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IWC ECO'99 Vol. LI No.4 stories
Article Index:
1) To kill a baby If we were certain of anything coming into this meeting, it was that the horror story of whaling in Bequia would come to a sudden end, or at least that the IWC would deal it a fatal blow. The spectacle of a baby humpback being stabbed and ripped apart in front of tourists, we thought, would be too much to take. Not so, apparently. The Commissioner for St. Vincent and the Grenadines spent almost half an hour today justifying the "tradition" and offering improved methods. It seems the Makah may have been giving lessons on the side because, lo and behold, there is now a proposal to use guns on the whales, automatic rifles we think we heard... to make them die more quickly and no doubt feel better about it. Because of the greater efficiency, more whales could be killed. At one point applause broke out in the room... a first so far as we know. Not even the US slide show got that. The upshot was a startling proposal for a Schedule amendment by (surprise!) Ireland. Under it, humpbacks can go on being killed in the Caribbean, as long as they aren't babies. St Vincent had a quick rejoinder to the last one that got speared... really it was the mother that got it first, and the baby that came over to the harpoon. Be all that as it may, we're waiting to find out whether there's enough intestinal fortitude left in this room to tell the baby killers it's time to bury the harpoons, or at least restrict their use to decorating walls. 2) The competition Possibly we should thank Japan for the idea that the IWC should manage fisheries. We won't for two reasons, one being that Japan seems to regard whales as fish, an error that elementary school students are well aware of; the other being that Japan is seriously off the rails in its thinking about the relationship between numbers of whales and abundance of fish species available for human consumption. To claim, as Japan does, that if there were fewer whales (i.e. if more were killed) there'd be more fish for us, is plain nonsense. As the New Zealand Commissioner pointed out, not all whales eat fish, many don't consume commercial fish species, the prey of sperm whales, which comprise the greatest biomass of cetaceans, is squid, and moreover, fish eat fish. The real culprit is overfishing, i.e. us. 3) onward Well, this was it... the last IWC meeting of a long millenium. Good cause, we say, for serious rethinking of our purpose in being here. For some, this was the dullest, most trivial, least useful meeting ever. For us, it was marking time. Better to do that, we think, than to slide backwards. Next year, with a brand new calendar, there's a chance for a new start. We have a great task ahead of us, no less than bringing sense and a resolution to an issue that's been driving much wider agendas. Whales became world symbols in 1972 at the first UN environment conference. "Save the whales-save the Earth". The whales are a long way from being safe, and not just because of the harpoon. Our planet is in dire peril. Next year, the first meeting of the next round will be in Adelaide, Australia, a fine setting for a real celebration of whales, a pertinent examination of our priorities, and a new beginning. 4) In the nick of time A graphics presentation by US Commisioner James Baker on the catastrophic changes underway in the world's oceans began Wednesday's session. Complete with video clips, orca calls and a rousing organ finale, it was a scary review of those environmental threats, and a litany of hazards to people who consume cetaceans. The conclusion, that the IWC's scientific research programs must focus urgent attenion on environmental threats was inescapable. Unsurprisingly, Japan, with its Caribbean cohorts and Norway, struggled to keep the IWC from allocating funds for environmental research. Fortunately, they weren't able to prevent seed money being provided for the work. Perhaps reacting at failing to get its way once again, Japan petulantly threatened to withdraw its two ships from global climate change research. The day before, the Caribbean Six were in full cry against a US offer to fund a multinational non-lethal study of humpbacks in the Caribbean. Claiming it a threat to the sovereignty, territorial waters and EEZs of regional states, the Six bravely resisted "colonialist" arguments that the program would work through a regional organization; would offer full involvement to Caribbean scientists and governments; and would respect local authority over access. In response, Caribbean delegates signalled their desire to turn over marine research in the region to Japan, which has certainly shown it knows what to do with its research subjects... during a 1998 cruise in Caribbean waters, Japanese scientists killed and dissected a pilot whale. The scientific debate continues, but at least a start on work has been made. Let's hope it's in time. 5) More threats to Grays The combined might of ESSA, the Mexican government-owned corporation, and the Japanese giant Mitsubishi Corporation continue to press the Mexican government for permits to build a massive salt plant on the untouched edge of San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja's El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve. The proposal would make 116 square miles of desert ecosystem into an industrial complex of ponds, roads, piers, pumps, and giant conveyer belts... all to convert the pristine waters of San Ignacio Lagoon, which shelter the birth of gray whales, into rock salt for a glutted international market. The scheme poses a huge threat to gray whales. Unfortunately, despite hard evidence and genuine fears, it is still very much on the table. 6) Basteson's blooper Norwegian delegate Steiner Bastesen slipped up in a big way a few years ago, and is now paying for it. Last week, his fishing company, Haifa/AS was in court facing charges of cheating on quota allocations. Many of the charges were laid against the vessel "Havliner" for incidents in 1995 that related to fishing inside a protected area, faulty documentation, and serious under reporting. On one occasion, the vessel's captain "forgot" to report 17 tons of cod and 2.2 tons of haddock. Another time it was 7.4 tons. A couple of years earlier, the vessel's cod quota was overfished by 12.4 tons. It seems the pattern of cheating was consistent enough for a Norwegian court to find Haifa/AS guilty and fine it 130,000 NOK (around $20,000 USD). Fortunately or otherwise, the company's owner was far away at the time of the trial, possibly thinking it better to be in the heat here than back there. 7) Organized Crime and Dolphin Safety The dirty secret behind the massacre of dolphins by tuna fishermen in the eastern tropical Pacific is that organized crime syndicates own virtually all of the tuna fleets and canneries in Latin America-- and use these companies to smuggle cocaine and heroin throughout the world and to launder narco-profits. The Cali and Medellin cartels of Colombia, the Mexican drug gangs, and even the Sicilian Mafia have bought into the Latin American tuna industry over the past 25 years as ideal fronts for their criminal activities. When the US, Canada, and the European Union banned imports of dolphin-deadly tuna in the early 1990's, they inadvertently crippled the major drug-smuggling pipeline of the crime syndicates. The gangsters- -and the governments they control- - have fought bitterly to overturn the dolphin-safe tuna regulations. They even persuaded the World Trade Organisation to rule that the US embargo is an illegal restraint of "free trade." The "tuna/cocaine connection" was organized in the 1970's when two Sicilian Mafia families, the Cuntreras and the Caruanas, set up operations in Venezuela to smuggle heroin into the Western Hemisphere. Because the Mafia controls Italy's tuna industry, the Sicilians established tuna fleets and processing plants in Venezuela and nearby countries as cover for their narco-trafficking. In the early 1980's, the Sicilians entered into partnerships with the Medellin and Cali Cartels to smuggle cocaine into Europe, where the Mafia had an established heroin network. By the early 1990's, the Cuntreras and Caruanas were annually shipping 200 tons of cocaine, worth more than $10 billion, to Europe, most of it hidden in cans or frozen blocks of tuna. The Sicilians made so much money off the tuna/cocaine connection that they have invested heavily throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Law enforcement sources report that they have bought control of Aruba, effectively turning that island state into a criminal enterprise for drug-running and money-laundering. The flood of cocaine through the ports of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and other nations became so pervasive that the colloquial term for the drug became "atun blanco"- -white tuna. The largest tuna/cocaine operation was set up in the late 1980's by the Cali Cartel and the Mexican drug cartels. A Cali underboss, Jose Castrillon, formed dozens of companies and banks in Panama, which bought tuna fleets and canneries. The Colombians even bought into the Mexican tuna industry when it was privatized by President Carlos Salinas. Raul Salinas, brother of the president, became a secret partner in several Mexican tuna fleets and canneries that fell into the hands of the Cali Cartel and the Tijuana Cartel. For the past decade, two-thirds of the cocaine entering the US has come through Mexico, and almost all that was smuggled into Mexico on tuna boats sailing from South America to Mexican ports. Large cocaine shipments are even sent on to Europe from Mexico. And now Colombian heroin is flooding into this pipeline. Remarkably, both the Mexican and US governments have chosen to ignore the tuna/cocaine connection because of the corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican and Panamanian governments. The leading candidate of Mexico's PRI ruling party in next year's presidential election, Interior Minister Francisco Labastida, helped to set up the tuna/cocaine connection in the late 1980's when he was governor of Sinaloa State, the center of Mexico's tuna industry, according to a top-secret report leaked by America's CIA last year. The Clinton/Gore Administration has apparently turned a blind eye to the tuna/cocaine connection because it is desperately trying to prop up the ruling regimes in two strategic nations, Mexico and Panama, and because "free trade" in narcotics and narco-dollars is vital to their economies. Environmentalists, meanwhile, are asking all cetacean activists to help expose this dirty deal dooming dolphins. 8) If you care Bernhard Bechter is such an unassuming guy he couldn't offend anyone if he tried. Today Secretary Gambell kindly asked the police to allow Bernhard to leave his red kayak sitting on the lawn outside the meeting. No problem. Later, we watched Bernhard stop while walking across the lawn, noticing that one of Japan's delegates was taking a photo of a colleague, hold out his hand offering to take a photo of them both, do that, hand the camera back smiling, and walk on. It was a nice moment that perfectly illustrated where Bernhard is coming from. He doesn't hate, doesn't have enemies, isn't really against anyone, he's just for the whales. Looking at him, you'd scarcely credit that Bernhard was lying in hospital a few months ago with a broken back. That was just one of the incidents that happened to him on his way here... to show that someone cares about whales. Bernhard left his home in Austria's mountains last August, on a bike, towing a kayak, headed for Grenada. His journey took him through Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark & the Faroe Islands. On to Iceland, he visited Keiko the famous orca. Greenland was next... seriously winter by now. Bernhard hung out with his kayak and whale hunters for 3 weeks, then he jumped on a plane and headed off to northern Canada. That's where his kayak slid down a snow bank and he broke his back. After the hospital, Bernhard headed south for Miami, hitching rides with his kayak and stirring up media attention... it's hard not to notice someone sitting on a kayak holding his thumb out. Eventually, Bernhard landed in Venezuela. Almost immediately someone stuck a gun in his face and took most of what he had... but not his kayak. Despite dire warnings about dangers in the jungle, Bernhard headed up river. He landed on sandy shoals to camp at night, met gentle people who emerged silently from the forest, mostly naked, never experiencing a moment's fear, and paddled along accompanied by river dolphins. Trinidad next, hung up by customs, finally hopping on a sailboat, Bernhard landed on the lawn here a day late after 9 long months on the way. Sign onto his kayak here & find him later at www.globalance.org. 9) Inhumanity How to kill a whale? It turns out that's a big problem because the darned things just don't die all that easily. The niceties of language aside, the workshop on "killing methods" was told that even if you are standing beside a stranded sperm whale and put a bullet where you think her brain is, you might miss... she wakes up a while later and you have to do it again. That's the kind option. The other one, where you chase them down in boats on tossing seas, miss with the harpoon and do it over, stick in the lance, blast in the bullets, can take a lot longer... maybe an hour. If you're a Japanese whaler, 70% of the whales you hit don't die "immediately", if you're Norwegian, that number's "only" 40%. Must mean whales writhing on the line feel a lot better better if they're in the North Atlantic. 10) Blubber The Norwegian businessmen who paid 60 times the usual price for blubber in 1995, speculating that trade with Japan was about to open, must be regretting it now that the government of Norway insists all blubber from before 1997 is rendered into oil. This doesn't mean Norway has given up on shipping whale products to Japan... not at all. '97 was when Norway's DNA register started. Expect Norway to work harder than ever on trade, with whale meat fetching $3.30 USD in Norway and $27 USD per kilo dockside in Japan. 11) Still singing after all these years Still singing after all these years Dreamt of Moby Dick the Great White Whale cruising about with a flag flying with an inscription on it "I am what is left of Wild Nature" And Ahab, pursuing in a jet boat with a ray gun and jet harpoons and super depth charges and napalm flamethrowers and electric underwater vibrators and the whole gory glorious efficient military-political industrial-scientifiic technology of the greatest civilisation the earth has ever known devoted to the absolute extinction and death of the natural world as we know it And Captain Ahab Captain Death Captain Anti-Poetry Captain Dingbat No Face Captain Apocalypse at the helm of the killer ship of Death And the blue-eyed whales exhausted and running... but still singing to each other - Lawrence Ferlinghetti Back to Eco Main Page. |
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