For a fortnight the carcass of a blue whale has been gently rotting on the popular bathing beach of Conchan near the Peruvian capital of Lima. To judge from the local papers, bathers are more exercised about the smell than the fact that the blue whale is the largest creature ever to inhabit the earth, that it is at the top of the list of endangered marine species, and that this particular animal was killed by a whaler's harpoon.
Only one company can legally catch whales within 200 sea miles of Conchan. And the history of that company is a clear illustration of a new, covert international operation that promises to push the whale finally over the brink to extinction.
It is a common misconception that whales are protected by international law. They are not. The only restrictions on the killing of whales are the self-imposed quotas operated by the principal hunters themselves, the member nations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In international or home waters, other nations may do as they please and there is nothing to prevent IWC members unhappy with their quotas getting non-members to do their whaling for them.
The most ingenious exploiter of this loophole is Japan, the world's largest consumer of whales and a leading force within the IWC. Its determination to hunt all the whales it wants is putting it increasingly at odds with its own hunter colleagues. The IWC recently adopted two new conservation measures calling upon its members: to ban imports of whale products from non-member countries; and to outlaw exports of whaling equipment and expertise to outsiders.
Japan has already indicated her "inability" to comply with the first resolution, and the "difficulties" posed by the second. The true extent of these difficulties is revealed by the fate of the dead blue whale at Conchan.
Peru is not a member of the IWC, and it permits only one company to catch whales within its territorial waters. The language of Peru is Spanish and the name of the company, Vic Mar, sounds authentically local. But the owners are Japanese, and its four ships are predominantly Japanese-crewed. Until last year, when it was clear that the issue was becoming sensitive, it also had a Japanese name: Kinkai.
Vic Mar/Kinkai operate in quasi-military secrecy. No catch figures have ever been released, but from international statistics it is possible to deduce an average haul of 2,000 whales a year over the past decade. Two-thirds have been sperm; the rest mostly sei and bryde's. In 1976 Peru took 213 sei and 200 bryde's whales. For the same year, in the waters off Peru and Chile, the IWC quota - for all its members - was a mere 198, all of which was taken. In other words, the number of animals killed was more than double that which the principal hunters themselves regarded as safe for the future of the species.
From Peruvian trading statistics it is possible to deduce that only 500 tons of whale meat a year are used locally. So what need have they of such a large catch? What happens to the surplus?
Given Vic Mar's history, the answer is unsurprising. It seems the great bulk of its output is exported to Japan, making a useful supplement to that country's own IWC-imposed quotas for the South Pacific, which last year were 401 sperm and 1,237 sei.
Peru itself does have whaling quotas (this season Vic Mar have been awarded 900 sperm and 300 sei). But nobody, not even the IWC, can discover any scientific basis for them. Much of Peruvian (and Chilean) whaling takes place in waters where the IWC has stated that no sperm whales may safely be taken.
When the Japanese moved into Peru in 1966, they felt no particular need for secrecy. But as whale stocks and IWC quotas sank in a mutual spiral of cause and effect, more discretion was called for. A more covert ploy now appears to be under way in neighbouring Chile.
The only whaling company in Chile is Fabrica Macaya Hermanos. Until last summer it had only three ageing ships. Of these, only one had been fit to put to sea in any of the previous three seasons, and last year it managed to catch only 70 sperm. Then, on July 7 last year, the company suddenly announced a new vessel. Eight days later the government obligingly raised its "quota" to 500 sperm and sei a year for the next five years.
On paper the deal seemed innocent. The Chilean company was simply leasing the ship with an option to purchase from a company in Panama. But our investigations reveal every appearance of a barter deal with the Japanese.
The new Chilean whaler is called the Paulmy Star III. A year age she was a trawler called Orient Maru II, flying the Japanese flag in the Bering Sea. Last spring her former owners, Tokushima Suisan, sold her to Taito Seiko, a company in which Taiyo Gyogyo (the biggest Japanese whaling company) has a controlling interest. Taito then resold to the Paulmy Star Corporation, which it "thinks" is in Liberia.
"The purpose of such procurement," according to the export document Taito was obliged to lodge with the Japanese Government, "is its use for shrimp trawling off the coasts of Panama."
The Japanese authorities remain adamant that when the ship left Japan in April it was as a trawler. The vessel was sighted leaving Tahiti on June 30 and may also have called at Panama. By the time she arrived in Chile she was flying the Panamanian flag and had been fitted with a harpoon gun - not famous as a productive weapon against shrimps. In October, she began to hunt whales.
Both Fabrica Macaya Hermanos and the Chilean Government refuse to reval any further details of the affair. Nor is any information forthcoming about the ultimate destination of the catch beyond the Government's insistence that it be landed in Chile and the meat "preferably" consumed there (though in the case of sperm, meat is of secondary importance to oil). On August 24, however, a Chilean Foreign Ministry official told a diplomat from an interested foreign embassy in Santiago that he understood the ship's owners were still Japanese.
Further than this, the ownership of the Paulmy Star Corporation of Panama is impossible to discover (secrecy being one of the more compelling attractions of flags of convenience). Fabrica Macaya Hermanos says it "thinks" the owners are one Brazilian, one Panamanian and "it might be a Japanese." It also insists that it will export the whale products to Spanish companies of which it "doesn't remember the names."
Dr Juan Grau, Secretary General of the Chilean Institute of Ecology, condemns the deal bluntly as a straight barter trade with Japan, and fears more "camouflaged" Japanese ships to follow.
Yet there remains one curiosity which has escaped the attention of protesters and IWC alike. Panama is still a member of the IWC. If the Paulmy Star III is flying the Panamanian flag then she should be observing Panamanian quotas (currently zero), and not Chilean ones. It might be coincidence, but Panama has given notice of her intention to leave the IWC on June 30.
How this could open the floodgates to pirate whalers is best illustrated by the career of another ship, the Sierra, which operates out of the West African port of Abidjan and flies the flag of Cyprus. Until recently she had operated out of Angola and Mozambique, under the Somali flag, and had recruited her crew in South Africa, where she has managing agents. She has had recent spells of Panamanian and Liechtenstein ownership and has operated outside IWC jurisdiction under various names. Her present owners, Sierra Ltd, shelter behind a firm of Cypriot lawyers who are merely nominees. The lawyers say they have "no idea of the movements and policy of the ship because it is merely registered here and to the best of our knowledge has never been here."
The last trace of the Sierra is a visit for repairs at Las Palmas in the Canaries. She left on January 30, announcing her intention to "whale in the South Atlantic." As she is a factory ship, built in Rotterdam in 1960, she can deliver her products wherever she chooses - even to another ship in mid-ocean.
Whatever she catches and sells will be her secret. Cyprus has no whaling regulations and the Sierra is legally able to catch whatever whales she likes in areas completely forbidden to IWC factory ships.
A Cyprus Government spokesman says: "We would like to tell them to get the hell out of here. But we cannot strike a ship off the register for breaching an international convention to which we are not signatories."
Crewmen say Japanese meat traders sail with them to choose the choicer cuts and that these are crated on board and stamped "produce of Spain". The South African authorities also claim to have reasons for suspecting Japanese ownership, but will not elaborate. And a person directly involved in the most recent sale of the ship insists that the present owners are Japanese.
The ease with which international whaling quotas are legally bypassed is alarming to conservationists and IWC alike. Most conservationists now believe that an international trade embargo on whale products is the only answer.
