Pro-whaling nations – Japan, Iceland and Norway – are tipped to gain control of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at its annual conference this month, despite last ditch efforts by the Australian environment minister, Senator Ian Campbell to raise support in the Pacific for a continued whaling ban.
The impending shift to a pro-whaling majority will be the first in three decades and is set to create a tense and emotional meeting when the IWC convenes on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, June 16-22.
Mr Campbell told the ABC that Japan and other pro-whaling nations have the numbers to take control of the International Whaling Commission.
"We are, on paper, at least two or three votes behind," Mr Campbell said. "We've been working for a year to turn that around and we will continue to work right up till when the crucial votes are taken in St Kitts."
The pro-whaling lobby was expected to gain the numbers last year with the induction of Nauru, Gambia and Togo to the 66-nation organisation. However Togo and Gambia failed to arrive in time to cast their votes. This year, Japan has been able to lure Guatemala to become pro-whaling so as to ensure its margins.
Mr Campbell says, despite the numbers he is not giving up and remains optimistic he can still secure key votes in the Pacific before the crucial meeting.
On a whirlwind tour through the Pacific last month, the senator called on the newest recruits to the IWC, the Marshall Islands, to encourage them to maintain the moratorium on international whaling. While their cabinet is still considering its position, Mr Campbell says he is hopeful.
"They've got a genuine interest in the view of the conservation nations issues and in Australia's views and they will listen to our voice," he said.
The Solomon Islands is also a wild card. Its environment minister crossed to the pro-whaling side last year, despite assurances from its government to the contrary. The minister was accordingly sacked but to date, the Solomons have not made their position clear.
While Norway has always ignored the international moratorium and hunts commercially, both Japan and Iceland hunt whales under the "the scientific exception" allowed by the IWC. With the likelihood of a majority in the IWC though, Norway and Japan have grown in confidence.
Despite recent public requests from Sweden and Finland for Norway to reduce its quota, the determined Scandinavian country has announced it will hunt 1052 minke whales in the North Atlantic this year, the highest since a moratorium on hunts was agreed in 1986. Meanwhile, Japan killed 853 minke whales and 10 endangered fin whales last season, and has recently announced that in 2007 it will begin to hunt the humpback whales that travel up the east coast of Australia.
Renewed confidence of pro-whaling nations has alarmed international environmental and scientific groups who more than most are aware of the devastation caused to whale stocks during the earlier 100 years of commercial whaling.
Humpback whale researchers from Southern Cross University in northern New South Wales say the population of humpback whales will be severely threatened by Japan's announcement.
Director of the university's Whale Research Centre, Associate Professor Peter Harrison, says: "for the first time in many decades there will be killing of humpback whales in the Antarctic waters, south of Australia, in their summer feeding ground."
"Our key concern is that the history of Japanese scientific whaling has been that they have gradually and sometimes dramatically increased the number of whales that they're killing each year."
Greenpeace argues that whaling of any kind is hazardous to the species because the reproductive rate of whales is slow and while some populations of whales, like the East Pacific grey whale, are not presently endangered, there are many more that are. Whaling only compounds ever growing environmental threats to whales, they argue, like pollution, global climate change, military sonar and fishing gear entanglements.
In a cultural stand off though pro-whaling groups argue that whaling is intrinsic to their culture and they have the right to hunt whales as long as the hunt is regulated. They claim environmental arguments are only a screen for cultural imperialism which has already eroded so many of their traditions. For them whaling is one of the last vestiges of national identity.
"We think it is possible to use whale resources in a sustainable way," said Hideki Moronuiki of the Fisheries Agency. "We don't have much land, we have the sea. Japan has lost so much of its culture already. Countries in the UK and America have their own resources. We don't tell them what to eat."
According to the Japan Times Japan's whaling research fleet is backed by a lobby of nationalist politicians who have spent billions of yen over the years to fight for the resumption of commercial whaling. Without their support the eight whaling ships of Japan's fleet would be unsustainable and the vast amounts of money directed at the many small and economically challenged pro-whaling nations would more than likely have diminished.
Meanwhile Mr Campbell says anti-whaling countries are not backing away either.
"It's an incredibly important environmental and conservation issue, an issue for humanity," he told ABC.
It's not something that's an easy fight, but it's one we will keep fighting until we win."
With stakes so high and both sides so polarised, the IWC meeting this June is sure to be fiery.
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