Sharpening The Harpoons

By EUGENE LINDEN

Cries of "Save the whales!" are once again echoing around the globe. Several environmental groups have sponsored newspaper ads urging Congress to bar Norwegian seafood from American markets, and some U.S. travel agencies are faxing letters to Norway, warning that travelers will shun the fjords in the future. The source of their wrath: Norway's threat to resume commercial hunting of minke whales, which its Cabinet is expected to act on this week.

If Norway lets the harpoons fly once again, it will be an act of defiance toward the International Whaling Commission, which reaffirmed a seven-year-old hunting ban at a meeting last week in Kyoto, Japan. Norway, along with Japan, had urged member nations of the IWC to end the moratorium but lost an 18-to-6 vote.

Public opinion and practicality have always driven the politics of whaling, and the debate has taken many strange twists over the years. Time and again conservationists have called for more studies before the ban is lifted -- a tactic used widely by industries to delay environmental regulations. In this case, there are sound reasons for caution. Humans have failed miserably in efforts to manage the harvesting of wild animals, and the IWC approved the moratorium because past attempts to control whale hunting had been disastrous. Whalers ignored catch limits and other restrictions designed to protect populations.

Tundi Agardy of the World Wildlife Fund notes that since some whales live as long as humans do, it can take decades for scientists to determine whether whaling is harming a species. Moreover, no one yet knows how hunting interacts with other pressures that affect whale populations, including pollution and shipping traffic. Beluga whales that wash ashore at the confluence of Canada's St. Lawrence and Saguenay rivers are often so loaded with toxic chemicals that they are treated as hazardous waste.

Under an IWC program that allows "scientific" whaling, Japan and Norway have run small operations during the moratorium. Norway argues that populations of at least one species, the minke, are healthy enough not to be endangered by small-scale whaling. An estimated 86,700 minke whales live in the northeastern Atlantic and 760,000 in the Antarctic seas. Environmentalists distrust these numbers and counter that the IWC needs to develop stringent monitoring and enforcement before whaling can resume.

Despite the passion of the debate, whaling has more symbolic than economic importance for both Japan and Norway. Japan presents whaling as an "aboriginal" enterprise deeply entwined in its culture; in fact, however, whale meat became popular after World War II, and today only a small percentage of the people regularly eat the $55-a-pound delicacy. The industry has been trying to muster public opinion by distributing slick brochures. One titled "Let's Take a New Look at Healthy Whale Meat" contends that it is high in protein, low in fat and "good for food-allergenic people." Norway's prowhaling position comes in part from the political power of fishermen, who used to hunt whales when fish were scarce.

For all their prowhaling bluster, Japan and Norway are well aware of how many people romanticize whales as sentient creatures that should be spared the horror of harpooning. A recent poll found that 52% of Norwegians worried about international boycotts should the country resume commercial whaling. Says Richard Fuglsang, managing director of the sleeping-bag company Ajungilak: "Foreign sports-equipment dealers tell us straight out that they dare not sell Norwegian goods."

With next year's Winter Olympics in Norway, the stakes for the tourist ^ industry are higher than ever. Another whaling nation, Iceland, has already quit the IWC but has not yet resumed the hunt for fear of the reaction from environmentally oriented tourists. This suggests that the real power to control whaling lies less in the IWC than in the pocketbooks and votes of consumers around the world.

With reporting by Satsuki Oba/Kyoto and Ulla Plon/Copenhagen