Norway can not only kill whales but every year their quota goes up.

Norway will kill 797 Minke Whales in 2005

As to your remarks; well, I'm afraid we can still kill whales, the pronoun referring in this case to whaling nations. Doing so is still legal, both for Norway, which lodged an objection to the 1986 moratorium, and Japan, which carries on its scientific program - though the latter really is a commercial season in disguise.

And frankly, like most Norwegians, I don't see what the huge deal is apart from the conservation issue, which at least for North Atlantic minke whales is not acute. (It's not an endangered population, and it is the only one harvested by Norwegians.) Humpbacks may be another matter, though current estimates run on 30,000 in the southern hemisphere. About fin whales I'm not up to date, but according to the BBC there are some signs of recuperation after past excesses.

While I don't enormously trust Japan in this question, that seems to me a good case for reviving the original purpose of the IWC, namely to regulate whaling in a way informed by science. This as opposed to the de facto free for all that exists today, with the IWC an arena for symbolic politics by countries with an often awful environmental record and in a growing number of cases, not even a coastline.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

Comparisons with domesticated livestock just don't fit here.

I look forward to your diary, some questions I would like to see answered.

-What are population numbers specifically of the minke species that Norway hunts in the North Atlantic, from objective sources.

-Is this population declining because of other factors, like global warming, ship traffic etc.

-What is the rate of decline (if any) over the last ten years.

-Why Norway needs this hunt since it comes under Fisheries and is government subsidized. Furthermore, Norway has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.

-Why some Norway whalers pretend that this is an indigenous hunt when Norwegian commercial whaling only began in 1930.

To thine own self be true. W.S.

Living in San Diego, with easy access to gray whale watching, via land or sea, makes one feel a special relationship with all whales.

Norway and Japan increasing their catch for "scientific purposes" is nothing short of an end run around the treaty ban. I am thrilled the IWC upheld the ban, and hope those countries are sanctioned and heavily fined.