Whales worth more alive than dead
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Humpback whales watching.
AFP - Wednesday, June 24
FUNCHAL, Portugal (AFP) - - Whales are worth more alive than dead, an Australian minister said Tuesday, as campaigners publicised the billion-dollar whale-watching industry on the sidelines of the IWC conference.
Environment Minister Peter Garrett welcomed a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which said that in 2008 whale-watching generated 2.1 billion dollars (1.5 billion euros) of tourism revenue worldwide.
Garrett was speaking on the second day of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), where pro- and anti-whaling countries are thrashing out the issue of whether to permit increased hunting of the marine mammals.
"The bottom line is clear," said Garrett, who before his political career was a rock musician with Midnight Oil. "Whales are worth much more alive than dead.
"Responsible whale-watching is the most sustainable, environmentally-friendly and economically beneficial use of whales in the 21st century," he told reporters at Funchal, on the Portuguese island of Madeira.
IFAW's whale programme director Patrick Ramage told reporters: "While governments debate what to do about whales, their citizens are pointing the way."
In 2008, more than 13 million people had taken whale-watching tours in 119 countries, he added.
"More than 3,000 whale-watching operations around the world now employ an estimated 13,200 people," said Ramage.
The 2.1 billion dollars produced in 2008 was more than double the estimated one billion dollars generated by the industry in 1998, said an executive summary of the report.
The IWAF report defined whale-watching as covering all cetaceans -- whales, dolphins and porpoises.
Garrett attended the launch of the launch to show his support.
Australia is one of the IWC member nations fiercely opposed to the hunting of whales.
They, like other anti-hunting nations, argue that hunting whales is not profitable, to the point that some whaling countries have to subsidise the industry.
Anti-whaling nations are fighting to preserve the 1986 moratorium on whale-hunting, although Norway and Iceland are already defying it.
Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, kills more than 1,000 whales a year through a loophole in the 1986 treaty that allows their killing for scientific research.
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Denmark asks to resume humpback whale hunt
AFP Tue Jun 23, 4:27 pm ET
FUNCHAL, Portugal (AFP) – Denmark on Tuesday officially requested permission to resume hunting humpback whales off Greenland, in a move that has angered environmentalists.
Ole Samsing, Danish commissioner at the annual International Whaling Commission (IWC) conference being held on the Portuguese island of Madeira, made the call and demanded a "quick solution".
"We want to put forward a proposal for a quota of 10 humpback whales per year for the 2010-2012 period" in Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, Samsing said.
"We want a quick solution for this proposal," he added.
Samsing said the hunting of humpbacks would be carried out under so-called "aboriginal" or subsistence hunting to support local communities.
To compensate for resuming the humpback hunt, Samsing proposed reducing the quota of minke whales from 200 to 178.
Commercial hunting of humpbacks has been banned since a moratorium in 1966.
Greenland continued to legally capture the large marine mammals until 1987, when the ban was extended to "aboriginal" or subsistence hunting.
The Danish plans drew criticism from environmental campaigners, who say Greenland does not need a quota increase.
"Overall since 1991, Greenland has taken only 77 percent of its whole available quota," the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) said in a statement urging the IWC to refuse the request.
"The IWC scientific committee has already made it clear that the humpback population can withstand 10 being captured a year," Portuguese commissioner Jorge Palmeirim, head of the sub-commission for subsistence whaling, told AFP earlier Tuesday.
"But the question is one of need, and it is not clear that they need to increase their quota," Palmeirim added.
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Killer Whale
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thanks for this article Chew Bakar
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Nice pictures.
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Originally posted by Chew Bakar:
