OTHER+HARMS+TO+SEA+CREATURES

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 * // Tell Iceland PLEASE Stop Hunting Whales Despite an international ban on whaling adopted in 1986, Iceland has announced plans to hunt whales commercially for the first time in twenty years. Permits have been granted by Iceland's Ministry of Fisheries for the hunting of 30 minke whales and nine endangered fin whales. Commercial whaling is an out-dated and unnecessary industry that should have ended a century ago with the use of whale oil lamps. //[[image:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/94/278945802_1dcfb309dd.jpg width="500" height="217" caption="Tell Iceland PLEASE Stop Hunting Whales by goecco.com."]]** [|**http://www.flickr.com/photos/goecco/278945802/**] [[image:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/110/278945809_acbc726c63.jpg width="500" height="278" caption="Tell Iceland PLEASE Stop Hunting Whales by goecco.com."]] [|**http://www.flickr.com/photos/goecco/278945809/**]======

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[] **// Last week, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), an intergovernmental organization founded in 1946 to regulate the commercial and scientific hunting of whales, held its 59th annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. Among its notable decisions was a resolution to uphold an indefinite moratorium on commercial whaling by IWC members that had been in effect since 1986. //** **//Although the vote was symbolically important, it will have no practical effect on the whale hunting now conducted by Japan, Norway, Iceland, and certain other countries. Since the moratorium was approved, Japan has continued to kill large numbers of whales each//** **// year under a provision of the IWC’s founding treaty, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), that allows member countries to issue permits to their nationals to kill whales for “scientific research.” Norway, meanwhile, has been legally entitled to continue commercial whale hunting because its objection on the grounds of national interest rendered it exempt from the ban. Iceland conducted its own ostensibly scientific killing of whales from 1986 to 1989 and again from 2003; in the interim it withdrew from (1992) and then rejoined (2001) the IWC. In the face of intense international criticism–largely but not exclusively from other IWC members–Japan, Norway, and Iceland intend to kill a total of some 2,500 great whales in 2007. //**
 * // It's a ritual that boils the blood of whale-watchers everywhere. On Nov. 18, a fleet of four Japanese vessels left Shimonoseki harbor in Western Japan to begin its five-month whale hunt in the Antarctic Ocean. This time, however, the whalers are planning what's expected to be its largest hunt in decades; along with about 850 minke and 50 finback whales, the fleet says it plans to harpoon as many as 50 humpback whales for the first time since hunting the endangered species was banned in 1963. //**======
 * // The IWC //**
 * // The IWC was originally established “to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry.” It did so by setting annual killing quotas by species for both commercial and “aboriginal” hunts (i.e., hunts by indigenous communities for subsistence purposes) and by declaring certain seasons or geographic regions closed to hunting. Since the IWC had no enforcement authority, however, its decisions were often evaded or ignored, and by the 1960s the populations of several whale species had been greatly reduced. By this time, however, the whaling industry itself had begun to decline, reflecting both a dwindling worldwide demand for whale products and new public interest in issues related to conservation and the environment. Gradually these changes made themselves felt in the IWC, which slowly expanded its agenda to include conservation and protection, rather than merely efficient exploitation, of at least some whale species. //**
 * // In 1958 the first United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea adopted a resolution calling on member states “to prescribe, by all means available to them, those methods for the capture and killing of marine life, especially of whales and seals, which will spare them suffering to the greatest extent possible.” In response, the IWC established a working committee on “humane and expeditious” killing, which concluded that the only significant factor in determining whether a method of killing was humane or not was the “time taken to inflict death.” In 1972 the United Nations Conference on the Environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden, called for an immediate 10-year moratorium on whale hunting. After 10 years of internal debate, the IWC agreed in 1982 to a trial five-year ban on commercial whaling, to last from 1986 to 1990; in 1994 the moratorium was declared an indefinite “pause” in commercial whaling. Norway objected to the ban in 1986 and was thereby exempt under IWC rules; Japan and Iceland, in contrast, quickly developed an intense scientific interest in the whale species they had previously hunted commercially. //**
 * // “Scientific” whale hunting //**
 * // Under the auspices of the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR), established in 1987, one year after the commencement of the moratorium, Japan undertook the Japan Research Programme in the Antarctic (JARPA), in the course of which it killed approximately 440 Antarctic minke whales annually from 1987 to 2003. (JARPA continued after 1994 despite the IWC’s designation that year of the region south of 40 degrees S latitude as a Southern Ocean Sanctuary in which all commercial whale hunting would be prohibited.) JARPA II, proposed in 2005, called for the “sampling” of approximately 850 minke whales annually, as well as 50 humpback and 50 fin whales (the latter two species are endangered). Despite a request from the Scientific Committee of the IWC in 2005 that Japan either withdraw JARPA II or revise it so that more of its objectives could be met through “nonlethal” means, Japan issued permits to the ICR for the first two years of the program, through the Antarctic summer of 2006-07. (Under IWC rules, members must submit proposals for scientific hunting to the Scientific Committee but do not require the approval of the committee to conduct a scientific hunt.) Meanwhile, under JARPN, the Japan Research Programme in the North Pacific, Japan killed approximately 100 minke whales annually in the western North Pacific from 1994 to 1999. JARPN II, which Japan described as “a long-term research programme of undetermined duration,” entailed the annual killing of 150 minke whales as well as 50 Bryde’s whales, 50 sei whales, and 10 sperm whales (the latter two species are endangered). All the meat and blubber from the Japanese hunts is sold commercially, though Japan claims that this practice is in compliance with the ICRW rule that whales killed in scientific hunts not be wasted. //**