A DECISION is to be made today by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) on whether to accede to an application to permit the hunting of humpback whales off the coast of Greenland for the first time in 25 years.
The application has been made by Denmark, which holds Greenland as a protectorate, and will be considered at a special session of the IWC in St Petersburg, Florida. It is being opposed by conservationists, but supported by Japan, Russia and the US.
Humpback whales are listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has estimated that there are about 65,000 worldwide, mainly in the western and northern Atlantic Ocean.
EU members of the IWC have yet to agree on how they will vote on the proposal, and conservationists fear that if the EU abstains, the remaining pro-whaling majority will permit the Greenlanders to catch and slaughter up to 10 humpback whales this year.
Minister for the Environment John Gormley is being urged by the National Sea Life Centre in Bray, Co Wicklow, to ensure that the EU prevents Greenland going ahead with the whaling proposal, which has been put forward on behalf of its indigenous population.
“This is a bid for an increase in Greenland’s quota for ‘subsistence’ whaling for the benefit of its native Inuits,” said Sea Life general manager Pat Ó Suilleabháin, who noted that it is being opposed by the the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS). “It seems that IWC protocol dictates that EU members must either agree unanimously or abstain when it comes to votes on subsistence whaling, and Denmark – the sponsor of the proposal on behalf of Greenland – is effectively using the rules to force this through.”
Mr Ó Suilleabháin said the reason why Sea Life and the WDCS were so opposed to the demand is that it is a result of “a switch by Greenland from subsistence to increasingly commercialised whaling” – mainly involving less vulnerable minke, fin and bowhead whales.
Sea Life and WDCS fear that if the Greenland proposal is agreed, having been rejected as recently as 2008, it would set a precedent that would make it difficult for the full IWC gathering in Morocco in June to resist calls for a return to wide-scale commercial whaling.