and alongside the pastoral views and seascapes, the Jersey cow with its friendly and expressive face features strongly.

Sunday will be busier for everyone, with many high-level preparatory and co-ordination meetings happening ahead of the IWC opening tomorrow. But this has been an IWC of two parts this year and let us look a few weeks back, when the IWC’s Scientific Committee held its annual meeting (for the first time for many years this was not back-to-back with the main Commission meetings).  At the invitation of the Norwegian government it was held  in Tromso in the Arctic north.  The report of the Scientific Committee remains confidential until the opening of the main meeting (another of the IWC’s old fashioned and secret procedures); but we can report that Tromso was a pleasant venue –a friendly town on a small island nestled amongst many fjords, snow capped mountains (even in June) and so far north that night never comes!

It is a beautiful part of the world stunning in its detail – a thousand waterfalls and a burst of Spring time flowers and amongst them the reindeer and elk wander freely.

Meanwhile, back to Jersey. For comparison, here we have the famous eponymous local cow and an indigenous bank vole. The locals also have some sort of unusual preoccupation with their local toad (referred to using the French word ‘crapaud’). Monsieur Crapaud is so revered here that there no less than two statues of him in St Helier’s main squares. In one the crapaud is flanked by several life-sized jersey cows in the other a huge toad is mounted on top of a column. We shall be further investigating the significance of this in due course.

There are also some less appealing wildlife. A late morning survey of the somewhat suspiciously sticky streets sees the slow and shy emergence of some very strange creatures indeed. Red-eyed and big of belly, they appear to be primates of some sort. Are they perhaps escapees from the local Durrell institute for Conservation menagerie? Certainly they have some primate features and possibly even a rudimentary form of language – high in expletives and low in general vocabulary. They appear to be mainly nocturnal. In the daylight, odd specimens can be found propped up in coffee shops around the town gently re-hydrating and going bright red in the sun.

They belong to the family of lower primates more frequently seen in Mediterranean resorts where alcohol is cheap. They are the fabled British Booze Hounds.

The wildlife in and around the immediate vicinity of the meeting hotel is otherwise quite limited. Here we find severe warning notes about the “aggressive” local gulls and the terrace of the hotel onto which in fine weather the hotel’s one café extends, has a fine network of nylon lines strung high overhead to try to keep them off. The gulls appear to have worked out ways through these nearly invisible lines and parade shamelessly amongst the delegates eyeing with interest their soups and salads. Indeed the obvious puzzle-solving abilities of the gulls, combined with the intelligent glint in their eyes, raises a question as to whether or not they might be included in the group of animals that are regarded as sentient. There has been much interesting and important discussion about which animals qualify as having this attribute in recent years. From a casual study of the behaviour of the local wildlife, this observer at least feels that the case is appreciably stronger for the herring gull than the British Booze Hound. 

We are now in the last couple of days before the opening of the 63rd meeting of the International Whaling Commission. Workshops have been running behind the closed doors of the meeting halls in the Hotel de France in St. Helier, Jersey, in the Channel Islands and the Commission will finally open its doors to the public and the press on Monday.

So, how do we come be in Jersey? Well, when no country invites the IWC to town for its annual meeting, as was the case for at least the main IWC meeting this year, the IWC Secretariat (which is based in Cambridge, UK) has to find a venue based on the budget that it has available. The last time this happened was the meeting held in Hammersmith in London. This time the Secretariat has brought us to Jersey (for which we thank them). Strictly speaking, the Channel Islands are not part of the UK, but they are part of Britain and thanks to some interesting quirks of local history, here the royal toast is to ‘Her Majesty the Queen, the Duke of Normandy'.

The Islands are self-governing and steeped in their own rich history which is strongly coloured by some five centuries of battles between the UK and France for their ownership. There is still a strong French influence visible, for example, in many place names here. It seems that allegiance to the British crown was achieved because it allowed self-governance. Another strong local influence is the legacy of the years of occupation that the islands suffered during World War II when they were the only part of Britain to be occupied by Nazi forces. Early in the war, Hitler issued instruction that the islands should be fortified and many remaining structures show how efficiently this was achieved. There are also many monuments to this time. One stands just outside the main bus station – the Liberation Station - on the quay in St Helier (the Island’s capital). Here a joyful group of people are depicted waving a giant Union Jack (the British flag) in the air. It was never clear during the War that the Islands were of any strategic significance. They were too far away from the UK coastline for that and, for example, played no part in the evacuations of cornered ally troops from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk. However, Hitler’s orders were rigorously followed and although many islanders escaped before the occupation, many were also trapped here.

It would be inappropriate to make a comparison between those times and the meetings happening here now at the Hotel de France. So we won’t. However, July 2011 sees a meeting of nations – potentially as many as 89 if all the member nations of the IWC show up – of some significance, not just for the whales but also for how the international community conducts itself because key issues on the agenda this year include the ‘governance of the IWC’. The old Convention that established the IWC was agreed in 1946 and includes many elements that more modern treaties now clearly avoid. Most famously there is the ‘scientific whaling’ clause which allows nations to issue quotas to themselves for ‘scientific research’. Then there are the various veils of secrecy that affect many issues and meetings. Hence the report of the scientific committee (which we can reveal met a few weeks ago in Tromso in Arctic Norway) remains secret as do the meetings that happened this week – until we get to Monday. Then there are arguably lesser, but still important, matters relating to how the IWC functions such as the fact that countries can turn up and pay their annual dues (and secure their right to vote) during the meeting and in cash. These and a host of other issues need to be updated to make the IWC fit to face the 21st century. The UK has a proposal in play – as can be seen on the IWC website - (in the form of a resolution – the usual way that the IWC makes decisions) to address some of these issues. In many ways it is a modest proposal, but it is still a step in the right direction if it goes through.

Other key issues include how the IWC deals with requests for ‘aboriginal subsistence whaling quotas’. Quotas to provide subsistence for certain indigenous peoples who have a nutritional and cultural dependence on whales have been permitted by the IWC for decades. However, concerns have arisen in recent years about the conformity of some hunts with those longstanding principles, in particular the growing commercialization of whale products in Greenland beyond those who depend on them for subsistence, including sales to tourists. More of this later. There is also much work to be done to protect whales in the 21st century from modern threats such as climate change and marine debris. We are encouraging the IWC to step up and take these matters urgently in hand. So please look here for updates from the WDCS team at the IWC to see how these things are progressing. The main Commission meeting (when it opens its doors to the public) starts here on the 11th and runs until the 14th.

25th June 2010: Despite huge concerns from many delegations, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has just adopted a new quota for Greenland's so-called aboriginal subsistence whaling (ASW).

Greenland had requested an increase in its subsistence whaling quota of some 10 humpback whales a year, for a period of three years – the same proposal it has tabled unsuccessfully each year since 2007.

Despite repeatedly claiming, year after year, that it requires ever more whale meat, this year Greenland secured the quota by ‘whale-trading’ - agreeing to reduce its quota of minke and fin whales in exchange for 9 humpbacks even though it would get less, not more, whale meat out of the deal.

WDCS, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, has consistently argued that Greenland has failed to justify its claim to need more whale meat because so many of the whales it hunts end up on supermarket shelves rather than meeting the genuine subsistence needs of remote indigenous communities.

This year, WDCS provided new evidence to the IWC that hunters are ’whaling to order’ for a commercial processing company that supplies supermarkets, and that whale meat is being sold in fancy hotel restaurants frequented by foreign tourists. 

Greenland’s willingness to barter humpback whales for fin and minkes is further evidence that it does not need more whale meat. The tonnage of whale meat from the 22 minke and 9 fin whales it is ‘surrendering’ far exceeds what they will get from 9 humpbacks.

We fully expect humpback meat to make it into the same commercial distribution chains as the other species, perhaps even at a premium price because its flavour is apparently preferable in Greenland.

Sue Fisher of WDCS says, “Despite agreeing to maintain the moratorium on commercial whaling earlier this week, the IWC has just voted for commercial whaling. It makes no sense for Greenland to give up tonnes of whale meat when it says it needs more, unless there are commercial motivations in play. In one vote the IWC may have irreparably damaged its credibility by overturning a long-established process for approving subsistence quotas and condoning commercial whaling in the name of subsistence.”

Fisher continues on the role of the EU who proposed a compromise that was ultimately adopted, “The EU came under huge pressure from Denmark to capitulate. Denmark has broken the back of the EU on this issue.”

“Having previously refused to abide by the EU Common Position, Denmark has clearly indicated that it is not here to represent the views of millions of Danes but people in Greenland and the Faroes who want to conduct commercial whaling. This is not the democracy of the European Union we were promised, but the dominance of one country over 24 others” Sue Fisher from WDCS concludes.