Whales are just beginning to recover from years of exploitation. During the last century, commercial whaling decimated most of the world's whale populations.
The world's great whales are still in trouble. They face a multitude
of threats such as entanglement in fishing nets, noise disturbance,
and pollution. Meanwhile, the Governments of Japan, Norway and
now Iceland continue to hunt whales, despite a long-standing ban,
agreed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). These Governments,
supported by industry lobbyists, also run aggressive campaigns
to have the IWC overturn the ban, even though the organisation
recently established a new conservation committee in order to
strengthen its conservation agenda.
Greenpeace launched its first anti-whaling campaign in 1975, when we confronted the whalers on the high seas. Faced with the distressing realities of commercial whaling, public opinion began to turn against the whalers.
Public support has
stayed with Greenpeace. Whaling nations have tried to turn the
tide using misinformation and outright lies; such as “whales
eat too much fish”. The only scientists who believe that
consumption by whales has an adverse effect on commercial fisheries
are those who advocate a return to commercial whaling. The problem
of collapsing fisheries is wholly due to overfishing by humans.
Equally, there is no scientific justification for "scientific"
whaling. The scientific data the Icelandic Government claims it
is capturing could be efficiently obtained by non-lethal methods.
For example DNA work, which Iceland has expressed a will to do,
can be done by non-lethal biopsy.
Greenpeace does not oppose studying whales, we just oppose killing them to do so.
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