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Losing the Whales: How the Anti-Whaling Narrative Has Failed
The anti-whaling movement has failed to address the issues underpinning international negotiations over whaling, and now faces its greatest defeat.
Sep 16, 2024
Save the Whales. Perhaps the first famous conservation slogan. The end of pelagic commercial whaling was one of the original successes of the conservation movement in international diplomacy. The movement started in the USA, yet now, the two species of whale that are critically endangered are both found in U.S. waters. And we’re about to see the resumption of Antarctic commercial whaling, supported by the U.S. military-industrial-security complex. Crunch time is the meeting of the International Whaling Commission, or IWC later this month. “Lose the whales” is looking more realistic.
To understand how we’ve arrived here, we need to go back to 2010. The year Apple unveiled the first iPad. Taylor Swift released Speak Now. Wikileaks put out the “Collateral Murder” video. U.S. President Barack Obama declared the end of combat operations in Iraq, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the beginning of the USA’s re-engagement with East Asia. In November 2010, President Obama attended the meeting in Japan of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
While there he had individual meetings with the (then) Prime Ministers of Japan, Naoto Kan, and Australia, Julia Gillard, the USA’s most important allies in the region. At the time, Japan and Australia were at loggerheads over whaling. A few months earlier Australia had started proceedings against Japan at the International Court of Justice that it was, with its “scientific whaling,” in breach of its obligations under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), the treaty underpinning the IWC. Australia won the case a few years later.
The return of pelagic commercial whaling is imminent.
As part of the movement against whaling, on November 5 2010, conservationists organized the “World Wide Anti-Whaling Day.” In Sydney, Australia, a protest was held at the Japanese Consulate. For the media coverage it received, it may as well not have happened. Concerns about Japanese whaling in Australia’s Antarctic whale sanctuary were running high, so this lack of media interest was unusual. However, the press had just covered another whaling “protest.”
On the evening before, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) organized a different action. The video remains available. They set up a fake whale in Sydney Harbor with a generic “stop whaling” message. As the video celebrates, this garnered huge coverage in the Australian media, so the action at the consulate the following day got none. Evidence of the conflict over whaling, between these two major U.S. alliesevaporated just in time for the presidential trip to Asia. Instead, the generic, unfocused “stop whaling” message occupied the airwaves. Organizers of the action at the consulate were livid.
Founded in 1969, IFAW was originally a small and effective NGO. It helped establish non-lethal studies as the way to do science on whales. In 1997 IFAW’s founder passed the organization on to a couple of former government officials, ex-senior managers of Peace Corps programs in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Under their direction, IFAW grew rapidly, including by taking over smaller NGOs internationally. Most conservation NGOs are short of money, and IFAW, suddenly rich, absorbed them.
The person who was heading IFAW’s whale program at the time of the stunt in Sydney Harbor has an unusual background for an employee of a conservation NGO. He was originally a German and Russian linguist with U.S. Army intelligence, enlisting in the early 1980s. After the army he moved to Mongoven, Biscoe, and Duchin (MBD), a company that specialized at infiltrating environmental NGOs for corporate clients, as detailed in an academic paper on their work for the tobacco industry. The title—“[MBD]: Destroying Tobacco Control Activism From the Inside”—tells the story. In a move that was the most radical conversion since Paul on the road to Damascus, he then immediately got the job as head of GLOBE USA, a collaborative of global politicians working on environmental issues. He moved to IFAW in 1996, immediately prior to the leadership changeover there. In 2007, coinciding with a U.S. government decision to come up with a process to “solve” issues in the IWC, he was appointed to IFAW’s new position of Global Whale Program Manager. Unlike other IFAW staff, he had little prior experience with the IWC.
The Sydney stunt is just one example, demonstrating how easy it is to direct media stories. IFAW remains the go-to organization for much of the mainstream media on whaling, and other whale conservation issues. IFAW’s messaging controls the anti-whaling narrative.
The anti-whaling movement has been operating under a set of assumptions over the past couple of decades. These include: whaling is a dying industry running on subsidies; acting forcefully against whaling will encourage a backlash in whaling nations; whaling can be replaced with whale-watching as an economic use of whales; and recently, that the Japanese withdrawal from the IWC was an “elegantly Japanese solution” that meant Japanese whalers would never again engage in pelagic whaling. Note that all but one of these links quote IFAW.
Given the new Japanese quotas for killing fin whales, the new ice-strengthened Japanese whaling factory ship, and the call to shut down the IWC, these assumptions are mistaken. Whaling is just one part of much bigger geopolitical machinations that revolve around the U.S. military maintaining its Japanese bases in the face of pubic anger there at the appalling behavior of some service personnel. And then the Japanese government uses access to bases as leverage to winning on whaling, in order to maintain their control over management of other, more important, pelagic fisheries.
Further, the anti-whaling movement has failed to heed warnings of problems in their midst. These were clear after Wikileaks released documents revealing the dealings between the U.S. IWC commissioner, and the Japanese government in 2009. Also clear from the Wikileaks cables is the way in which Australia and Japan’s relationships were impacted by whaling, and how this was a concern for the U.S. government. The NGO community treat this as irrelevant.
That U.S. IWC commissioner? Prior to her return to government, Monica Medina, also ex-military, also worked at IFAW.
On the Wikileaks documents, IFAW’s whale program leader wrote a blog post back in 2011. It includes: “...as I stare back at his face on the WikiLeaks homepage, that Julian Assange—who doesn’t look so well—is on a one-man mission, that the job he is tryin’ to do on us is about something other than saving whales or even promoting transparency in government, and that he really doesn’t much like us—as in U.S.”
The return of pelagic commercial whaling is imminent. The anti-whaling movement has failed to address the issues underpinning international negotiations over whaling, and now faces its greatest defeat. A major NGO focusing on whaling—one to whom many media outlets turn to for comment—has a track record of employing former U.S. military, and military intelligence, staffers. (And not just for whaling). Have these intelligence professionals failed to comprehend the geopolitical issues driving negotiations over whaling?
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What’s Really Behind the GOP Drive to ‘Save the Whales’ From Offshore Wind?
Think tanks funded by ultra-conservative donors and fossil fuel companies coopted a coalition of “grassroots” opposition organizations to stop the development of clean energy, despite the fact that oil and gas are the true threats to ocean life.
Jun 29, 2024
As a communications director for an environmental nonprofit, much of my job boils down to separating fact from fiction and disseminating the former to the public. That’s why in June, National Ocean Month, at the top of my to-do list has been disentangling a convoluted narrative touted by Republican party officials. They claim offshore wind energy is threatening marine wildlife, begging the question, “Have Trump and his allies turned into unlikely environmental champions sporting ‘Save the Whales’ placards? Or is something more suspect lurking beneath the surface?”
Republicans have run with the myth that offshore wind energy development endangers whales drawing from vague theories about noise and electrical generation and the construction of turbines. This myth has stopped multiple wind projects in their tracks in New York and New Jersey. It has been the fodder of countless viral media moments. And most recently, it has propelled a lawsuit against a Biden administration wind project off the coast of Virginia. Despite the fact that scientists and experts say there is absolutely no evidence linking wind development to whale endangerment, this messaging spin has proliferated.
So how—and why—did the GOP successfully promulgate this false narrative without any scientific backing? Like all successful propagandists, they didn’t act alone. Think tanks funded by ultra-conservative donors and fossil fuel companies coopted a coalition of “grassroots” opposition organizations to stop the development of clean energy. The fossil fuel industry has weaponized its cronies in Congress and “the third sector” to maintain the status quo of oil and gas energy dominance. Where there was blatant climate denial years ago, there were industry-funded politicians parroting Big Oil talking points. And where there is clean energy policy obstruction and interference now, there are the same industry-bought politicians and community “environmentalist” allies with newly outfitted sloganeering.
The fossil fuel industry and its allies will continue to fight to the bloody end for the last drops of oil and the last scraps of profit, and we do not have time to entertain their deceit.
The fact is that investment in renewable energy would actually help whales and other marine species whose habitats are threatened by the effects of the climate crisis. But the richest layer in this ocean of conspiracy is that offshore oil and gas drilling, a major piece of the very industry backing this faux-ecological crusade to save the whales, is a direct threat to a seriously endangered species called Rice’s whale.
With estimates of fewer than 100 individuals in the wild, Rice’s whale is one of the most endangered species in the world and the only baleen whale resident year-round in the Gulf of Mexico. Since its reclassification three years ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has scrambled to protect its habitat and mitigate its declining numbers. In the NMFS’ list of primary threats to the species, the four most severe are “range curtailment from energy exploration and development, exposure to oil spills and spill response, vessel collisions, [and] anthropogenic noise during seismic survey.” For self-identified champions of marine species welfare, the organizations and think tanks behind the right-wing spin campaign about offshore wind’s endangerment of whales have been curiously silent about Big Oil’s offshore drilling operations that comprise every single one of those threats.
It is understandable that fossil fuel industry mythmaking would obfuscate the real ecological stakes in offshore energy development. Rice’s whale is but one environmental victim of the prolific and extensive fossil fuel industry’s oceanic damage.
When Big Oil drills, Big Oil spills. Since the turn of the century, there have been hundreds of oil tanker spills—spills that have released hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean. When Big Oil spills, wildlife populations and communities along the coast suffer. Seabirds, marine mammals, fish, and vegetation can be displaced, injured, or killed at each stage of the drilling process. They are also poisoned by crude oil and hydraulic fluids introduced by the drilling operations, which, once bioaccumulated up the food chain, sicken the people who consume them. Coastal communities also rely on the Gulf, in which offshore oil production accounts for 15% of total U.S. crude oil production, for fishing, boating, recreation, and tourism—to say nothing of the cultural connection they have to the ocean. Big Oil threatens these central facets of coastal life with spills and pollution. Offshore wind does not.
In the narrative battle over energy in the seas, the stakes are high. The fossil fuel industry and its allies will continue to fight to the bloody end for the last drops of oil and the last scraps of profit, and we do not have time to entertain their deceit. As National Ocean Month comes to an end, for the sake of our future, our ocean, and all who rely upon it, the importance of discerning fact from fiction cannot be lost on us.
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The Return of Whaling
The industry is on the cusp of winning a major victory over the global conservation movement that has fought for decades to bring this murderous practice to an end once and for all.
Jun 15, 2024
Whaling is seen as an evil of the past, memorialized in events like ritual recitations of Moby Dick. Or invented as a metaphor for the worst of humanity’s greed—the Tulkun hunts in Avatar: The Way of Water. But commercial whaling hasn’t actually stopped, it’s merely scaled back. Japan, Iceland, and Norway still engage in commercial whaling.
On May 9th, a spokesperson for the Japanese government announced that they were intending to set a hunting quota for fin whales. A week earlier, the Kangei Maru, a brand new, state of the art whaling factory ship, was launched. It’s almost four decades since the Japanese whaling industry felt the need for a new whaling mothership, and this one’s specifications will allow whalers to butcher fin whales on it. Plus, the Kangei Maru has the range and construction to work in Antarctic waters. Coincidentally, on exactly the same day as the Kangei Maru’s launch, a scientific paper was published, presenting the results of surveys conducted in one area of the Southern Ocean. The results suggest that there are around 50,000 fin whales in just that one site.
If the only way to regulate whaling internationally is under some gentlefolks’ non-binding agreements, how did commercial whaling almost disappear?
Then, on June 11th, the council of the Japanese Fisheries Agency announced a quota of 59 fin whales within the Japanese EEZ. On the same day, the Icelandic Minister of Fisheries issued a permit for a hunt of 128 fin whales by Hvalur, the Icelandic whaling company.
Fin whales are known—if they’re known at all—as being the second-largest of the great whales. Only blue whales are larger. Less well known is that they were also the whales hunted in the greatest numbers during industrial commercial whaling through the 20th Century. About 900,000 fin whales were killed across all ocean basins, nearly as many as the sum of all blue (~380,000), humpback (~250,000) and sei whales (~300,000) combined. Given their abundance and individual size, fins were where the real money was in high seas whaling.
This history is lost.
Most fin whales lived in the Southern Ocean, but they’re found throughout the polar and temperate regions of the world. Unlike humpback or right whales, they don’t engage in clearly defined annual migrations from feeding to breeding areas. They’re mostly offshore, beyond the reach of whale-watching operations. And they’re nowhere near as acrobatic as humpbacks. Fins don’t create their own PR value, the way that more visible and demonstrative whales do.
Currently, fin whales worldwide are categorized in the IUCN’s Red List as Vulnerable, one step down from Endangered, based on a review from 2018. However, a more recent (2023) IUCN review of fin whales in European waters listed them as being of Least Concern there. For the few places where data are available, most fin whale populations are increasing. Apart from the recent work showing about 50,000 whales in one small(ish) area of the Antarctic, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) lists about 40,000 fins in one part of the central North Atlantic (for 2015, so the estimate is almost a decade old). The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides estimates of around 7,000 off the east coast of North America, and 8,000 in the waters of California and Oregon. Added together, that’s over 100,000 fin whales—and it excludes most of the Southern Ocean, where fins are likely to be most abundant, and where other observations indicate that their numbers are on the rebound.
So, what about the Japanese whalers hunting fin whales? How can this happen? There are two international bodies primarily responsible for managing whaling internationally. The International Whaling Commission (IWC), oversees setting quotas for whaling, and the ways in which whaling is managed. At present, the IWC has quotas for commercial whaling set at zero, a moratorium that’s been in place since the mid-1980s. The other organization is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which regulates—as the name suggests—international trade in endangered species. Fin whales are listed under CITES Appendix I, meaning that they are judged to be threatened with extinction, so international trade in their products is prohibited. This is (more or less) based on the Red Listing of fin whales internationally as Vulnerable. Were that status to change, their CITES listing may well change in response.
Japan left the IWC at the end of 2018 and so is no longer bound by IWC regulations. There’s nothing stopping Japan from doing this under IWC rules. What about CITES? Japan has a reservation to the listing of fin whales, as do Iceland and Norway. So these nations are not bound by CITES provisions regarding fin whales, and are free to trade in their products. That’s why Hvalur hf., the Icelandic whaling company, has exported fin whale meat to Japan from the almost 1000 fin whales they’ve killed over the past 15 years.
So, if the only way to regulate whaling internationally is under some gentlefolks’ non-binding agreements, how did commercial whaling almost disappear? Whalers wiped out almost all populations of large whales, which played an important role. There wasn’t much left to hunt. But previously, the threat of US sanctions was also a factor. Under the Pelly Amendment of the US Fishermen's Protective Act, the Secretary of Commerce and/or the Secretary of the Interior, are required to let the President know if “nationals of a foreign country, directly or indirectly, are engaging in trade or taking which diminishes the effectiveness of any international program for endangered or threatened species.” This is supposedly an obligation, and it’s also meant to lead to a ban on importation of fisheries and wildlife products from that country. Needless to say, despite Japanese nationals obviously diminishing the effectiveness of the functioning of both the IWC and CITES, Japan has not been certified. Geopolitics trumps marine conservation.
There was rejoicing back in early 2019 when Japan appeared to be giving up on pelagic whaling. But Japan leaving the IWC was never “good news for whales,” as stated at the time by Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Japanese whalers now get to ignore IWC-based rules on how many whales can be killed, where they can be killed, and who observes that the killing takes place in the manner that is claimed—something that has always been a problem with whaling.
There is nothing to stop Japanese whalers returning to much larger-scale commercial whaling. They are on the cusp of their comprehensive victory over the conservation movement.
Correction: An earlier version of this piece misstated the date of the Japanese Fisheries Agency's June announcement.
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