The two countries used a meeting of the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) held in Apia, Samoa, which has around 20 or so member nations, "to progress the proposal for a South Pacific Whale Sanctuary". They also sought to inform SPREP members of the "economic benefits: that can be obtained through developing whale-watching operations".

Only two of the countries present at the Apia gathering were members of the IWC. The Solomon Islands, which is a member, did not show up. (In fact, neither did five other SPREP members: Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, Vanuatu, Nauru and the Marshall Islands).

At end of the meeting, a statement was issued. It said that SPREP members "support in principle" (qualified support) the proposed South Pacific Whale Sanctuary, they recognized the concern of some SPREP members of the potential impact of whales on commercial fisheries and that for some SPREP members specific whale legislation was "not a high priority".

But if the New Zealand Government's spin on the issue is to be believed, South Pacific Island nations were ready to give everything they had for the sanctuary fight; that SPREP nations gave "unanimous" support for the Sanctuary Proposal, and that SPREP nations noted the breeding grounds for the great whales in the South Pacific were "one of the truly great wildlife spectacles of the world".

So while New Zealand and Australia will trot up to this year's annual IWC meeting with the qualified support of some Pacific Island nations, they still have to justify to Commissioners the need for such a sanctuary. Quite simply, the sanctuary proposal failed at last year's meeting in Adelaide because it has no scientific basis.

A sanctuary in the South Pacific is not needed for the protection of whales. All of the large whale species are protected - by the IWC's moratorium. This moratorium, the lifting of which is long overdue, gives blanket protection to all whales.

When the moratorium is lifted, it will only be because the IWC has approved and implemented the Revised Management Scheme (RMS), which will protect all whale stocks in the South Pacific, without exemption. The RMS, with all of its built-in safety factors, is a model of the commonly accepted "precautionary approach", which will only provide limited quotas for abundant stocks of whales.

Nor is the sanctuary needed to promote whale-watching enterprises, which are being touted by New Zealand and Australia as the panacea to end all economic ills for developing nations. The New Zealand Government has said that whale-watching now accounts for around $US2 billion, and has urged developing South Pacific Island nations to jump onto the ride.

Unfortunately for those nations, New Zealand and Australia appears to have over-inflated the figures, which IWMC World Conservation Trust believes will be revealed over time.

But the fundamental problems which promoting whale watching enterprises to all and sundry remain. All whale watching that occurs now is within the various countries' 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones. While there may be whale-watching businesses in 87 countries today, none of these enterprises occur in international waters, which accounts for most of the proposed Sanctuary are.

People who want to watch whales go where there are whales, not where there are sanctuaries, and especially not to sanctuaries that include large areas of the High Seas.

IWMC World Conservation Trust believes the vote for the South Pacific Whale Sanctuary at this year's London meeting is quite simply a waste of time and another attempt by anti-whaling nations to blanket the world with "non-whaling areas" to prevent any return to whaling when the moratorium is eventually lifted.