By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Jul 13 2008 (IPS)

Australia is hopeful that its proposal for a new multi-national whale research program – in which whales are not killed – announced at the recent International Whaling Commission meeting in Chile will place considerable pressure on Japan’s controversial whaling programme.

"This new Australian-led research partnership will provide the world with a non-lethal approach to gathering scientific information on whale populations in the Southern Ocean, helping improve our understanding of whales and cetaceans and enhancing our approach to their conservation and management," Australia’s Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, told delegates at the 60th IWC meeting held in Santiago in late June.

Under the proposal, Australia will host a workshop early next year – open to all scientists and groups interested in participating in the programme – aimed at developing a plan for the research.

Australia and Chile have agreed to establish a steering committee to assist with the workshop’s implementation, with the two nations also looking to extend their collaboration in terms of a plan for conservation management.

"This new collaborative approach offers a new way to conduct whale research and I would urge nations, including Japan, to participate," said Garrett.

The proposal may go some way in countering recent criticism of the Australian government’s policy on whaling.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came under fire in June when he and his Japanese counterpart, Yasuo Fukuda, "agreed to disagree" regarding their respective countries views on whaling – despite the government previously threatening legal action against Japan – while the government’s promised whaling envoy is also yet to materialise.

Japan – which, along with Norway and Iceland, wants the reintroduction of commercial whaling – currently uses an exemption in the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling that enables whaling to be conducted for scientific, as well as aboriginal subsistence, purposes.

Although anti-whaling countries and organisations argue that Japan’s scientific programme is a front for commercial operations, Japan insists that its research produces results.

While it also undertakes non-lethal research, Japan says that the killing of whales is required in order to obtain such information as a population’s age structure, reproductive rates, and how whales interact with other aspects of the marine ecosystem.

Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research – a non-profit organisation which conducts the country’s research of whales – argues that information such as the sexual maturation of whale species can only be obtained through lethal means.

Japan also wants the "emotion" to be taken out of the whaling issue and argues that whales are healthy and abundant in the Antarctic.

"Lethal studies are a standard research approach for other species and there is no scientific reason to exempt whales from this standard approach," said Japanese delegate, Joji Morishita, in a briefing note for the Chilean meeting.

But Australia’s proposal has received widespread support. Countries that spoke in its favour at the recent IWC meeting included vociferous anti-whaling nations such the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, while France, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and the host nation, Chile, were among others expressing their support.

The proposal has also been welcomed by environmental conservation organisations.

Rob Nicoll, from Greenpeace Australia Pacific, told IPS that information regarding a whale’s age range can be obtained from undertaking a biopsy and then examining amino acids from the biopsy.

"It’s been clearly demonstrated by scientists around the world that all the information you need to garner for managing whales can be gained non-lethally," he says.

"I think that puts paid to the Japanese claim that ‘we need to kill them to get this information,’" argues Nicoll.

The Greenpeace activist says that "the issue that we have [had] up to now is that we don’t have all that information. But the government’s plans to institute conservation management plans led by the International Whaling Commission and backed up by these joint non-lethal scientific partnerships is the right way to go about it."

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) also backs Garrett’s proposal. According to the WDSC’s Mike Bossley, the proposal intimates "to the Japanese that if you genuinely do want to do research, that’s fine, but there are ways of doing it that don’t require you to kill the animals".

Bossley told IPS that while the proposal’s chances of successfully bringing about an end to Japan’s lethal research program remains difficult to judge, establishing a non-lethal research programme is worthwhile.

"If we don’t push it, it’s go no chance of success. If we do push it, it’s got some chance," he says.

But with the establishment of the non-lethal research programme still some way off, Japan is set to continue its annual whaling program in the Southern Ocean towards the end of the year.

Rob Nicoll says that while Greenpeace was pleased with the outcome of the 60th IWC meeting – in which member countries agreed to undertake dialogue in an attempt to resolve differences before the 2009 IWC meeting in Portugal – the environmental campaigning group was disappointed that Japan’s program will still go ahead.

"As a show of good faith in that process it would have been great if the Japanese had said ‘we’re going to suspend all of our current whaling operations until this process comes to its culmination," says Nicoll.

The Japanese fleet will be expecting similar encounters with anti-whaling groups to last season’s hunt, when Greenpeace vessels chased and harassed the Japanese fleet.

The militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recently announced the launch of Operation Musashi, its 2008-2009 campaign in defence of whales in Antarctic waters.

Sea Shepherd has been involved in controversial incidents with the Japanese fleet over the last two seasons in the Southern Ocean, including a collision with a Japanese whaling vessel, the throwing of "stink bombs" onto the decks of whaling ships, and the boarding of a Japanese ship by two of its members.

"If the members of the IWC refuse to act to save the whales, then it is up to us to take this fight onto the high seas," said Sea Shepherd’s founder and president, Captain Paul Watson.

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