OUTRAGE OVER WHALING ... #2 <cont>

Greenland seeks whaling breakaway:

I think this is all about applying pressure on the IWC, Walter. Ambit claims to loosen up the whaling rules. Sigh.

Vote-buying allegations on whaling
Andrew Darby, Hobart
September 29, 2008

THE Federal Opposition has called on the Rudd Government to tackle Japan about alleged vote-buying in the International Whaling Commission following the recruitment of strife-torn Eritrea to the organisation.

Eritrea follows Tanzania and the Republic of Congo on to the 82-nation commission's membership list in recent months.

All three African countries joined talks in Tokyo in March, which a Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement said at the time were aimed at "obtaining understanding for Japan's position on sustainable whaling".
Shadow environment minister Greg Hunt said yesterday that IWC vote buying was unacceptable. "Mr Rudd should take the issue of vote buying directly to the Japanese," Mr Hunt said.

"His concern about whaling appears to have evaporated from the day he became Prime Minister."

A spokesman for Environment Minister Peter Garrett said Australia would welcome the opportunity to meet new IWC member countries and discuss recent developments in cetacean science and the reform process.

Eritrea is a single-party state accused this month by neighbouring Ethiopia of being engaged in training and arming terrorists.

It is currently ranked 157th out of 177 nations in the UN Human Development Index and 126th on Transparency International's Global Corruption Index. "We do not know their views on whales, or why a small, desperately poor country, where 80% of the population is involved in farming and herding, would want to join the IWC," said Greenpeace International spokesman John Frizell.

Meanwhile, there is little evidence that a United States-sponsored attempt to find a consensus on the future of the IWC is progressing.

A closed-door meeting held recently in Florida of inner-circle IWC nations, including Australia, developed a list of high-priority divisive issues for further meetings to consider.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare said the latest African recruits indicated that for Japan, it was business as usual.

"I see this as a sign of bad faith by Japan about the future of the International Whaling Commission," said the fund's campaigns manager, Darren Kindleysides.

"Bad faith, in the same way as it plans to go ahead with whaling in the Southern Ocean again this summer."

The Japanese whaling fleet is expected to leave for the Antarctic in about six weeks for its latest scientific whaling expedition.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/votebuying-allegations-on-whaling-20080928-4pp6.html

who murdered more whales last year, Japan Greenland, Norway? or who?
Do you know the breakdown of the numbers and types of whales that were murdered

I don't know off the top of my head, farmer. Will do a bit of investigating & see what I can find out.

... but I do know that they all believe that, whatever their "catches", that it's not nearly enough!

(I'd be interested in data on tuna, too. Must be huge!)

This is one of the most beautiful images of a whale I've seen this year, I just had to share it:

It is a beautiful, serene image. Thanks for posting it.

Not whaling, this, but it is about whale decline. Seven orca in Puget Sound have gone missing this year. Researchers aren't sure if this is due to pollution, small food quantities, naval sonar testing, run ins with boat propellers or a combo of things. One propellers-struck whale was found to be emaciated, no one knows why she was so skinny. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/25/killer.whales.ap/index.html

It's horrible, Li'l K, but as you know orcas are the largest of dolphins, not whales at all. They're not hunted, unlike their (and our) cousins the whales.

Orcas are, btw, the most heavily polluted living creatures, with all the heavy metals we've beeen dumping into the oceans. I posted a link and an excerpt on the Global Warming thread (Blatham's) I'll see if I can find it.

I found it, but can't post links on this tiny phone...sorry. Anyway it's on the last page of the thread.

Oh yeah, they're dolphins. I tend to clump them all into cetaceans.....

That is rather dismal news, k. I have the feeling we'll be hearing lots more stories like this .... Sigh.

Thanks for posting.

Today our Supreme Court said our Navy doesn't have to comply with emergency measures to tone down the new sonar emissions.... sigh... This pretty guy (gal?) doing somersaults off New Zealand better stay far from the new submarines...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/35952269.html

Summer again. "Scientific whaling" season again. Sigh.
This year GreenPeace will not be involved in anti-whaling activities in the Southern Ocean. That leaves just Sea Shepherd & the Japanese whalers.:

Activists say they have taken whaling fleet by surprise
Andrew Darby in Hobart
December 22, 2008/Sydney Morning Herald


Annual slaughter … Japanese whalers at work.
Photo: AFP

SEA SHEPHERD anti-whaling activists forced to pick their way through dangerous ice-strewn seas in the Antarctic yesterday said they had the Japanese whaling fleet on the run.

The activists surprised the whalers inside the pack ice zone off the Australian Antarctic Territory, only days after the fleet arrived in its whaling grounds.

The rapid discovery of the ships near the Dibble iceberg tongue, south of Tasmania, took the Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson closer to his ambition of shutting down the fleet's activities for weeks on end.

Captain Watson said the fleet broke up and fled in fierce polar weather. He was forced to thread his ship, Steve Irwin, through a maze of house-sized submerged icebergs, known as growlers, in pursuit.

"If we hit one of them it would have cut us open," he said.

He said the whalers were about 50 nautical miles north-east of the Steve Irwin.

"We know where they are," he said. "We'll keep them running."

In previous seasons it took anti-whaling groups weeks of searching across the vast Southern Ocean to track down the fleet, giving the whalers time to kill hundreds of whales.

Captain Watson said he found the fleet through intuition and experience only a month after it left port in Japan.

He said he correctly predicted the whalers would begin operations in the far west, instead of following the usual pattern of beginning north-east of the Ross Sea. He then proved right in guessing that they would be working in an area of open water inside the pack ice belt.

He rejected a suggestion that Sea Shepherd was being aided by satellite information.

"I wish," he said.

Last season the activists planted a miniature tracking device on one of the whale hunter ships, Yushin Maru No. 2. Captain Watson said that tracker stopped operating on the vessel's return to Japan.

The Japanese Government has refused to comment on the movements of the fleet, which has a "scientific research" quota of 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, and Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, have called for restraint by both sides in the Southern Ocean this summer.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/whale-watch/activists-say-they-have-taken-whaling-fleet-by-surprise/2008/12/21/1229794246629.html

The Sea Shephreds have taken some of their foundation money to produce a series on tracking and disrupting the whalers . Its a series called "THE WHALE WARS" and its on ANimal Planet USA (a cable tv network). The shows are stirring and, like soldiers commited to an unpopular war (in many's eyes), these warriors risk their lives by interposing their bodies between the whales and explosive harpoon guns in waters just above freezing..

I hope we get to see it here, farmer. (I don't have cable.)

It is incredibly brave & dangerous work, I agree.

Sea Shepherd clashes with Japanese whalers
Posted 5 hours 37 minutes ago
Updated 5 hours 24 minutes ago


Clash: A photo supplied by Sea Shepherd shows the Steve Irwin protest vessel alongside a Japanese whaler on Boxing Day (Sea Shepherd)
Anti-whaling protesters and a Japanese whaling ship have clashed in waters off Antarctica.

The crew of the Sea Shepherd boat the Steve Irwin say they threw bottles of rotten butter and non-toxic dye at the whaling ship when the two vessels met in dense fog on Boxing Day.

The Steve Irwin's captain Paul Watson says the aim is to drive the Japanese vessel out of Australian waters, where he says it is in breach of a Federal Court order.

He says the two ships collided, but there was no serious damage to either.

A spokesman for the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo says Japan has a legal right to conduct whale research and the Sea Shepherd is a terrorist vigilante group.

The spokesman accused the Sea Shepherd crew of throwing acid and said the Steve Irwin rammed the Kaiko Maru, and then repeatedly overtook and menaced the Japanese vessel for three hours at dangerously close quarters.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/27/2455525.htm