Scientific Uncertainty and the Politics of Whaling

Notes

NOTES 1 / INTRODUCTION 1. The term “commercial whaling” was not used in the IWC until 1972, when copies of a communication from that year’s UN Conference on the Human Environment calling for “a ten year moratorium on commercial whaling” were distributed at an IWC meeting. At the same meeting, the United States proposed that such a moratorium be adopted, which the United Kingdom seconded. The introduction of the distinction between commercial and aboriginal whaling was an important one, and it fueled considerable debate in the IWC over the following decades. The U.S. government has used the distinction on many occasions to oppose whaling operations outside the United States, while simultaneously supporting the rights of indigenous whalers in the country to continue limited hunting of often endangered species. The United States also used this distinction to fend off international criticism over the large number of small cetaceans (porpoises and dolphins) killed by the U.S. tuna fishery during the 1970s, claiming that these deaths were not commercial but only “incidental.” Another perspective on the distinction has been provided by Junichi Takahashi, who argues the commercial/aboriginal whaling distinction was introduced to gain political advantage for the primarily Western-based opponents of whaling , many of whom are English speaking, by utilizing culturally biased English definitions of “commercial” and “aboriginal.” See J. N. Tønnessen and A. O. Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 674–77 (an abridged English translation of the original, Norwegian four-volume work entitled Den Moderne Hvalfangsts Historie; the original work contains many tables and footnotes that are not included in the English edition); and J. Takahashi, “English Dominance in Whaling Debates: A Criti203 cal Analysis of Discourse in the International Whaling Commission,” Nichibunken Japan Review, vol. 10 (1998). 2. See Tønnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling,. 667–72; J. E. Scarff, “The International Management of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises: An Interdisciplinary Assessment (Part One),” Ecology Law Quarterly, vol. 6 (1977): 366–71. 3. Whales, generally classified as Cetacea, can be separated into two main groups: baleen (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti). There are ten species of baleen and sixty-five species of toothed whales (the largest being the sperm whale). The three families of baleen whale are: (a) the medium-sized and slowswimming right whales; (b) the gray and humpback whales; and (c) the mostly larger and faster-swimming rorqual whales, which includes the blue, fin, sei, Bryde’s whale, and the much smaller minke—all of which belong to the genus Balaenoptera. The larger right whales inhabit only the northern hemisphere and are known as the Greenland right whale or the closely related bowhead whale, while the smaller species, the southern right whale, inhabits only the southern hemisphere. Gray whales inhabit only the northern hemisphere, but humpbacks are found worldwide—both of these whales also are medium-sized and are relatively slow swimming. See K. R.Allen, Conservation and Management of Whales (Seattle: University of Washington Press; London: Butterworths, 1980), 2–3. 4. Sperm-whale oil is actually more like a form of liquid wax and is often referred to as “sperm oil” to distinguish it from the edible whale oil taken from the baleen whales. Thus, sperm oil was used only for lighting and as a highgrade machine oil. The meat of the sperm whale, unlike that of the baleen whales, also was not favored for consumption by the Japanese, although some meat was sold on the domestic market. Kay Radway Allen has suggested that the adoption of mineral oil over sperm oil for lighting and so on that occurred after the discovery of oil in Texas in the mid-1800s may account for the decline in sperm-whale catches at this time. Allen adds, however, that the situation is unclear and also could have been caused by depletion of stocks. See Allen, Conservation and Management ofWhales, 12 and 16; Tønnessen and Johnsen, History of Modern Whaling, 7 and 228; G. L. Small, The Blue Whale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 96. 5. See for example, Small, Blue Whale; P. Birnie, International Regulation of Whaling: From Conservation of Whaling to Conservation ofWhales and Regulation of WhaleWatching, vols. 1 and 2 (NewYork: Oceana Publications, 1985); M. M. R. Freeman, “Why Whale?” in O. D. Jonsson, ed., Whales and Ethics, 39–56 (Reykjavik: Fisheries Research Institute, University of Iceland University Press, 1992); P. Stoett, The International Politics of Whaling (Vancouver: Uni204 NOTES TO PAGE...