Posted by Dave (in Anchorage, Alaska)
Well, it’s the end of day two here at the International Whale Whaling Commission (IWC). Three days left, and we’re all going slightly nuts.
The day began smoothly enough. I stumbled out to breakfast at a local diner that the Greenpeace team have been frequenting. The staff are getting to know us so well there we barely need menus anymore. Several of us reckon that we’re going to go home heavier – the helpings here in Alaska are enormous.
Local Whales for Local People
At the Captain Cook Hotel, the morning’s main order of business concerned subsistence whaling quotas – and it all ran along smoothly at the beginning. The United States managed to secure its ongoing bowhead quota for the Alaskan Inupiat and Yup’ik people, the Russian Federation, while saying that it would like to get more whales for its aboriginal people, decided not to ask for them. St Vincent and the Grenadines succeed in getting a quota of four humpback whales a year after making a proposal that was backed by several countries that are generally anti-whaling, like the UK, France and Italy, on the basis that St Vincent and the Grenadines had based their proposal on sound science – and that the whaling was indeed sustainable.