Japanese harpoons closer for humpbacks

The world's whales have been saved from a return to hunting but the drama of this year's annual whaling forum is not over yet. At the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in the Caribbean island nation of St Kitts and Nevis, pro-whaling nations, led by Japan, have lost three key votes but could muster enough support for a last effort to sway the commission to a more pro-whaling stance.

Japan lost a crucial vote on setting up secret ballots that would have allowed countries, some of whom have received dollops of aid from Japan, to hide their IWC voting record.

Japan is estimated to have spent $400 million on aid to countries joining the commission.

Conservation Minister Chris Carter, leading New Zealand's delegation at the IWC, said the fact Pacific neighbours Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, Palau and the Marshall Islands supported the secret-ballot plan was particularly disappointing.

"I certainly came here with the impression there were key votes they would support us on, and it's very disappointing to see them consistently voting with the pro-whalers," he said.

With another two days to go, Japan was likely to stage a last-ditch effort to force the IWC to a pro-whaling stance by putting to the vote a declaration that the IWC should "normalise" whaling and focus on commercial hunting as opposed to conservation.

Mr Carter said there was a good chance Japan would get the majority vote it needed to get the declaration passed, but the victory would be "diplomatic" rather than real because Japan still needed the moratorium overturned for commercial hunting to resume.

No wide-scale whale hunting can resume until three-quarters of 66 IWC members vote to overturn a 20-year whaling ban.

"It would mean Japan goes out of this emboldened and with a major diplomatic victory and to begin building from a majority to a full three-quarters vote," he said.

Japan kills up to 1000 minke whales a year under a "scientific" research programme, which will expand next year to include an additional 50 humpback whales.

Humpbacks - whose haunting songs and breathtaking leaps have fired the imagination of hundreds of millions of people around the world - are on the official Red List of Threatened Species.

Experts say that killing them is particularly cruel. They are much bigger than minke whales, the main species now hunted, and so the grenade-tipped harpoons used are much less likely to kill them outright.

Anti-whaling nations have condemned the programme, but it is allowed under IWC rules.

A report on Japanese whaling by conservation group Fund for Animal Welfare using video footage of hunting claimed 80 per cent of whales were still alive after being harpooned.

It alleged that of 16 minke whales , 10 took at least 10 minutes to die and were killed by suffocation as they were forced underwater.