Primary Focus: To convince the International Whaling Commission to deny Japan's most recent request for a commercial whaling program in coastal waters.
Background Info: Japan (and other pro-whaling nations) are trying to restart a legal commercial whaling program. At the 2010 IWC meeting in Morocco, the IWC member nations couldn't reach an agreement and the issue was deferred for a year and will be back on the voting block at the 2011 IWC annual meeting.
HOW THIS PETITION WILL HELP END WHALING
New laws will go into effect in 2011 that will ban the Nisshin Maru from operating in the Southern Ocean using heavy oil. Since these new regulations will make hunting whales in the Southern Ocean to expensive, Japan is wanting to create a commercial whaling program that will allow them to legally hunt whales closer to Japan.
The idea they came up with is to make a "deal" to the IWC:
"Let us have a commercial whaling operation in our coastal waters, and we'll scale back our research whaling in the Southern Oceans".
We intend to get this petition read by the various IWC commissioners at the June 2011 IWC meeting. The IWC will need a two-thirds majority vote in favor of restarting commercial whaling in order for any new program on whaling to be started.
Our main hope is that at the very least, this petition will help convince enough IWC commissioners that [we] the concerned citizens of a global community stand against a restart to commercial whaling. It will then be economically unfeasible for Japan to continue their scientific whaling program in the Southern Oceans due to the sharply increased cost of operating the Nisshin Maru south of 60 degrees.
Thank you,
Oceanic Rescue and Conservation Action Society
Dear Commissioner(s):
We the undersigned, and citizens from varying nations, cultures and race; come together to speak as a single voice through this petition to urge the member nations of the International Whaling Commission to respectfully deny any and all request to resume commercial whaling.
It is our informed opinion, based on the paper Are Antarctic minke whales unusually abundant because of 20th century whaling?, which was published in the Journal Molecular Ecology, December 2009, that there is a substantial debate of genetic ocean-wide diversity of minke whales and pre-whaling population estimates.
Due to the fact that the international scientific community is not in consensus of these highly important figures, it is not appropriate to resume commercial whaling at this time.
We request and appreciate the International Whaling Commission for reading this petition in public session so that it is on public record with the number of petition signers, and we further thank all member nations for their consideration to oppose and deny any and all request for commercial whaling in 2011.
Thank you,
[signers]
