Whale process

If you wonder why Chez Rémi has been very light [very few posts with very little substance, I must admit] this month, there is a very simple answer: I am extremely focussed on the final preparations of the meeting of the Pew Whales Commission which the Pew Environment Group has asked me to help organize in Lisbon next month.

With only two weeks and a half before this meeting we're still dealing with a number of lose ends, almost day and night. So, log into the meeting's website for regular updates. We're going to feed the website quite massively from this week-end onward.

Consistent with the goals of the Pew Whales Conservation Project, the Lisbon meeting is meant to help the International Whaling Commission (IWC) find an exit strategy to the policy impasse in which it finds itself for too many years.

Reading the most recent public statement of Japan's main fisheries negotiator Joji Morishita, I can only hope we're still on schedule...But until proven wrong, I agree with Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that we must continue to try the diplomatic route for at least another six months.

Readers interested in the debate on the relationship between whales and fiheries will also be interested to read Peter Corkeron's latest paper released in Biology Letters, "Marine mammals’ influence on ecosystem processes affecting fisheries in the Barents Sea is trivial".