PARIS: More than 80 nations square off in Slovenia next week over the fate of the world’s remaining whales, facing a multitude of perils from meat hunters and ship strikes to getting snared in fishing gear.
The stage is set for heated debate, as the 88 members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) are deeply divided along pro- and anti-hunting lines.
The biggest bones of contention are Japan’s yearly whale hunt in the name of science, which critics insist is for dinner tables instead, and a proposal for a South Atlantic sanctuary to protect the majestic marine mammals.
Hunting nations Japan, Norway and Iceland are traditionally pitted against much of the rest of the world at the biennial IWC meetings, which seek to balance issues of national sovereignty, subsistence rights and culture with conservation of Earth’s natural bounty.
For environmentalists, it is an issue of cruelty as well.
“Whaling has no place in the 21st century. It’s outdated, it’s thoroughly inhumane,” Claire Bass of Humane Society International told AFP from the Adriatic coastal town of Portoroz, where the commission’s 66th meeting will take place from Monday to Friday.
“There is no humane way to kill whales at sea,” she said, pointing out that many die long drawn-out deaths from horrific wounds inflicted by harpoons with explosive tips.
This year’s meeting marks the 70th anniversary of the commission’s founding, and the 30th birthday of a whaling moratorium estimated to have prevented the killing of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of whales.
