All the warning signs we need are out there if we care to take notice:

• We may well see the extinction this century of the western grey whale if incidental takes by net entanglement are not severely reduced or halted;


• The survival of the northern right whale hangs in the balance, with ship strikes and net entanglements preventing their recovery; and this year


• the Baiji dolphin was officially declared 'functionally extinct' after a 6 week survey in late 2006 failed to sight a single one.

Our oceans are in crisis. Marine pollution from underwater noise, debris and land based sources, climate change and its various impacts - both known and unknown, ship strikes, and of course, industrial overfishing all threaten the world's whales and dolphins. Our tendency to overfish, like commercial whaling in the past, is now seriously threatening global fish stocks and in some areas our ability to feed ourselves. Over 75% of the world's fish populations are either fully exploited, overexploited or recovering.

In the face of all of this, supporters of commercial whaling promote as fact claims that whales are the cause of declining fish populations. Yet they are unable to produce a single peer-reviewed scientific paper in support of this claim. The sad truth is that across the world's oceans, fisheries are collapsing mainly as a result of overfishing by humans and failed management regimes. But the supporters of commercial whaling know that if they can somehow blame industrial overfishing on the whales (which existed in balance with abundant fish populations well before commercial whaling began), then they will be freed from the responsibility of even having to attempt precautionary management because the objective of whaling will be to reduce the size of whale populations. Deliberate depletion of recovering populations - or marine ecosystem manipulation - would then become the goal of the IWC.

As our oceans have changed, so too must the institutions that are charged with safeguarding the life that lives within them; to focus on ensuring conservation for this and future generations. As whaling nations push for a resumption of commercial whaling, we would do well to remember how much of a disaster the 20th century was for the whales. The blue whale, the fin, and the sei were all hunted to the brink of extinction while the whaling industry, operating under IWC management, demonstrated over and over again the unsustainability of commercial whaling.

Only the moratorium has brought relief from these serial management failures which occurred because advocates of whaling controlled the IWC and managed whaling for the short term good of the industry, not the long term good of the whales or our oceans.

The 21st century must demonstrate humankind's ability to learn from our mistakes and turn the tide from overexploitation, to conservation and protection.

Already, there is broad recognition that the 21st century definition of 'sustainable use' when it comes to whales, means whale watching, not commercial hunting. Now is the time for this body to endorse that view and devote its considerable political and scientific resources to safeguarding and ensuring the recovery of whale populations everywhere, beginning with the most endangered. To do so, the Convention must be modernised. It must develop a plan to ensure the conservation of whales that includes addressing current and future threats like climate change. It must recognise that so-called 'research' whaling is untenable. You don't need to kill whales to study them, so the so-called 'scientific loophole' in the Convention needs to be removed. And it must be updated so that it accords with the accepted principles of international environmental and marine law.

In 1974, a Commissioner addressing this plenary stated,

"This Commission will be known to history as a small body of men who failed to act responsibly in terms of their very large commitment to the world, and who protected the interests of the few whalers and not the future of thousands of whales."

All parties to this Convention need to take action this week towards turning that tide, so that in 2074 it will be possible to address this body saying:

"This Commission will be known to history as a body which rose above its early mistakes to become an instrument of conservation which brought back whale species from the brink of extinction and led the way for the protection of marine biodiversity so that we can be proud of the clean, healthy and vital oceans that we have today."