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![handle is hein.animal/awiqu0027 and id is 1 raw text is:
INFORMATION REPORT
ANIMAL WELFARE INSTITUTE
P.O. Box 3650 Washington, D.C. 20007 January, February, March, 1978 Vol. 27, No. 1
THE WHALERS IN THE ASCENDANCY
Tokyo's International Whaling
Commission Meeting
The much heralded reduction in sperm whale quotas
achieved this June at the Canberra meeting of the International
Whaling Commission (IWC) was reversed in Tokyo in Decem-
ber. With a massive demonstration outside the Japanese For-
eign Office where the meeting was held, whalers and their
cohorts in the Seamen's Union shouted into bullhorns and
waved signs calling for what they termed scientific utilization of
whales. The Commissioners rushed with unprecedented haste
to vote an increase of killing 5,681 sperm whales in the North
Pacific. (They raised the 1978 quota of 763, voted this June, up
to 6,444; the 1977 quota was 7,200).
The Chairman of the Commission, Arthur Bollen of Australia,
issued a press release at noon after switching from the Technical
Committee meeting into full plenary session. Commissioners
had only just received a scientific paper criticizing the figures
and had had no opportunity to study it.
Some of the commissioners had not even received this paper
by the world's leading whale population scientist, Dr. Sidney
Holt of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The paper
is reprinted in the column at the right. Dr. Holt flatly states that
the figures adopted by the Scientific Committee at its November
meeting, preceding the Tokyo IWC meeting, are not credible.
His reasons are clearly and scientifically stated and are worth
reading in full.
Other scientists found the analysis of Dr. Seijo Ohsumi of the
Far Seas Fisheries Research Laboratory so difficult to believe
that the Committee decided to pool the figures they had from
southern hemisphere sperm whaling with those Dr. Ohsumi
presented for the North Pacific. By mingling the incredible figure
with an existing figure from a different part of the oceans, they
came up with a figure which no scientist advocated on the basis
of research; nevertheless, since it issued from the Scientific
Committee, and most countries have slowly and painfully come
to the conclusion that the Scientific Committee should be
supported, most of the commissioners came to Tokyo with
instructions to vote for its findings and they did so.
Only France had the courage to vote against the massively
increased quota. The United Kingdom abstained. All other
nations (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Iceland,
Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South
Africa, United States, and the Soviet Union) voted for the
increase.
The United States has fought hard over the past four years to
end the former practice of IWC Commissioners voting quotas
much higher than those advised by the Scientific Committee. Its
success in establishing the reputation of this Committee created,
for this session at least, an uncontrollable monster.
All of the data on which Dr. Ohsumi's paper was based came
from Japanese whaling vessels. The data goes back to periods
when there were no international observers aboard the vessels,
and even now, the observers are not in a position to attest to the
type of data involved. In any case, the raw data was not even
submitted to the other members of the Scientific Committee.
This is the sort of presentation on which the Committee, and the
Commission is asked to operate.
The Russians who kill even more sperm whales than the
Japanese simply refuse to supply any but the most limited data.
Scientists from non-whaling countries have devoted little time to
the analysis of such data as they are able to get their hands on.
Thus, although Dr. Ohsumi's paper was not accepted without
doubts, questions and arguments within the Scientific Commit-
tee, it constituted by far the greatest influence on the outcome of
the Committee's meeting at Cronulla, Australia just before the
full IWC meeting of the Commissioners in Tokyo.
Secrecy
The actions of the IWC, seem to an observer, to be guided by
two ruling passions: secrecy, and the killing of whales to the
[continued on page 2]
HEARINGS TO PROTECT ELEPHANTS
. .. within the last years the threat to all Africa's elephants
has grown even more critical, and there is no parallel for
their plight among living creatures. . . They are magnificent
animals. They can communicate with one another, you
know, and when one falls to the ground, others come to his
assistance and try to pry him with their tusks back to his
feet-some say because they know the great weight of his
bulk will collapse his lungs if he stays down too long...
Elephants are believed to have some conception of death,
and possibly even of the reasons they are hunted. They
have been known to seize the tusks from a dead member of
the family and smash them to pieces. Here in Uganda,
during one of the cropping episodes, the ears and feet of
the destroyed elephants were stored in a shed to be
prepared for sale as handbags and umbrella stands. A
group of elephants broke into the shed, removed the
objects, and buried them. Scientists involved in the episode
are said to feel uncomfortable still about the incident
The Last Place on Earth, Harold T.P. Hayes,
New York, Stein & Day, 1977.
On December 13, 1977, Chairman John Murphy (D., N.Y.)
held hearings on H.R. 10083 introduced by Representative
Anthony Beilenson (D., Calif.) to prohibit importation of ele-
phant products before the Committee on Merchant Marine and
Fisheries. [continued on page 3]
SPECIAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION
TOKYO, DECEMBER 6-7, 1977
Statement by Dr. Sidney J. Holt
Observer representing Food and Agriculture
Organization
It was with great regret that the Food and Agriculture Organi-
zation (FAO) found that, due to unforeseen circumstances, it
was not possible for a representative to attend the Special
Scientific Committee meeting in Cronulla. This means that my
comments must be. based on study of the report of the
Committee and of the background papers, instead of on an
intimate knowledge of, and participation in the Committee's
discussions, as is usual. I have however, consulted some of the
participants in the meeting and thereby assured myself that
there are no fundamental misunderstandings involved in the
following remarks. It is important, in such matters, to try to see
the wood for the trees and this is perhaps more easy than if we
had been involved in the very complex and difficult discussions
of the meanings of the data and the properties of the assess-
ment models used. In this position one may try to assess the
overall credibility of the advice the Committee has now pre-
sented to the Commission. I hope my friends in the Scientific
Committee will forgive me if I say that the results are not
credible.
In recent years the advice of the Committee has on several
occasions been that quotas should be drastically revised, usually
downward. Such advice has been received with surprise and
displeasure by some Commissioners. Such proposals for revi-
sion have been based on analyses taking into account more
data, or using better analytical models, or both. In the present
case the proposed stock classifications are dramatically changed
and quotas revised upwards on the basis only of a re-application
of the same model, using few new data. This calls for a more
than usually close look at the way in which this has come about.
It is not easy to see by inspection how the Allen model
works. For this reason FAO posed last July-that is, immediate-
ly after the decision to call a Special Meeting-a number of
written questions to the Convener of the meeting, with copies to
the Secretary of the Commission and to the Chairman of the
Scientific Committee. Unfortunately these questions have not
been answered, but we consider them still to be relevant. They
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