The Future of Whaling

The world's whaling commissioners meet next week. Hopefully they will be able to stop this unnecessary and barbaric activity

The Madeira archipelago of Portugal boasts a remarkably biodiverse ecosystem, featuring more than 250 species of land molluscs, Europe's biggest tarantula and an extremely rare butterfly known as the Madeiran Large White.

This stunning locale will provide the setting for the 61st annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The week-long conference begins on Monday.

In 1986, the IWC banned commercial whaling. However, due to the rules of the 1946 IWC Convention, countries have the option to disregard any conservation measure. In addition, there is a loophole in the regulation allowing the killing of whales for "scientific research" -- a loophole that has been used by Japan, Norway and Iceland to continue whaling. Indeed, whale meat is currently for sale in markets and restaurants in these nations.

Unfortunately, the IWC does not have the ability to enforce the moratorium on whaling and individual governments have so far neglected to do so. This has left the enforcement to non-profit conservation groups like Sea Shepherd, which is the focus of the popular Discovery Channel television series "Whale Wars."

"There is no excuse for continuing to allow this barbaric and outdated practice, especially as other threats to whales such as pollution and climate change increase," according to a statement by the Humane Society of the United States. "It is time to declare a global whale sanctuary and make all the seas safe for whales...no exceptions."

Perhaps the biodiverse setting of Madeira will inspire the officials of IWC member countries to make the 1986 whaling ban permanent by creating a worldwide sanctuary for all whales in all waters.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign the Humane Society petition to create a global whale sanctuary
  
• Sign the Greenpeace letter to Iceland's prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir urging her to cancel Iceland's five-year commercial whaling quota and ensure that Iceland's representative at this year's International Whaling Commission meeting votes for whale conservation
• Sign a Care2 petition urging Iceland's minister of fisheries Jon Bjarnason, Minister of Fisheries to reduce this year's whale hunt quotas immediately – and to ban whaling forever
  
• Sign the Whale's Revenge petition urging the International Whaling Commission to close the loophole that allows whaling in the name of so-called "scientific research"
  

RELATED POSTS

• Silencing Whale Songs (May 31, 2009)
• Illegal Whale Meat Still on Japanese Menus (April 14, 2009)
• Bloody Waters in the Faroe Islands (February 19 , 2009)
• Gray Whales, Meet Big Oil (November 22, 2008)
• Palin Rebuffed As Unique Alaskan Whales Score Major Victory (October 18, 2008)
• Whales Get New Sanctuary in Chile (September 30, 2008)
• First-Ever Whale Songs Heard in New York Waters (September 20, 2008)
• Greenland's Request to Kill Humpback Whales Denied (July 1, 2008)
• Greenpeace Activists Jailed in Tokyo (June 22, 2008)
• US Condemns Iceland's Whale Hunt (May 26, 2008)

image: Southern right whale, Peninsula Valdés, Patagonia, Argentina (credit: Michaël Catanzariti)