IWC62 2010
Report from IWC62 2010 Agadir, Morocco.
International Whaling Commission Meeting (IWC)
Agadir, Morocco
June 21st to June 25th
Day 1
This year the International Whaling Commission Meeting was held in Agadir, Morocco.
There are 3 new member countries: Bulgaria, Dominican Republic and the Republic of Ghana.
The IWC opening speeches were conducted by the Deputy Mayor of Agadir and the Secretary General of the Ministry of Marine Fisheries. The meeting was chaired by the Ambassador Anthony Liverpool (from Antigua and Barbuda) Vice-Chair of the Commission in the absence of the Commission's Chair Ambassador Cristian Maqueira, who was unable to attend due to health problems.
Ambassador Liverpool mentioned that for over two decades the differences on the opinions about the whales and whaling has taken over the IWC discussions and that it has caused a lack of effectiveness, adding that to solve those difficulties it's not easy.
He recalled all the intercessional meetings that have taken place as a real commitment to try to reach a consensus solution to the IWC problems, so that the IWC can become an effective and credible conservation and management body. He also mentioned the consensus resolution passed last year, to increase the efforts to resolve the IWC problems at the latest in this meeting in Agadir. Ambassador Liverpool referred the Proposed Consensus Decision to Improve the Conservation of Whales released by him and Ambassador Maqueira for discussions.
Since this was the first time that all member nations have been together since Madeira, he expressed the need of all its members to be involved in the negotiation process. He informed the meeting that the Commissioners had agreed to devote as much time as required to the intense negotiations needed to reach a final consensus solution. They had also agreed that a new negotiating concept involving all the members was required and had established a number of negotiation groups that would meet in closed sessions.
To allow these sessions, the Commissioners had agreed to a timetable to complete its Agenda that included the suspension of the Plenary Session until Wednesday at 9:00 AM.
Day 2
Ten groups held negotiation sessions yesterday and continued today. The groups involved are: Japan, Iceland, Norway, Republic of Korea, the Buenos Aires Group (Latin American countries), The European Union, African nations, the small islands developing states and two other groups- one consisting of Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Israel, Monaco and Oman, and another group: Switzerland, the Russian federation and Denmark.
The groups reported to a private meeting of Commissioners this morning. All these groups reported that their discussions have been very useful, had lead to a fuller understanding and individual views and was conducted in a respectful way.
Day 3
Finally the Plenary doors opened for the NGOs and media!
Chairman Liverpool said that ten groups have consulted with each other and he explained that they held 30 sessions in the last 2 days. He said that while they are close to get a consensus, more work is needed in these issues: the moratorium, numbers of whales, the special permit whaling, sanctuaries, trade, and the table 4 (the projected quotas of 'the deal').
The first item on the agenda was the IWC in the future. Just as many Commissioners have told me the last two days, they reached not any important agreement, which means that the Whaling Moratorium will remain intact!
As usual they went on and on about the importance of reaching a Consensus about the future of the IWC, their differences and how the IWC is been ineffective because it is divided in two sides: pro-conservation and whaling.
The pro-conservation countries took the floor: Uruguay on behalf of the Buenos Aires group (Latin American countries), spoke about the need to work for conservation, Argentina said that in the future they should discuss about amending the articles 5 and 8 (which are about whaling with opposition and scientific whaling). The proposal does not meet the requirement of the countries that they represent. The United States said that they have assisted to progress on the area of conservation, but they did not reach an agreement. Australia said that they should center where their views meet and build on that. He added that they should completely hold the critical conservation work regarding several issues, such as disentanglement, the western gray whales, the depleted whale populations and the governance gaps to ensure transparency. He associated with Argentina. New Zealand suggested three ways to advance:
- To continue with the negotiations as they have been doing
- to create an entire new process
- to have a cooling period for recuperation and resume the discussions next year during the IWC63.
New Zealand associated with Australia. Mexico took the floor and said that the Commission has to answer to the problems of the 21st Century. He added that even if the deliberations have been productive, they can't support anything against the moratorium or any catch that are more than the ones provided by the RMP. Spain comments that the EU wants an effective IWC and has the will to negotiate. Monaco says that there are not two sides, but at least a dozen views and he suggested that the catch limits be defined by science. Some other countries associated to these comments (This Agenda Item would be coming back and forth for the next 3 days).
Then the next Item was whale stocks. The Scientific Committee new chair is Ms. Debra Palka.
In brief, the assessment of minke whales in the Antarctic is still unfinished. Their populations decline should be ready next year. According to Japan, they believe that the number of minke whales is abundant and that it will not affect their population to catch some few specimens.
There is serious concern about the Western gray whales near Sakhalin Island, Russia, because of the seismic surveys that produce anthropogenic sounds could affect them in their primary feeding area, and their habitat is critical. The SC is extremely concerned about the potential impact on these whales and highly recommended to postpone these surveys to at least June 2011.
In Patagonia the right whale populations are declining and the Southern hemisphere humpbacks population is increasing. The SC recognized 7 breeding stocks there.
Whale killing methods and associated welfare issues
Russia, the US, Greenland and Norway submitted their printed reports in the pigeon holes. Surprisingly the Russians had a very complete report. Greenland is second in providing information. The United States report lacks the time of death, the number of bullets used, time to unconsciousness/death and the total targeted and missed information. Norway wrote a simple page of text with their information.
Russia killed 115 gray whales. One was struck and lost. Of these ones, they used harpoon and float in all the whales, rifle in 110 and darting gun in 71. They had 6 stinky whales. From these killed whales, 4 exceeded 1 hour to die, the longest survived 90 minutes.
Greenland killed 165 minke whales from West Greenland, 4 minke whales from East Greenland and 10 fin whales. They used penthrite grenades to kill 67 minke whales from West Greenland and the 10 fin whales. With this method, the TTD (time to death) for minke whales was for a 41% under 1 minute, 68% died within 5 minutes. The largest TTD was 30 minutes. Using rifles, the TTD of a 3% of the whales was 5 minutes, the mean time was 29 minutes and the longer TTD was 2 hours. Fin whales TTD was 0 minutes and 1 died within 5 minutes. 11 minke whales from W. Greenland were struck and lost.
The United States killed 31 bowheads. 9 were killed with black powder darting gun as primary method, 19 with black powder darting gun as secondary method. 2 were killed with penthrite darting gun as primary method and 1 with penthrite darting gun as secondary method. No TTD available. Struck and lost 7 whales.
Norway took 484 minke whales. They used harpoon guns of calibres 50 mm and 60 mm with the penthrite harpoon grenade. The rifles used carry round nosed bullets with a minimum calibre of 9.3 mm. They have no struck and lost whales.
Scientific permits
Ms. Palka mentioned the issue regarding the adoption of a 'consensus package', that Mr. Erne Bjorge assumed that if the Commission would reach a decision that includes special permit whaling, it would be incumbent on the Commission to provide guidance to the SC, on how permit reviews should be handled in the future.
Under the JARPNII survey, the total of sampling vessels was 494 and 106 schools of common minke whales, 107 individuals were sighted and 59 animals were caught: 36 males and 23 females. None of these females had reached sexual maturity.
As a point of clarification, regarding what new information the value in ecosystem modelling could bring from taking one sperm whale last year, the proponents said that the precious data on sperm whale diet from commercial catches were non quantitative and did not consistently identify prey items to species level and that the data of JARPNII is effectively used for ecosystem modelling. Many considered this was not the case and that the catch of sperm whales in JARPNII is not scientifically justified.
NOTE: Australia instituted proceedings against Japan in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the 31 May 2010, with respect to a dispute concerning Japan's JARPA II program on scientific whaling (JARPA II case).
For more information on this case check this
link:
http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/eCache/DEF/11/840.html
About the Safety issues at sea, the same old complain of the Japanese against Paul Watson and the SSCS was heard.
Regarding the Environmental and health issues, I managed to convince the commissioners from Israel, Ireland, Czech Republic and Hungary to support the subject of toxic substances and whale human consumption. Unfortunately it was impossible to find a brave Commissioner who wanted to present the issue of the small cetaceans as they had their hands full with the dreadful Greenland Proposal and other countries like Mexico, main issue was the vaquitas critical state.
The issue of the British Petroleum spill at the Gulf of Mexico came up on the floor. Mexico said that one cachalot whale died because of the oil spill. Grey whales, cachalots, bowheads, etc. they all may be in grave danger. The Commissioner of Mexico explained that this is dangerous for all the migratory whales. He added that if a similar spill like this happens in the Arctic it would be catastrophic.
The United States offered to hold a workshop on the impacts of industrialist work in the Arctic. Russia, Sweden, Finland, South Africa, Korea, Norway, United Kingdom, France and Iceland all support this proposal and express their desire to participate in this workshop. St. Kitts supports this and also the use of the whales and wants to gave this workshop international.
Greenland had her usual presentation about why their Inuits need to kill whales to survive.
Monica Medina (the US Commissioner), requested the Chairman to have their presentation. It took 40 minutes of discussions until she was allowed to do so. In brief, the presentation was about the 'need' the United States has to kill whales for sustainment reasons for their aboriginal population.
There was no time for the NGOs to speak today.
Day 4
Whale watching
There is a Proposal for a large scale whale watching experiment. IWC member countries will be able to use the results of the project at the basis for appropriate scientific management of whale watching. This information will provide biology data and life story factors of cetaceans that are important to the Committee's work.
Cooperation with other Organizations
There were no meetings of the scientific Council with the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), during the intercessional period. Regarding ASCOBANS, a new version of the Recovery Plan for Baltic Harbour porpoises was adopted, a new Conservation Plan for the Harbour Porpoise was adopted and the meeting agreed on guidelines to address the adverse affects of underwater noise on marine mammals during offshore construction activities for renewable energy production.
About ACCOBAMS, 9 recommendations were adopted to address the problems affecting cetaceans in the Agreement area. Regarding NAMMCO, a survey of narwhals was conducted in East Greenland in August 2008. The SC recommended catches be set, so that at least a 70% probability that management objective be met for West and East Greenland narwhals, i.e. 310 and 85 narwhals in West and East Greenland respectively. During the last meeting, it was recognized that the preliminary data on the abundance of narwhals and belugas shows higher than estimated and encouraged Greenland to submit fully corrected estimates. These estimates were submitted and were endorsed by the NAMMCO Joint Working Group in February 2009. An agreement to convene an expert working group to carry out a review and evaluate the whale killing data was submitted by Japan. Our friend Dan Goodman represented Japan at that meeting and it was agreed that he should represent the Committee as an observer at the next NAMMCO Council meeting.
Regarding FAO, no IWC observer attended the 2009 meeting. In CITES, the US Delegation represented it. There were no proposals for changing the listings of whale stocks from Appendix I to Appendix II, neither for uplisting of a dolphin or whale species.
At the IMO meeting in November-December 2009, the proposed Agreement between the IWC and IMO was approved, so now the IWC has an IMO observer status. They have a number of issues, which includes ship strikes, habitat degradation and noise from ships.
Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling
Eastern Canada and West Greenland bowhead whales
Last year the SC was disappointed that the expected genetic analyses didn't materialize. This time the SC presented work on genetic differentiation of bowhead whales in Eastern Canada and Western Greenland. The study included sequence data for 346 individuals from the Baffin Bay-Davis Strait and 197 individuals from the Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin. There was a small genetic difference between the two areas. There was no difference between the HB-FB and Cumberland Sound, an area allegedly to be within the range of the BB-DS stock.
From 647 identified individuals, 91 were re-identified within the same location and year. The other 556 individuals (which were 208 males and 348 females), the scientists doing the survey found 16 re-identifications between years. Three of these were between sampling areas and all three had moved from the HB-FB area to the BB-DS area.
From twenty new specimens that got satellite tags in Disko Bay, 4 crossed assumed boundaries between putative stocks. In conclusion, the population is quite large, there is a high rate of movement between the areas and according to the authors there is only one stock of bowhead whales in Eastern Canada and Western Greenland.
The Committee received two papers on abundance stocks. The resulting abundance of bowhead whales in Isabella Bay, Nunavut in September 2009 was 1,105. These results were obtained by an aerial survey and observers (Koski et al, 2009).
Review of recent catch information reported that 5 females and one male were taken for subsistence purposes in Disko Bay, West Greenland in April-May 2009 and 2010. No whales were struck in 2008, and no whales were struck and lost in 2009 and 2010. Due to the uncertainties surrounding the Eastern Arctic bowhead stock structure and abundance, the Committee requests the Secretariat to contact Canada to try to obtain data on Canadian catches.
Management advice
In 2007, the Commission agreed to a quota for 2008 to 2010 of two bowhead whales struck annually off West Greenland but the quota for each year shall only become operative when the Commission has received advice from the Committee that the strikes are unlikely to endanger the stock. The Committee agrees that the current catch limit for Greenland will not harm the stock. It was also aware that catches from the same stock have been taken by the non member nation Canada. It agrees, as in previous years that should Canada catches continue at a similar level as in recent years, this would not change the Committee's advice with respect to the strike limits agreed for West Greenland.
The Committee reviewed the catch limits in Table 4 of the Report of Proposed consensus decision to improve the conservation of whales from the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Commission. For Eastern Canada/West Greenland (EC/WG) bowheads, the Greenland strike limit is 2 per year, plus a carryover provision of two unused strikes from the previous year. The Committee agrees that the strike limits for EC/WG bowheads that are listed in Table 4 are in accord with its advice, recognizing that the normal regular review is also intended as part of the IWC/627rev. However, the Committee notes that Canada may allow for regular catches of this stock. If the size of Canadian catches increases then the Committee's advice may change in that the total number of removals may exceed the safe limit determined by the agreed approach. If the Canadian catch increases, then the Committee wishes to draw attention to the fact that the total number taken from the stock may be greater than what is safe.
Given these importance on this issue, the Committee recommends that the Secretariat should contact Canada requesting about catch limits for bowhead whales.
Note: The North Pacific gray whales of Vancouver Island were genetically tested, also the whales of Baja California. The results suggest that they are demographically independent; therefore they require separate management consideration. The gray whale calves birth rate, decreased in Baja California.
About the United States, they requested that the IWC Secretariat separate aboriginal quotas from the rest of the deal package.
Finally the NGOs got to speak!
There was a long list of pro-conservation NGOs who wanted to speak. Unfortunately the ones chosen to speak didn't express much of what all the other NGOs would have wanted them to say. So, as a result of these interventions, pro-conservation NGOs got highly criticized afterwards.
The first speaker was from WWF Africa. He criticized the IWC with lots of emotion.
The second was a representative from NOAH, a Norwegian Animal Rights Group. She attacks the Norwegians representing her country at the IWC, because most of the Norwegians are against whaling and the position they take here it's against the will of their people, and represents only a small minority and declining industry.
Then a person representing the Latin American NGOs explained about their difficult task into growing the whale watching activities. She said that a wider Caribbean sanctuary is being developed. She added that vote buying in the Caribbean harms the reputation of the region and that an in deep investigation should be made. The next NGO to speak is the Cousteau Foundation suggested to make a plan and get a budget for the whales and reminded how much its founder Jack Cousteau loved the whales and the whale moratorium. This person spoke about how precious time and money has been wasted discussing about the future of the IWC instead of discussing other important issues, such as whale watching, ship strikes, so on. Greenpeace Japan speaks last and this guy yells so much in Japanese, that it made it impossible to understand. This guy mentions the role of Japan during CITES and mentions some of the wrong actions Japan did there.
The Chair Mr. Liverpool suggests finishing this very long day, but Norway requests to take the floor. Norway is shock about the accusations made towards his delegation and even the Chairman. Mr. Liverpool comments that when having NGO presentations, the NGOs should not make accusations to particular governments.
Day 5
The day started with all the financial and budget issues.
It was a extensive morning, but when coffee break came around noon, all the Commissioners started to debate about the Greenland Proposal outside of the Plenary.
After a long never ending debate, this was the amendment of the Proposal presented by Denmark on behalf of Greenland:
In the IWC62 in Agadir, Morocco, Denmark and Greenland further agree to voluntarily reduce the fin whales catch limits from West Greenland, from 16 to10 for each of the years: 2010, 2011, 2012.
The Chairman asked if this can be adopted by consensus: Costa Rica asked to exclude the humpback whales because of their population's importance in the South Atlantic. Australia cannot support an expansion of Greenland catch under the aboriginal sustainment quotas; Switzerland says in the spirit of the IWC they should allocate these quotas. Brazil associated to Costa Rica and Australia, the same Argentina. Iceland supports whaling. Monaco stated that the average household income for West Greenland is of about 55,000 Euros per year, plus they bring in large fishing and get massive amounts of shellfish, so these people are not really starving as Denmark and Greenland often claims. St Lucia and the rest of the all the Eastern Caribbean, Asian and all the other 'puppet' countries, took the floor for a never ending time with their usual complains and 'loyalty' to the aboriginal people, that makes your ears bleed!
The EU agreed, but all the countries are very upset, especially the ones of the Latin block and Oceania.
Finally, after very long statements, the third time that the Chairman requested to have a Consensus on accepting the amended Proposal, at last it was accepted, so the new quota for Greenland will be 10 fin whales and 9 humpbacks for the next three years.
Regarding financial issues again, the quotas for the NGO's will increase a bit by next year.
Dr. Nicki Grady farewell took a while she got presents from Cameroon, Japan and on behalf of all the Commissioners she got a mysterious big box. The Russian Commissioner sang for her a song from Elvis Presley!
Dr. Grady has been in charge of the IWC and has done a good job in the last 10 years. The person that will take over her job will be Mr. Simon Brockington.
The IWC63 location hasn't been decided yet. By September 21st the submissions of the place have to be at the Secretariat.
Additional information
*This year the observer from the Canadian DFO was Mr. Robert P. Jones, Assistant Director of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks and Marine Mammals, International Fisheries Management Bureau and International Affairs Directorate. He was very nice and friendly.
*A Marine Specialist's Petition to the IWC was launched at the end of May by Mark Simmonds and Sidney Holt. In that petition, marine scientists of the world called on the member nations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) not to undermine the conservation achievements of the last few decades by again endorsing commercial whaling at their meeting in Agadir, Morocco.
The voice of the 200+ marine scientists and other experts that signed on this petition, is a testimonial of concern. The list was closed in the last session of the IWC 62.
Ericka Ceballos
Agadir, Morocco
June 2010
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