Whaling

(Dive Travel Business News - November 3, 2011) --  Icelandic whalers are trying to win tourists over to their point of view, offering them the chance to go to see with them, feel harpoons and eat whale meat and blubber.

Now after being alerted to the fact that whale meat is on sale at an Icelandic airport, the British Foreign Office has issued a stiff warning to Britons not to bring home any whale meat, saying to do so is in breach of international law protecting endangered species.

Penalties of imprisonment or fines up to £5,000 could be meted out by the courts, says the Foreign Office, because importation into Britain and other EU countries is illegal under the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (Cites). Up to 70,000 Britons who visit Iceland each year however so far there have been no reports of whale meat on sale in the UK or being seized at the border. read more »

(Dive Travel Business News - April 27, 2010) -- HUFFINGTON POST --

A Sea of Deceit and Capitulation

by Edward Dorson
April 25, 2010

The trajectory of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), meeting in Morocco this June, is on a disastrous course for the world's whales. A new proposal to resume commercial whaling will be presented at the IWC summit. Simply put, it's an awful deal. In order to foresee the fate of the whales with this proposal on the table, look no further than how all the marine species fared at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) last month, where each and every proposed aquatic species was denied protection. This was a Japanese orchestrated "victory," and the same bullying, vote swapping and "influencing" that Japan deployed at CITES to prevent marine protection is also entrenched to dictate the fate of the whales at the IWC. read more »

(Dive Travel Business News - April 24, 2010) - The International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling in 1986. A new whaling "peace plan" proposal on the table by the IWC serves to mollify the three countries who are currently whaling in blatant disregard for the worldwide whaling moratorium. The whaling proposal, if ratified at an upcoming meeting of the IWC in June, will save commercial whaling from the brink of extinction, but not the whales.

A philosophical shift has taken place since 1946 when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was formed to coordinate the different national whaling industries. Since the first post-war wage-earners with disposable income had the awesome thrill of seeing a whale up close - whether snorkeling, diving,  whale-watching or on TV - many of the world's citizens learned that a whale's life has more value alive than dead.  read more »