Suggestion that the International Whaling Commission should be closed down is ill-informed nonsense
A recent article in the scientific journal Nature, suggested that the International Whaling Commission was a defunct body and could be closed down. This article has now been picked up by more popular media and is fuelling an erroneous view of the IWC ahead of its important biennial meeting later this month in Lima, Peru.
Mark Simmonds, the OceanCare Director of Science, gives his view and for those who are interested a detailed deconstruction of the original article can be found in the link below produced and endorsed by many organisations.
“The conclusions of the authors of the Nature article show a remarkably poor appreciation of the modern IWC. In particular they disregard all of its important ongoing conservation work as if it does not exist and, in fact, it is not at all difficult to gain an understanding of this as it is well described on the IWC’s website.
I have been closely involved with the IWC over the last three decades and have observed its evolution into a modern body of significant importance to the conservation of the world’s ninety cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises and related species). The IWC fulfils an important function in monitoring their populations and it has key workstreams addressing the varied and interacting threats now affecting these animals, including capture in fishing nets, climate change, ship-strikes, noise and chemical pollution, and marine debris.
Its commercial whaling moratorium has been a huge conservation success and remains of critical importance in keeping a lid on whaling ambitions around the world. Pro-whaling interests would, of course, like to see it gone. None of the IWC functions can simply be moved to some other inter-governmental body, as suggested in the Nature article. This is simply nonsense”
For a fuller consideration of the NGO rebuttal please click here.