Bush Administration Holdovers Release Secret Deal with Japan to End Ban on Whaling

Time for Change NOW in US IWC Delegation

William Hogarth, an appointee of former President George Bush and Chairman of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), has released details of a new deal, negotiated in closed meetings for almost two years, to allow Japan to continue their illegal whaling for five more years in Antarctica and the North Pacific Oceans, essentially overturning the ban on commercial whaling that went into effect in 1985-86. Every President since Richard Nixon has opposed commercial whaling worldwide.

“This is a complete sell-out of the United States’ long-held opposition to commercial whaling and the commitment of the American people to whales,” charged David Phillips, Director of the International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) of Earth Island Institute. “It’s time for the Obama Administration to remove William Hogarth and other Bush holdovers and change the US delegation to the IWC to leading the protection of whales and dolphins.”

Phillips noted that: “The Japan Fisheries Agency has repeatedly defied the global moratorium on commercial whaling by calling their catch ‘scientific’, but selling the meat in Japanese markets and restaurants. Now, under this proposed ‘deal,’ Japan would get out from under international scorn and criticism, switching to killing whales in their own coastal waters while continuing the charade of ‘science’ in the Antarctic and North Pacific.”

Mark J. Palmer, Associate Director of IMMP, charged: “ This is no compromise; this is the US completely capitulating to the Japanese Fisheries Agency’s illegal whaling at a time when the Japanese people are buying less and less whale meat.”

The proposal is included as Appendix 1, “Chairs’ suggestions on the Future of the IWC”, of the Report on the Small Working Group and can be found at: iwcoffice.org/commission/future.htm

Other nations are likely now to follow Japan’s example. Iceland’s government just last week, reportedly responding to media accounts of the Japan deal, quadrupled its whaling quota from 100 minke whales a year to up to 400 per year, plus 150 endangered fin whales for its whaling industry. Japan, despite these so-called compromise negotiations, accepted 60 tons of whale meat from Iceland last November, another violation of international laws and norms. Other nations are likely to consider establishing whale- and dolphin-killing industries to cater to the Japanese government’s support of whaling and trade in whale meat.

“The Obama Administration must immediately intervene to stop the selling out of whales by the United States delegation,” said Palmer. “This one-sided deal means the Japan Fisheries Agency’s scofflaw actions over the past 24 years in defiance of the moratorium on commercial whaling have won by simply ignoring international laws and norms of conduct to hold on to the slaughter of whales globally. The vast majority of nations of the world that cherish whales and protecting the marine environment get nothing at all. Japan’s defiance, by contrast, gets then everything they wanted – legal whale slaughter and no international pressure to change.”

“This deal will increase the killing of dolphins, which after all are whales, in Japan’s home waters,” notes Richard O’Barry, Director of the Save Japan Dolphins Coalition. “Already, the Japan Fisheries Agency allows up to 23,000 dolphins to be killed each year in the most horrific ways imaginable. What can William Hogarth and the Bush Administration be thinking? The new Obama Administration must rush to put a stop to this sell-out of whale and dolphin protection.”