There is apparently no domestic political stimulus for these nations to change this position, and indeed, both domestic tourism forces and environmentalist groups would object if government policy on whaling should change. However, a leading argument posed by each in opposition to whaling is that if the IWC should reverse the 18-year moratorium, the result would inevitably harm the stocks of whales upon which their tourism depends. Many cetaceans breed in the warm waters of the south Atlantic and south Pacific, including in the waters surrounding New Zealand and Australia. In the winter months the animals migrate to the Antarctic to feed on krill off the ice shelves of the southern ocean. It is there that Japan will be hunting increased numbers of minke whales in a regulated manner once the moratorium is lifted.

The main target for Japanese whalers has been and is expected to remain, minke whales. These animals are extremely abundant in the southern ocean, and blue, humpback and fin whales, which are some of the whale watch favorites of the New Zealand and Australian tourist trade, would absolutely not be targeted. They are too rare to be included in the catch quotas of the Revised Management Procedure. Similarly, the southern right whale would not be a targeted species. A DNA registry of all animals taken will be an efficient form of oversight for a renewed commercial whale fishery, and the registry, in conjunction with an international inspection system, will suffice to quell any suspicion that rare species could be secretly taken.

The tone of New Zealand and Australian arguments against any resumption of commercial hunting for minke whales is disrespectful, because it implies that species other than minke would be taken. This allegation is entirely unjustified. The suggestion that whale watch tourism could not be successfully conducted concurrently with a resumption of legal minke whaling in the Antarctic, is ridiculous. If New Zealand and Australia are concerned that minkes would become rare in their own waters due to the renewed commercial fishery for them, then that also is ridiculous, because the annual quota would not be over 2,000 animals from the Antarctic, where they go to feed in numbers up to 750,000.

IWMC, and a growing number of respected marine scientists, assert that resumption of commercial whaling under the auspices of the IWC Revised Management Procedure and Revised Management Scheme will have absolutely no adverse impact on whale watching in the southern Atlantic and southern Pacific oceans. In fact, a few decades of consistent minke harvest in the southern ocean may well result in an increase in blue and fin whales because of the decreased competition between them and minkes for krill resources. It is really time that the scare tactics of pseudo-environmentalism be quelled throughout the southern hemisphere, because this behavior serves no one well. Whaling and whale watching are not mutually exclusive, even when they are conducted in the same waters, as the Norwegians have demonstrated. No one reasonably expects that whaling would be conducted in the EEZ of either Australia or New Zealand. These two beautiful nations should reassure their citizens that "their" whales will be safe both at home and during their winter feeding forays into the southern ocean.