Preparing to Defend the Whales

It is just a few days now until I leave for the annual International Whaling Commission meeting which this year is being held in Alaska.

Today, Greenpeace activists laid out the bodies of whales and dolphins drowned in nets and killed by ship strike as a stark reminder of the range of threats to cetaceans.

Three hundred thousand whales and dolphins drown in fishing nets each year and it is impossible to calculate how many more fall victim to pollution, ship strikes, the impacts of sonar or climate change. In this contrext it is impossible to justify hunting them as well.

Next week more than seventy nations will gather in Anchorage, Alaska to determine the fate of the great whales, under increasing pressure from whaling nations such as Japan, Iceland and Norway, for a formal resumption of commercial whaling. Later this year in the Southern Ocean, the Japanese government plans to hunt nearly 900 minke whales, increase the take of endangered fin whales to 50 and add 50 threatened humpback whales to the quota.

Governments attending the IWC must make a commitment to defend the whales, not the whaling industry. The drive to resume commercial hunting is one of the most extreme examples of governments’ failure to protect our oceans.

The whales and dolphins laid out today in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin were washed up on European beaches and subsequently collected by Greenpeace activists. The causes of death ranged from drowning in fishing nets, toxic pollution or from underwater noise. Some of them show scars from ship propellers or fishermen knifes. One died as it was giving birth.

What this space for update from Anchorage as the meeting unfolds next week.

Shane