If Whales Could Scream, The Killing Would Stop
Rebecca McQuillan, The Herald
July 2004

It can take them an hour and a half to die. They are speared by harpoons with explosive grenade heads, designed to detonate inside them causing maximum internal damage. At the same time, the head of the harpoon, which remains attached to the boat by a cord, expands like a clawed wall plug under their skin, causing drag from the whalers' boat behind them.

The methods have hardly evolved since Dr. Harry D. Lillie worked as a ship's doctor on a whaling expedition in the Antarctic in 1946: "If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck into its stomach and being made to pull a butcher's truck through the streets of London while it pours blood in the gutter, we shall have an idea of the present method of killing. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream the industry would stop, for nobody would be able to stand it."

Some 18 years ago, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which regulates whaling and aims to protect whale stocks, introduced a worldwide ban on commercial whaling to try to arrest the decline in whale populations. Subsistence whaling by Aboriginal peoples alone was to continue. Yet three countries exploit loopholes in the ban to continue slaughtering whales using harpoons and explosives. They are Norway, Japan and Iceland. As a result, they have continued to kill thousands of whales during the ban.

The IWC meets in Sorrento, Italy, from July 19-22. It has traditionally convened a working group on welfare as well as the plenary session, yet this year the commission decided there was no need for the welfare group to meet. Cruelty, never the IWC's primary concern, appears to be slipping down the agenda. At the same time, pressure is growing from countries such as Japan to resume commercial whaling.

Yet taking the fight to them is Whalewatch, a coalition of 140 animal welfare groups from 55 countries, led by the World Society for the Protection of Animals. Whalewatch has launched a major offensive to combat whale hunting. Where previous anti-whale hunting campaigns have focused also on conservation, Whalewatch is stripping its argument down to one bare assertion: that there is simply no humane way of killing a whale.

Speaking up in their support are Britain's best-known naturalist, Sir David Attenborough, and the actor Pierce Brosnan. Attenborough, in his foreword to Whalewatch's excoriating report on modern whaling, Troubled Waters, describes whales as "highly-evolved animals with all the sensitivities that that statement implies."

The report, he says, contains "hard scientific evidence that there is no humane way to kill a whale at sea".Yet the slaughter continues. When the ban was established, Norway made the most of a loophole, allowing countries to lodge specific objections.

It has been killing whales for commercial reasons since 1992: between 550 and 640 minke whales each year. Whale products are sold domestically and exported to Japan, Iceland and the Faroes. The Norwegian ministry of fisheries states "over-harvesting any species is undesirable, but to achieve an optimum balance in the food chain, the whale species which occur in large enough numbers should be harvested."

Japan, meanwhile, kills whales for "scientific research." It currently kills 590 minke, 50 sei, 50 bryde's and 10 sperm whales in the Antarctic Ocean and the North Pacific. Edible tissue can be sold commercially.

Iceland has also claimed the right to kill whales for scientific research since August 2003. It intends to take up to 250 minke, fin and sei whales annually and has expressed interest in exporting whale products to Japan."Over 1000 whales are going to be dying this year because of these loopholes," says Sue Fisher of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, who is in Italy in preparation for the meeting.

She says it is "unrealistic" that a total ban on whaling will be brought in at this meeting. Yet she and the other members of Whalewatch are determined to get welfare back on the agenda. Some coalition members will be attending the meeting, others will be staging protests. "We need to make people realise that we are dealing here with sentient mammals. We are talking about animals that die in incredible pain and fear. If we were talking about a farm animal with equal sentience, the method of killing would be totally unacceptable."

In Troubled Waters, which draws on the expertise of vets, biologists, ballistics consultants and marine scientists, Whalewatch highlights a number of issues which make it difficult to kill whales humanely. The primary method of killing is the penthrite grenade harpoon, fired from a cannon on the front of a ship. It is meant to penetrate 30cm into a minke whale before detonating, causing death by neurotrauma.

However, the common use of secondary killing methods — often rifle shots — indicates the first method is frequently unsuccessful. Their size and the location of their vital organs makes it difficult to kill them swiftly. Most of the target is submerged and both the whale and the boat are constantly moving. Weather and sea conditions change frequently. No wonder that the time to death of whales in commercial and scientific whaling is over two minutes on average and a maximum of 90 minutes. All in all, says Whalewatch, "there is a notable lack of regulation to protect the welfare of whales within the IWC."

As well as their implacable opposition to commercial whaling, Whalewatch questions the validity of the "scientific" whaling carried out by Japan and Iceland. Jonathan Owen of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, says: "As far as we're concerned, research is a dubious cloak behind which to carry on whaling. They seem to be on a quest to kill ever-increasing numbers each year."

So what sort of scientific research requires killing, as in Japan, more than 500 whales every year? Councillor Jun Koda of Japan's ministry of agriculture, says the research has "many purposes". "The main one is to find the relationship between fish and whales," he says. Whales' stomachs are opened up and the contents examined to find out how much fish they eat. Some experts estimate whales consume five times as much fish as humans per year," he says. In other words, Japan is suggesting whales are to blame for diminishing fish stocks.

Yet Whalewatch roundly rejects the argument on the grounds that history tells a very different story. "Fish stocks were far more plentiful when whales were far more plentiful," says Fisher.

"I'm no expert," says Koda. "However, if you just conserve the whales and catch the fish, there will only be the whales in the ocean and not the fish." A good reason to restrict fishing by humans, perhaps. Koda adds that 500 whales is "not so many", as the total population of minke in the southern oceans is 760,000.

Yet Owen stresses that the number of whales killed is beside the point: "It's irrelevant if you've got 10,000 or 10 million whales in the ocean. It can't be done humanely. It's a messy and cruel business."

Japan has a particular case to answer. Japan, Norway and Iceland are required to submit data to the IWC about the number of whales they kill and how long they take to die. Norway claims that 81% of minke whales it killed in 2002 died instantaneously; for Japan, just 40% of minkes hunted in Antarctica in 2002/3 died immediately.

Koda insists Japanese fishermen try to minimise pain but adds that there is room for improvement. Yet given Japan's desire to resume commercial whaling, that seems unlikely. "We believe we can resume whaling of specific species of whales," says Koda, highlighting the minke which has an "abundant population." He acknowledges that any resumption would have to be carefully managed to protect the population, but believes there is a place in modern Japan for commercial whaling.

Norway, too, is thought to be considering expansion of its whaling operations by doing its own "scientific research."

Yet Koda knows the score. "Other anti-whaling nations will not want us to resume whaling," he says. The scene is set for a clash worthy of the biggest animals on earth.

Contact Whalewatch.

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