The Minke Debate
Anti-Whalers resort to Misinformation

The weakness of the anti-whaling case was exposed yet again yesterday as nations opposed to whaling were forced to resort to misinformation to try to promote their cause.

Brazil and the UK (on behalf of the EU) showed their ignorance by apparently failing to remember that the IWC – which includes themselves – has already adopted the Revised Management Procedure (RMP). This catch-setting component of the RMS takes full account of population status and uncertainty, and would stabilize stocks at near 90% of pre-exploitation levels. This is far above standard fisheries norms, which UK Minister Morley seems reluctant to impose on his own North Sea fishers. Indeed the Minister revealed his own failure to understand the most basic tenet of marine resource dynamics: that sustainable harvest of a resource necessarily requires some reduction below pre-exploitation level.

Thus catches under the RMP would in no way compromise the non-consumptive usage desired by Brazil. Such joint use has already been demonstrated in practice for minke whales off Norway and for the Eastern North Pacific gray whales.

Georgia claimed that there were less than 1000 minke whales from the J-stock left in the Western North Pacific. The number they quoted is not endorsed by the IWC Scientific Committee. Indeed the catch rate trend on which this stock was previously classified as heavily depleted is now known to have been misleading.

Australia correctly pointed out that there is uncertainty about minke stock structure in the Western North Pacific. But they failed to add that such uncertainty is already factored into the computer trials to which the RMP is subjected.

The reality, of course, is that these arguments are a charade to cover an underlying policy of cultural imperialism. These nations are quite entitled to decide that they won't use whales consumptively, but they should not attempt to pervert science as a surrogate for their real objective to impose their cultural norms on others. The result is that CITES scientific credibility, and with it CITES itself and its laudable objectives, are the real casualty.