LAST week, the Caribbean was in the international spotlight – and not only because of the Soca Warriors, Trinidad and Tobago’s football team. The region came under scrutiny for backing Japan and other nations that hunt whales in a vote to lift a ban on commercial whaling.

The St Kitts Declaration moves the International Whaling Commission (IWC) one step closer to endorsing the hunting of these marine mammals on a large scale.

But the 33-32 vote was more symbolic than “historic”, as claimed by Japan, whose delegation to the annual IWC meeting was by far the largest.

The 1986 ban cannot be lifted without three-quarters of the commission voting in favour of it.

Nevertheless, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and anti-whaling nations accuse Japan of “buying” the votes of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines with development aid.

However, while Vincy exports to the Asian nation were valued at US$0.03 million (EC$0.08 million) in 2002, imports were exponentially higher at US$6.22 million (EC$16.79 million).

In the wake of the Frigate Bay conference, some environmental activists have called for a tourism boycott of the six Caribbean Islands, but both Greenpeace and International Fund for Animal Welfare, said such a boycott would likely backfire, quoted in AP wire reports.

“We actually think an increase in money spent on whale watching and eco-tourism will lead the Caribbean to an anti-whaling position,” said Patrick Ramage, IFAW spokesman.

Added Mike Townsley, spokesman for Greenpeace: “The IWC is already extremely divided. A boycott would just increase that division and strengthen the grip that Japan has on these countries.”

Antigua immediately labelled it a terrorist threat.

“Those who said they would cut off tourism – the lifeblood to our region – are making terrorist threats,” said Joanne Massiah, who represented Antigua and Barbuda at the whaling conference.

Since 1998, Japan has given more than US$100 million to the six. In St Vincent and the Grenadines, for example, the only Caribbean territory that actually hunts whales, Japan gave grants valued at US$28 million up to 2003, according to the website of its Trinidad and Tobago-based embassy, which also serves the Eastern Caribbean.

Japan has also offered US$8 million worth of technical cooperation to the Vincentians, and for the period 1999-2001, it was their top bilateral donor.

The aid given is often of little use to the islands, according to Christine O’Sullivan, a marine mammal specialist at the Jamaica Environment Trust.

A documentary filmed in Antigua by a conservation group featured the former whaling commissioner for the island, John Fuller.

He pointed out that much of the aid they had received from Japan had not been so beneficial. Fishing villages built with Japanese funds and expertise were now deserted and unused.

And the Japanese usually bring in their own engineers and construction workers to erect structures.

Katsumi Maruoka, counsellor at the Embassy of Japan in Kingston, wrote in responding to an article written by Sunday Observer columnist John Maxwell, that: “One position of particular concern in Mr Maxwell’s article is that the Japanese Government provides the (Overseas Development Aid) for the sake of getting enough support in IWC. Japan, as a responsible world citizen, is the second largest donor of ODA in the world. It has been the main vehicle of Japan’s goodwill since 1954.”

Japan’s ODA provides continuous support that has made an essential contribution to economic and social development in many developing countries. Mr Maxwell’s position that Japanese ODA is like a measure for collecting support from developing countries for the sake of resumption of commercial whaling goes against the time-honoured principle of the people and government of Japan. In Jamaica alone alongside bilateral aid, technical and cultural cooperation, Japan has provided support for over 50 projects to Jamaica’s grassroots communities covering the length and breadth of the island.”

Maruoka continued that in terms of loan aid, the Japanese have lent Jamaica US$550 million for nine projects, including the Northern Jamaica Development Project (US$86 million). This project includes the following sub-projects: the Ocho Rios port expansion; the Northern Coastal Highways Improvement; Montego Bay Drainage and Flood Control; and the Lucea-Negril Water Supply System.

Jamaican environmentalists are anti-whaling, but government has enunciated no clear public policy.

Twenty-six scientists from the region, nine of them from Jamaica, have signed a petition stating that there is no basis for the Japanese claim that whales are eating so much fish that there isn’t enough for humans.

“In any event,” said O’Sullivan, “the whales that pass through our waters have already eaten up north when they get here. They just come here to calve. It is net fishing and trawling that is affecting the fish stocks. We’re the ones who are overfishing.”

Although Jamaica is not a member of the IWC, neither is Trinidad and Tobago nor Barbados – Caricom’s three most influential members – the St Kitts Declaration has raised much concern among local and regional environmentalists, said O’Sullivan.

She has already solicited 200 signatures on a petition to the minister for the environment asking for protection of all species of marine mammals, not just the eight listed under the Wildlife Protection Act.

An amendment was made to the Act in 2001 to protect the whales that pass through Jamaican waters on their way to spawning grounds in the Dominican Republic.

Killer whales, or orcas, which are not protected under the act, have been photographed in Negril, said O’Sullivan.

Her petition also calls for a ban on the importation of dolphins – eight have died in captivity since being brought to Jamaica from Mexico and Cuba, which, incidentally, is the world’s foremost exporter of dolphins – and any attempt to set up breeding facilities in Jamaica.

Dolphins and whales are highly intelligent animals, O’Sullivan pointed out. Their social structure and cooperative fishing are taught behaviour, things they have learned.

“Captive animals don’t know what to do in the wild,” she said.

“They don’t instinctively know how to hunt and take care of themselves.” Whales communicate over long distances, and the male whale’s famous “singing” to attract females are considered clear signs of these mammals’ intelligence.

O’Sullivan argues, like most environmentalists, that there is no such thing as ‘sustainable whaling’.

Whales are a long-living specie. It takes a long time for them to reach sexual maturity and generally they only deliver one calf. It takes a long time to wean that calf and a while to produce another one, sometimes up to four years, she said.

O’Sullivan cited a study of a Japanese whaler’s haul of 32 whales: 18 of them were immature, so they never had the chance to reproduce; 14 were mature, but of those, 13 were pregnant.

“So that’s not sustainable at all,” she said. “That’s why the moratorium was put in place.”

Even if the Japanese, Norwegians and other whale eaters were to push for the IWC to allow commercial whaling, St Vincent and the Grenadines would find it difficult to export surplus whale meat because of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).

They would need a permit to do so, and it would not be given very easily.

As it is, the Japanese often have a surplus from the hundreds of minke whales it culls from the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary around Antarctica.

Last winter whalers took 863. The meat was used for school lunches and pet food, said O’Sullivan, because they can’t export it.

Countries such as St Vincent and Dominica are increasingly relying on eco-tourism, particularly whale watching, which is far more profitable than whaling could ever be.

So while ‘Vincy’ fishermen hunt pilot whales, which they call ‘blackfish’, from one beach, tourists pay up to US$75 to go on a two-hour whale watching tour from another.

O’Sullivan said whale watching generates up to US$10 million in the Eastern Caribbean, and about the same for the Dominican Republic, which has a whale sanctuary.

mullern@jamaicaobserver.com