Tim Stephens

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a short article today on legal options available to challenge Japan's humpback hunt in the Southern Ocean. There was a brief reference to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), but not to the real nub of the argument.

CITES is a veritable treaty. Concluded back in 1973, it is one of the first comprehensive multilateral environmental agreements to come into existence.

CITES is there to stop commercial trade in threatened species of plants and animals. It applies to species also covered by other international agreements, such as whales which have their own regime in the form of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling which established the International Whaling Commission.

Basically, all of the great whale species are inscribed in Appendix I to CITES, which means that strict limitations on trade apply. Commercial trade is completely out of the question, but moving specimens about for research is okay. The only exceptions will be if governments have entered reservations, which a number of states have done.

Japan has made reservations in relation to a range of whale species but, very significantly, not humpbacks. This means that CITES applies with full force to this species and Japan will be in breach of its CITES obligations if it goes ahead and harvests humpbacks this summer. This is because the convention applies to introduction of species from the high seas in the same way as it applies to cross border trade in animal specimens, and it expressly prohibits taking species from the high seas for commercial purposes.

There has been speculation in the press over the last few days that Japan may back down on its plans to kill humpbacks. It was even reported last night that Japan may never have intended to hunt the whale because the Nisshin Maru factory ship it has sent to the Southern Ocean does not have sufficient refrigeration capacity to take the extra hundres of tonnes of whale meat. It may well be that Japan has been using the proposed humpback hunt as a negotiating tactic to retain its much larger minke hunt.