The International Whaling Commission recently completed its 53rd annual meeting. For the media, highlights included: false accusations of vote buying; the illegal withholding of Iceland's right to vote, decided by a majority when by international law it should not have been a subject for the commission to decide; the rejection of two proposed whale sanctuaries that had no scientific basis and were not needed for conservation; the exaggerated possibility that the abundance of minke whales in the Antarctic may be lower than the 760,000 estimated by the Scientific Committee in 1990; and, a lack of progress toward resumption of the IWC's main task, the regulation of whaling on a sustainable basis.

No one seemed to notice the one item that may serve as the catalyst to resolve the deadlock within the IWC that has made it dysfunctional since the moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted in 1982. While there is no political will among a majority of the IWC members to abide by their legal obligations under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and support a limited resumption of commercial whaling, there presumably is a will to ensure that fish stocks and fisheries are not negatively affected by whales.

Why else would the commission adopt by consensus a resolution jointly put forward by Japan and the United States deciding to make the study of fish consumption by whales a matter of priority?