"The best scientific information available points towards the extinction of at least some of the eight species of great whales," Kimball said, "unless all whaling nations are willing to revise their practices to the degree necessary to insure the survival of these huge marine animals."

The Japanese and Soviets are now the only ones engaged in major whalekilling efforts, according to Kimball. The United States phased out its last whale fleet in 1971 and has banned the importation of all whale products.

The British, Norwegians and Dutch left the major hunting grounds—the Antarctic and North Pacific-a few years ago when the supply of whales dropped so low that expeditions became unprofitable.

While Kimball admits there is a dearth of comprehensive and reliable population statistics on whales, scientific indications and declining whale harvests point to a major survival threat for most species of whales.

In the past 50 years, more than two million whales have been killed to produce lubricants, cosmetics, soap, paint, shoe polish and margarine. The Japanese and Russians eat whale meat but Kimball claims its contribution to the protein budget is small.

Over the past three whaling seasons, the kill has averaged 37,000, a decline blamed on fewer whales. The quota for the 1973-74 season, set by the International Whaling Commission, is 37,500.

Last year, the Japanese mounted four whaling expeditions and the Russians three. Each consists of a factory ship and a fleet of small, fast catcher boats. At the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment last year, a unanimous vote called for a 10-year moratorium on whaling. This past June, the American delegation urged the moratorium at the International Whaling Commission.

"At the meeting, both Russia and Japan declared their unwillingness to abide by an earlier decision made by all 14 member nations to give the Commission a stronger Secretariat," Kimball explained. "And the Japanese voted against three principal conservation decisions and the Russians opposed two."

Only Japan opposed the Commission recommendation to limit the 1973-74 harvest of fin whales to 1,450 and phase it out by 1976, according to Kimball. The United States had urged a complete moratorium. Once estimated to number a half million, the population of fin whales is now put at some 80,000.

Both the Soviets and Japanese have said they will not limit their take of minke whales to 5,000 this year, the same as last year. Japan had agreed, then the Soviets decided to harvest the minke, beat Japan to the Antarctic hunting waters and took the first 3,200, limiting the Japanese catch to some 2,500.

Kimball says Japan is using its own scientific figures this year to justify taking up to 12,230 minke whales.

"Since Japan and Russia are acting within the legal constraints of the IWC charter," Kimball said "that body is apparently helpless to act."

[From the New York Post]

PROTEST JAPAN WHALE KILLING

A dozen members of various humane, animal protection and environmental groups picketed the offices of Japan Aid Lines at 655 Fifth Av. at noon, to protest Japan's killing of whales.

The demonstrators contend that the Japanese have ignored quotas set by the International Whaling Commission. They said the total number of whales killed by the Japanese this year would be nearly 20,000.

[From the Los Angeles Times]

SHOW GOES ON AS WHALE FRIENDS MOUNT BOYCOTTS

(By Gordon Grant)

The passage of the California gray whales down the coast this year has, in a small way, sprouted international implications in part of Orange County.

High school students in the Capistrano Unified School District have endorsed a boycott on all Japanese-made imports, from automobiles to cameras, as a protest against Japan's repeated refusals to take part in a worldwide moratorium on the slaughter of whales.

Similiar boycotts are in effect in other parts of the United States under sponsorship of the American Cetacean Society, the Animal Welfare Institute, Friends

of Animals, Project Jonah (a worldwide organization) and, locally, the Capistrano Environmental Center.

The 14 nations of the International Whaling Commission, which meets annually, considered a 10-year moratorium on killing of whales at the 1973 conference in London. Only Japan and Russia opposed the plan, and those two countries alone account for 90% of the whales taken every year.

"The fact is," said Phillip Grignon, marine biologist and assistant principal of Dana Hills High School," that whaling is a minor industry in Japan compared to its other products."

"The purpose of our boycott here and of those in San Francisco school districts and elsewhere is to make Japanese businessmen ponder on whether their other exports should suffer because of one of their smaller industries."

Capistrano school district students are distributing leaflets listing the major Japanese products under boycott, including automobiles, photographic equipment and electronic gear such as radios and television sets.

On the lighter side, the migration of the gray whale is being celebrated with the second annual Festival of the Whales at Dana Point Harbor. Held on Jan. 25 through Feb. 3, the program includes daily whale-watching trips aboard sportfishing boats, lectures, and displays by schools and marine culture groups.

[From the Courier-Journal & Times]

SAVE-A-WHALE DRIVE OPPOSES JAPAN, U.S.S.R.

(By Irston R. Barnes)

The ruthless killing of whales has long outraged thoughtful people everywhere. Five of the major species-the blue, humpback, gray, bowhead and right whales are already so reduced in numbers that commercial exploitation is no longer profitable. So the whalers have now turned to the Antarctic fin, minke, sperm and sei whales, continuing their slaughter with contemptuous disregard for world opinion. But now, thanks to the organizing efforts of the Animal Welfare Institute, you can join in a save the whale campaign by boycotting all products of Japan and Russia.

Leadership in arousing public opinion to preserve whales was taken by the Society for Animal Protective Legislation in sponsoring a congressional resolution instructing our State Department to seek to negotiate a 10-year moratorium on the killing of all species of whales. In June 1972, the United States delegation urged a 10-year moratorium at the Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment; it was approved by 53 nations with none opposing.

Japan and Russia have since made that United Nations action an exercise in futility. At the International Whaling Commission meeting in London later in June of 1972, the same moratorium was rejected by the 14-nation commission, the United States being supported only by the United Kingdom, Argentina and Mexico. The IWC has been aptly called "the whalers' club"; it has been quite incapable of protecting whales as an economic resource. But in the June 1973 meeting, the IWSC split 8-5 on the moratorium with Denmark not voting, the action failing for want of a 75 per cent majority.

The IWC June 1973 meeting, with the added support of Norway, Iceland and South Africa, then adopted new quotas designed to reduce the kill. The quota for Antarctic fin whales was set at 1,450, a cut of 25 percent, with all hunting to end in 1976. (The world whale population is estimated to have fallen 80 per cent in less than 30 years.) Area quotas were established for Antarctic sperm whales; only a portion of the quota could be taken in one region. The quota on minke whales was held at 5,000.

In September 1973, Japan announced it would disregard the IWC's action and set its own quotas in line with "Japanese interests." Russia subsequently announced that it too would not observe the IWC quotas.

In recent years, Japan and Russia have killed 85 to 90 per cent of the whales slaughtered. With highly efficient ocean fleets, Japanese and Russian whalers have pursued the great mammals to their last refuge, the Antarctic seas. With spotter aircraft, sonar-equipped pursuit raft, factory ships and tankers, the carnage has been carried on with devastating efficiency.

In justification of their "right" to exterminate these great mammals, the Japanese say that they need the meat to feed their people. The Russians make no apologies, not even the profit motive, for their rapacious greed.

The fact is that whale meat has constituted less than 1 per cent of the protein in the Japanese diet. Until stopped in early 1971 by our endangered species and marine mammals laws, the Japanese exported some 12 million pounds of whale meat to this country as pet food! The Russians have used much of their whale meat to feed minks and sables on fur farms!

The Animal Welfare Institute (P.O. Box 3650, Washington, D.C. 20007), in association with Friends of the Earth and other conservation groups, has now launched a boycott against Japanese and Russian products. For this notable initiative, I have sent my first conservation contribution of 1974 to AWI and I am going to display their bumper sticker: "Stop the Whale Killers. Boycott Japanese goods."

[From the Indianapolis Star]

EXCEPT RUSSIA, JAPAN

NATIONS WANT WHALING MORATORIUM

(By Jeffrey Hunt)

The moment may be at hand to do something effective about the continuing slaughter of the world's whale population-and if so it has arrived none too soon, for unless the relentless slaughter of the whales made possible by modern technology is brought under control these impressive creatures face certain extinction.

For some reason not altogether clear to me, American conservatives have not on the whole been notable for their interest in-and savor the irony here conservation. There exist, to be sure, outstanding exceptions such as New York's Senator James Buckley.

But what is at stake in conservation is a principle profoundly conservative, and one that goes beyond the preservation of this species or that, however desirable in itself such preservation might be. The issue involves man's fundamental attitude toward the world around him; or in other words, it involves the sort of being he himself chooses to be. The purely exploitative attitude toward the nonhuman world has its roots in the utilitarian tradition of the 19th century-a liberal tradition. I might add. And it is no coincidence that this attitude entailed not only a gross exploitation of nature but of other human beings as well. Prior to the 19th century the dominant tradition was one of careful stewardship.

With two flagrant exceptions, the nations of the world now favor a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling. Such a moratorium was approved 53-0 by the nations attending a Stockholm conference on the subject in 1972. It was unanimously approved in Geneva in 1973. In 1972, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted unanimously for the moratorium.

Japan and the Soviet Union are the large-scale whale killers at present, and both have been refusing to go along with the moratorium. Both, however, ought to be especially vulnerable to international pressure just now.

Judging by the reception Premier Kakuei Tanaka received during his recent tour through neighboring Asian countries. Japan's international reputation is none too favorable. In fact, Japan is increasingly being perceived as a modern version of Victorian Birmingham-Manchester-Leeds, an example of runaway overdevelopment pursued without regard to any other considerations. The attitude of the Japanese toward their whaling is a prime symbol of this: a willingness to slaughter the whales for short-run profit despite the certainty of long-run disaster.

The less said about the international reputation of the Soviet Union the better, and thank you very much. Mr. Solzhenitsyn. But the Soviets do desire expanded trade relations with the West, and people like Senator Buckley might well be able to put pressure on them concerning their ocean-going abatoirs.

Modern whaling is a peculiarly messy business, far different from the adventurous Moby Dick hunts of yesteryear.

"The present-day hunting harpoon," writes one eyewitness, "is a horrible 150pound weapon carrying an explosive head which generally bursts in the whale's intestines, and the sight of one of these creatures pouring blood and gasping along the surface towing a 400-ton catching vessel is pitiful. So often an hour or more of torture is inflicted before the agony ends in death. I have experienced a case of five hours and nine harpoons needed to kill one mother blue whale. If

we could imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears driven into it, and then made to drag a heavy butcher's truck while blood poured over the roadway until the animal collapsed an hour or more later, we should have some idea of what a whale goes through."

Conservationists organized as the Animal Welfare Institute, P.O. 3650, Washington, D.C., have plenty of good ideas about ways of letting the Japanese and the Soviets know how we feel.

[From the Miami Herald]

JAPAN'S WHALERS HARPOON DECENCY

Hurtling beyond man's solar system is a piece of rocketry bearing a message to any form of intelligent life that might inhabit planets beyond the Milky Way. That message shows man and woman offering open-handed friendship from Earth.

We wonder at the sincerity of the message, considering what men of this plant do to other intelligent beings. There is no effort to communicate except with spears and guns.

We are thinking now of the whale, a highly intelligent mammal that is being hunted to the point of extinction. The whale is being butchered for such noble purposes as canned pet food. Can intelligent life out in the galaxy expect any more tenderness than that?

The cruelest killers of the whale are the Japanese who have decided to ignore the quotas set for certain endangered species by the 14-nation International Whaling Commission last June in London. Even the Russians had gone along to make the vote 13-1, but with the subsequent rejection by Japan, the Soviet Union announced it would not be bound by its own approving vote.

It is a measure of Japanese efficiency that the country's whaling industry is reported to have set a schedule of slaughter that we will reduce the whale population to commercial extinction levels at the same time Japanese's factory ships become too old to operate economically.

Considering that Karl Marx was such an expert on the subject of exploitation, certain that it would wither away in a workers' paradise, it is interesting that conservationists have concluded that the Soviet Union's actions and attitude toward slaughter of whales is "more greedy, imperialistic and exploitive than any capitalistic nation, with the exception of Japan."

World opinion has had no effect on the greedy Japanese. It has not even been easy to get American grocers to stop stocking whale products on their shelves.

But perhaps there is hope in the tightening fuel crisis and the tripling of prices by the Arab oil nations. The Japanese might have to make a choice between fuel for their whaling fleet and fuel for their busy camera and automoble assembly lines.

It is something to hope for frequently, like every 12 to 14 minutes when another intelligent giant that lives in Earth's seas will be harpooned.

[From the New York Times]

WHALE PRODUCTS TO BE BOYCOTTED

2 IN FRANCE DRAMATIZE FATE OF DISAPPEARING SPECIES

PARIS, January 5 (Reuters).-Two young French ecologists, determined to dramatize the fate of whale species they say are threatened with extinction, plan to draw up a blacklist of whole products in France and to join the crew of a ship planning to sabotage whale hunts.

Nicolas Desplats and Georges Dewez, both 23 years old, are leading the European side of Project Jonah, a campaign by individuals in eight countries to get Japan and the Soviet Union to halt their harpooning.

So far, with the campaign still in its infancy here, their petition for support has gained 10,000 signatures, including those of an oceanologist, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a volcanologist, Haroun Tazeff, and an Arctic explorer, Paul-Emile Victor.

The project originated in 1969 in the United States, then spread to Britain and on to France, Australia, South Africa, Norway, Sweden and Canada.

Mr. Dewez says that whale hunting by the Japanese and Russians has brought seven species of whole close to extinction.

The blacklist of products to be boycotted will include those using whale oil, such as lipsticks, candles, linoleum and glycerin. Whale meat is used for cat and dog food.

In another move, a delegation will call on Emperor Hirohito for a suspension of whale hunting for 10 years so that the threatened species can have a chance to replenish their ranks.

[From the Minneapolis Tribune]

THE ENDANGERED WHALES

Whaling has undergone quite a change since the Captain Ahabs of the 19th century set out from their New England ports to risk their lives in pursuit of the mighty leviathan. There isn't much risk for today's whalers, and the leviathan isn't so mighty compared with the whaler's factory ships, electronic gadgetry and explosive-tipped harpoons. Today, a whale is killed every 14 minutes, and the risk-a very real one-is that there soon may not be any whales left to kill.

Already, the right, blue, humpback and gray whales have been hunted to commercial extinction. Under existing quotas, the fin whale will probably soon reach that status. (Whalers couldn't find enough fin whales to meet last year's quota of 1,000.) The United States recognized the potential for extinction in 1971, when eight kinds of whales were placed on the endangered species list, and it banned the importation of whale products. The United Nations Human Environment Conference last year voted 55 to 0 for a 10-year moratorium on whaling to provide time for the remaining whales to rebuild their numbers. But the International Whaling Commission, dominated by the whaling industry, would not go along with the moratorium proposal.

So the hunt goes on, with Japan and the Soviet Union accounting for most of it. Whales are slaughtered for their meat (almost all of going into pet food or use on commercial fur farms) and for byproducts that go into such preparations as lipstick, shoe polish and car wax. But all those products can be made inexpensively-some more inexpensively-from other materials. Why hunt whales. then? Mainly because the remaining whaling nations have a lot of money tied up in ships and other equipment. Rather than have those investments go to waste, the whaling nations (which also include Norway, South Africa and Peru) are ready to keep on hunting whales until there are too few whales left to make it commercially feasible.

That day may come sooner than anticipated. Japan has informed the International Whaling Commission that it will not abide by its already too-high quotas on sperm and minke whales and will not, as the commission urged, phase out the killing of fin whales by 1976. Since the commission has no enforcement powers, the Japanese will apparently be able to take those actions with impunity.

What the loss of the whale will mean to the ecology of the sea-and. ultimately, the planet-can't be guessed. The results may soon become apparent, however. unless Japan and the other whaling nations can somehow be persuaded that they have no right to deprive the world of one of its wonders for the sake of short-term economic gain.

[From the New York Times]

THE WHALE KILLERS

Japan would have the world believe that it must eliminate the whales of this planet to satisfy the protein needs of its people. There is every reason for the world to believe, instead, that Japan's declared refusal to abide by the quotas set by the International Whaling Commission last June has much more to do with greed than with need.

Whale meat constitutes no more than 1.5 per cent of Japan's animal protein intake, and substitutes can easily be found. If the country were indeed dependent on whale meat, why were millions of pounds of that commodity being regularly shipped to the United States for pet food until 1971, when its import here was forbidden under the Endangered Species Act? Would not a nation really so dependent on whale meat make every effort to preserve the source of that food instead of recklessly slaughtering it into extinction?

The fin whale, the killing of which the commission voted to phase out, is reported to have declined from 380,000 at the end of World War II to some 77,000