MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION — Annual Report for 1991 



During the discussion, Iceland's Commissioner to 

 the IWC cited past IWC resolutions asking Iceland to 

 refrain from issuing special permits for research 

 proposals, its refusal to reclassify Icelandic minke 

 whale stocks despite a Scientific Committee recom- 

 mendation to do so, and its decision to delay the 

 implementation of the revised management procedure 

 by asking the Scientific Committee for advice on how 

 to do so. Given these actions, the Commissioner 

 stated that the organization is fundamentally flawed 

 and that he would propose to his Government that 

 Iceland withdraw from the IWC. Under Article XI of 

 the Whaling Convention, any contracting government 

 may withdraw from the Convention on 30 June of any 

 year by giving notice to the depository government of 

 its intention to do so on or before 1 January of the 

 same year. Subsequently, by letter of 27 December 

 1991, the Government of Iceland notified the United 

 States, in its role as depository government for the 

 Convention, that it had filed such a notice and that 

 Iceland intended to withdraw from the International 

 Convention for the Regulation of Whaling on 30 June 

 1992. 



Post-Meeting Activities 



Scientiflc Research Permits — The United States 

 has considered failure to follow resolutions adopted by 

 the IWC on scientific research to be grounds for 

 certification under two provisions of domestic law — 

 the Packwood-Magnuson Amendment to the Mag- 

 nuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act and 

 the Pelly Amendment to the Fishermen's Protective 

 Act. Certification under the Packwood-Magnuson 

 Amendment mandates an immediate 50 percent 

 reduction in the offending nation's fishery allocation 

 from U.S. waters. Under the Pelly Amendment, the 

 President has discretion to impose economic sanctions 

 by restricting imports of fish and fish products into 

 the United States from the certified nation. 



At past meetings, the IWC adopted a series of 

 resolutions asking Japan to refrain from and reconsid- 

 er authorizing the lethal take of Antarctic minke 

 whales for research purposes. Despite these resolu- 

 tions, Japan took 272 whales during the 1987/1988 

 season, 241 whales during the 1988/1989 season, 330 

 during the 1989/1990 seasons, and 327 minke whale 

 during the 1990/1991 season. 



As noted in past Annual Reports, the Secretary of 

 Commerce certified Japan under the Packwood- 

 Magnuson and Pelly Amendments on 9 February 1988 

 for authorizing a research take. On 6 April 1988, the 

 President directed the Secretary of State to withhold 

 100 percent of Japan's allocation of fish from U.S. 

 waters pending further review. After each annual 

 meeting of the IWC in 1988, 1989, and 1990, U.S 

 and Japanese officials and scientists have met to 

 discuss revisions or reconsideration of the Japanese 

 research whaling program. Despite disapproval of the 

 technical merits of the program by the IWC, Japan 

 has carried out its research program and killed South- 

 em Hemisphere minke whales. 



As mentioned above, the IWC noted that Japan's 

 1991 research proposal was essentially a continuation 

 of the previous program that failed to meet established 

 criteria for lethal whale research programs. The IWC 

 again adopted a resolution calling on Japan to recon- 

 sider its research program take of up to 330 minke 

 whales from Area IV of the Antarctic. 



Following the 1991 IWC meeting, Japanese offi- 

 cials and scientists presented U.S. officials with a 

 revised scientific whaling research proposal and, as m 

 previous years, asked that it be reviewed by U.S. 

 scientists before it was submitted to the IWC. Princi- 

 pal changes in the program included the addition of 

 two sighting vessels (for a total of five vessels) for 

 abundance surveys. The Japanese scientists also 

 agreed that, given the number of animals to be taken, 

 they would be able to calculate only average mortality 

 rates rather than age-specific mortality rates, which 

 had been one of the major objectives of its research. 



Members of the Marine Mammal Commission's 

 Committee of Scientific Advisors and other U.S. 

 scientists reviewed the revised Japanese research 

 proposal. The reviewers concluded that: (1) the 

 revised program continued to suffer firom technical 

 inconsistencies that had been noted in reviews of 

 previous Japanese proposals; (2) it failed to reflect 

 progress towards addressing the concerns identified by 

 the IWC Scientific Committee; and (3) it was not 

 clear whether the proposed objectives would contrib- 

 ute significant information to the IWC conservation 

 program, particularly with respect to information 



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