Live whales worth $120m to NZ - report

[Mr T.]

Live whales worth $120m to NZ - report

03 June 2005 By SUE ALLEN

A new report into the economic value of whale watching in New Zealand will be used to boost the growing anti-whaling lobby against Japan.


Introducing the report yesterday, Conservation Minister Chris Carter said it demonstrated in graphic financial terms "why living whales are so much more important than dead ones".

More than 425,000 people went whale or dolphin watching in New Zealand last year - almost double the 1998 figure of 230,000 - contributing an estimated $120 million to the economy, the International Fund for Animal Welfare report said.

The 2001 Hoyt Report estimated whale watching was a US$1 billion (NZ$1.4 billion) industry worldwide, attracting nine million participants in 87 countries.

"I hope this will go some way to supporting New Zealand's strong argument that whale conservation, besides its intrinsic value for biodiversity, is also really important from an economic point of view," Mr Carter said.

The report was made public as Prime Minister Helen Clark met her Japanese counterpart, Junichiro Koizumi.

Though the issue was expected to be on the agenda, Miss Clark said it had not been raised because time was short.

Miss Clark has told Japan's Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura that New Zealand is taking part in a 10-country campaign to persuade Japan not to push for an extension of its whaling programme. Australia, the United States and many European countries have also signed up.

Mr Carter said he would formally issue the New Zealand economic report at this month's International Whaling Commission in Korea.

Japan is expected to push to extend the number of minke whales caught each year to 900 and to resume whaling of humpback and fin whales at the same meeting.

Concerns are growing that Japan might quit the IWC and that it is using aid money to buy support from poorer member countries.

Mr Carter said he hoped Japan would stay in the IWC and that leaving could expose them to more wrath from environmental groups like Greenpeace.

As well as diplomatic pressure, Mr Carter said New Zealand had "good opportunities" to sell its argument through Japan's growing environmental movement.

There is a concern that an increase in Japan's scientific whaling quota could affect New Zealand's whale-watching industry. Only about 2000 humpbacks migrate past this country to Tonga, but they could be killed by Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean, Mr Carter said.

"The biggest threat to our multimillion-dollar industry is the threat of increased whaling," Mr Carter said.

The fund's Asia Pacific director, Michael McIntyre, said that more than 24,000 whales had been killed by Japan and Iceland under scientific quotas and by Norway, which killed commercially, despite a 1998 moratorium on whaling.

"Let me make this clear today: This so-called scientific whaling programme is a sham. There is no science in this programme, it has never been peer reviewed, it is just commercial whaling in disguise," he said.

[Lou]

It is nice to see some figures on the value of live whales, and $1billion is far more than I thought it might be. Let's hope that this can tip the balance back to the eco-tourism arguments for the smaller nations that Japan is trying to woo.

I would pay time and time again to see whales. I have seen them in Vic, Australia and in British Columbia and on both occasions they were right up there as high points of the trips. Just seeing the number of whale watching operations on Vancouver island alone gives some idea of the demand.

Lou