Subject: IWC: Whalers 'hid the toll of Pacific catches' (fwd)
mike williamson (williams@www1.wheelock.edu)
Thu, 28 May 1998 07:57:21 -0400 (EDT)
London TIMES May 19 1998
WORLD NEWS
Whalers 'hid the toll of Pacific catches'
BY NICK NUTTALL
ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
JAPANESE and former Soviet Union whalers killed many thousands more of
their quarry than official figures claim, scientists said yesterday.
A meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Muscat, the
capital of Oman, was told that 70,000 sperm whales were slaughtered
illegally by the Soviet deep-sea fleet in the Pacific between 1949 and
1971.
Russian scientists admitted that they had been sworn to secrecy by the
KGB and Soviet officials. The extra kills were hidden by so-called
double booking.
Toshio Kasuya, a former fisheries scientist for the Japanese
Government, alleged that his country's fleet had killed large numbers
of pregnant sperm whales in the Pacific in defiance of IWC rules. He
claimed that Japanese whalers, who were allowed to take pregnant
female sperm whales caught accidentally, had actually targeted them.
Up to 40 per cent of the catch were pregnant females, rather than the
11 per cent officially claimed.
A proposal from Michael Canny, the Irish whaling commissioner, calls
for a global sanctuary in return for a limited approval of coastal
whaling in a nation's waters.
But Allan Thornton, of the London-based Environmental Investigation
Agency, said: "These extraordinary revelations prove commercial
whale-hunting cannot be controlled. The whaling industry has
deliberately lied about the numbers of whales killed."
Britain is leading opposition to the Irish move, backed by the United
States and Australia.