A few days ago the whaling ship Soviet Ukraine steamed into the Black Sea port of Odessa with its final prize, a minke whale. An orchestra played as the skipper, Vladimir Angelin, recited his own poem, "Farewell to Antarctica". It was Angelin's final voyage.
Last week's announcement that the Soviet Union has at last ended commercial whaling caused conservationists to rejoice for the Russians have played a leading part in the plunder, to near extinction, of "great" whales such as the blue and right species. But the whale is far from saved. Japan remains by far the world's greatest whale-killer and consumer, and is deaf to conservationist pleas.
At the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Bournemouth next month Japanese delegates are expected to insist on their right to go on catching 875 whales annually until the year 2000 for "scientific" purposes. The hunt just continue, they argue, so that whale stocks can be monitored. Conservationists, however, say that research is an cover to keep the whaling fleet in work until the time is ripe to expand whaling once more. The flesh of whales killed for "research" endes up in the shops.
In the 1970s, after it became clear that whalers had virtually wiped out the great whales, the "eco-warriors" of Greenpeace and other groups dramatised the plight of the warm-blooded, intelligent creatures that have cruised the world's oceans for 50m years. Progress was spectacular.
The conservationists produced films of whales, speared by harpoons with 160lb explosive charges, writhing in blood-darkened seas and later, in huge factory ships, being sliced up with power saws.
Dr Sidney Holt, a world authority on whale ecology, says: "Down the years whales have not been treated as a renewable resource. They have been mined. The excavations have continued until the quarry became uneconomic." He describes the Japanese claims that whales are needed or research as "humbug" and "a betrayal of science'.
Holt believes that the number of whales have been brought so low that virtually all significant species are in decline. At a recovery rate of 2 per cent a year, it may take up to a century for the blue and humpbacked species to recover.
The message has not been lost on a world waking up to environmental issues. Growing popular pressure prompted IWC, which was set up after the second world war to manage world whale stocks, to impose progressive curbs on whaling. In 1982 it ordered a ban on commercial whaling until 1990.
Today, with Russia sidelined, only Japan, Korea, Norway and Iceland seem determined, in the cause of "science", to go on destroying whales. But the Japanese, by a wide margin, are the villains of the piece and are blocking the way to the real rescue of the whale.
Japan not only catches whales: it imports most of the whalemeat caught by other nations (7,000 tonnes last year). Norway and Iceland consume small amounts of whalemeat but, like Russia until last week, export vast quantities to Japan where, among some sections of society, the meat is regarded as a delicacy eaten at funerals and weddings.
Large-scale consumption of whalemeat in Japan did not begin until the late 1940s, when General Douglas MacArthur, the US military chief, commended it as a high-protein food.
The Japanese fishing industry began to exploit the massive whale resources of Antarctica and the Pacific and offered a ready market to others. The Russians, as hungry for hard currency as the Japanese were for protein, invested heavily in a fleet of factory ships. Whales and whaling have since become a deeply ingrained part of Japanese commerce and politics. The vested interests involved are so great that leaders of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic party are too scared to disturb them.
The key figure in the resistance to curbs on the industry is Zenko Suzuki, a formidable backstage politician whose power base is in the fishing industry (to his countrymen he is Mr Fish), and who in the early 1980s was briefly prime minister. Suzuki heads his own influential faction in the Japanese parliament and has an intimate relationship with Taiyo, the world's biggest fishing concern.
Because whaling, with an annual turnover of ú50m, is an integral part of the huge Japanese industry, curbs on whale catches are seen as a threat to fishing interests as a whole.
Suzuki has led the battle to provide Japanese whalers with subsidised fuel. He has managed to keep the price of whalemeat profitably high (ú20 for a steak weighing about 12oz). Above all, the has remained ultra-sensitive to the fact that several Liberal-led parliamentary seats are in areas where the population is involved in whaling. A candidate in a whaling area who opposes the slaughter is doomed.
Suzuku himself comes from Honshu, an area where pro-whaling prejudice runs strong. Thus, although the number of Japanese directly involved in whaling is less than 2,000 out of a total population of more than 121m (in an economy with full employment), Japanese politicians trifle with the issue at their peril.
Japan is prepared to go to great lengths to try to defend an indefensible case. Akihiro Mae, a spokesman for the fisheries ministry, says that the current IWC moratorium on commercial whaling is based on "emotion". It is necessary, he says, to "take" substantial number of whales to prove that a ban is not needed.
Alan Thornton, a Greenpeace director, is convinced that Japan's long-term strategy is to maintain commercial whaling. He believes that it will keep its ships, crews, and commercial infrastructure intact until 1990 when the current commercial ban is reviewed. It will then ask for the annual "scientific" catch to be validated as a commercial activity.
To carry out this strategy, Thornton says, the Japanese will apply economic pressure to weaker members of the IWC to secure enough supporting votes. A few years ago, when Panama proposed a ban on whaling, Japan threatened to cancel a sugar contract and persuaded the Panamanian authorities to sack their IWC commissioner.
At the IWC meeting in Bournemouth, much interest will focus on Tony Calio, the hard-driving American IWC commissioner who, since his appointment a year ago, has been building a powerful case against Japan.
The United States is the only IWC country with the clout to force Japan to toe the conservationist line. Calio hopes that the Reagan Administration's current mood of disenchantment with Japan on trade questions will strengthen his hand. The mighty whale, meanwhile, remains a pawn of Japanese politics.
