Despite the worldwide ban on whalehunting, the number of whales killed almost trebled between 1992 and 1997, and the members of the UN International Whaling Commission (IWC), which aims to regulate the practise, are unable to agree on the future of the whale.
In an attempt to break this impasse, a controversial Irish proposal to create a global sanctuary - which would permit whaling in coastal zones up to 200 miles offshore, subject to inspection and observation procedures - will be discussed at the IWC meeting in Australia next month. This proposal is the brainchild of an Irish civil servant, the current chairman of the IWC. Ireland may no longer be a whale-hunting nation, but it says something about general awareness of coastal resources that most people won't have heard of Michael Canny until he is about to hand over the prestigious three-year posting later this year.
Canny, a director of the National Parks and Wildlife Service at Duchas, has been the State's whaling commissioner since 1991, and has held the chair of the UN's International Whaling Commission (IWC) since 1997. Born in Roscommon, he has spent most of his career as a civil servant, starting out in the Office of Public Works (OPW).
He says that the involvement with international whaling politics happened "by accident", rather than design. The National Parks and Wildlife Service director has been Ireland's representative at the IWC since the Republic joined in 1985.
In 1986, the IWC voted to ban the commercial exploitation of whales, in response to an alarming collapse in whale populations. When Canny "picked up a bunch of files and headed for Reykjavik", the moratorium had been in force, by agreement, for five years.
In that same year, the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, had declared Irish waters to be a sanctuary for dolphins and whales. Haughey could well afford to do so; the last commercial hunting of any significance off this coast was when two stations were run by Norwegians on the Mayo coast between 1908 and 1923.
Canny "voted conservation, conservation", along with many other nations. When a new formula, known as the Revised Management Procedure, was tabled, "it was obvious that there was going to be no reconciliation," Canny recalls. The whaling ban depended on co-operation, rather than enforcement, but the two main whaling advocates opposed it. "Norway opted for the objection route, while Japan relied on whaling for scientific purposes to continue its activity."
At the same time, they were also lobbying to have the ban on trade in whale meat lifted, - "knowing that if that was no longer there, the moratorium didn't exist anymore," he says.
In 1995, Canny started working on a compromise proposal, which would take cognisance of the traditional activities of indigenous coastal populations. By 1997, when Canny became IWC chairman, the Heritage Minister, Sile de Valera, had approved the Irish proposal to allow for a global sanctuary, outside the 200-mile coastal limit. This stipulated that whale products would be for local consumption only. It also proposed phasing out lethal scientific whaling and the regulation of whale watching.
"Despite the moratorium, the IWC does not now control or regulate all whaling in the world. Whaling takes place legally in accordance with the Convention under objection to the moratorium, or under Article VIII (scientific)," says the motion tabled at an IWC meeting. This catch had increased from 383 whales in 1992 to 1,043 in 1997.
The Irish proposal has split the environmental community. Andy Ottaway, chairman of the British-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), Campaign Whale, describes it as a bid to legitimise commercial whaling activities carried out in defiance of the 10year-old moratorium.
"This is window-dressing to disguise abject compromise over the whaling issue," he says, and "a proposal which misleads the anti-whaling public". If passed, it would give a licence to former whaling nations, Iceland and Russia, to join Norway and Japan in the fray, he says.
"About 40 per cent of the world's oceans lie within the 200-mile limits of coastal states," Ottaway, a former Greenpeace member, says. "Nearly all of the world's whales spend part, if not the majority, of their lives within these waters when feeding, migrating, breeding or nursing young. "These whale populations are already under increasing stress from marine pollution, net entanglements, ship collisions and offshore development, including oil exploration. The last thing they need is renewed hunting."
However, Cassandra Phillips of the World Wide Fund for Nature believes Campaign Whale is misrepresenting the impact of the proposal. "Currently, the situation is worse than deadlocked, because the number of whales being killed by Japan and Norway is steadily rising. The only way to move forward here is for both sides to make some concessions."
Canny defends the proposal, explaining it would be underpinned by inspection and observation. "DNA testing allows one to trace the origin of whale meat on the marketplace," he says. However, Norway is currently opposed to allowing observers on its vessels and both Norway and Japan are opposed to funding the inspection system.
Canny is determined to seek a consensus in Australia this year: "We could go for a majority vote, but Japan and Norway would use objection procedures as before. To Norway, whaling is almost like the Irish language is to us - no one dare criticise it. As for Japan, there is an emotional issue linked to the reliance on whale meat after the second World War."
