That Masayuki Komatsu once described minke whales as "cockroaches of the sea" says a lot about Japan's attitude toward whaling. Lean, impeccably dressed, and an occasional consumer of whale meat, Komatsu often represents Japan on the International Whaling Commission (IWC), a 51-country organization whose purpose is to protect the world's whales from overexploitation. This June the IWC held its 55th meeting at the tony Estrel Hotel, in Berlin, and the stony-faced Komatsu came with one most important objective: for Japan, backed by Iceland and Norway, to win the right to resume commercial whale hunts.

Japan's fishing fleet does currently hunt whales, but Komatsu prefers not to use this indelicate term. An IWC ban on commercial whaling has been in effect since 1986, although a gaping loophole allows countries to kill whales for "scientific research." This year, Japan's fishing fleet will kill at least 590 minke whales and dozens more sperm, sei, and Bryde's whales with the official intent of studying, among other things, their diets. After the contents of the animals' stomachs are examined, many of the whales are butchered and their meat sold for more than $100 a plate in upscale Japanese restaurants. Japan is so committed to this epicurean luxury that last year Komatsu, who also heads up Japan's fisheries agency, gave $73 million to the nation's whaling industry.

But on the international stage Komatsu faces stiff opposition. On day one of the conference, Mexico's Andres Rozental, a career diplomat, squelched the pro-whaling voting bloc with a plan of his own: to create the IWC's first conservation committee, which would protect cetacean species not just from whalers' guns but from ocean pollution, ship collisions, habitat loss, and even global warming. The 25-20 vote was close, but the ultimate message was clear: Whales need more protection, not less. Outraged, Komatsu threatened to withdraw from the commission forever, then stormed out of the conference room with the rest of the Japanese delegation in tow. (He returned later that afternoon.)

Created in 1946, the IWC is supposed to control the rampant hunting that had driven many whale species towards extinction. For its first few decades, however, it was little more than a whalers' club, and notoriously ineffective; in 1961, more than 66,000 whales were killed in the largest annual take ever recorded. The IWC did not seriously assume its role as the whales' global conservator until the United Nations called for a commercial whaling moratorium in 1972. The mammals' cause was also aided by telegenic Greenpeace activists in small inflatable boats harassing whaling vessels at sea. Today, member nations are confronted by a boom in whale watching -- a $1 billion-a-year business that dwarfs the whaling industry. "We see ourselves as the new whalers," says Frank Future, Australian president of the International Alliance for Commercial Whale Watchers, which this year attended its first IWC meeting. Needless to say, the more people who see whales, the more people who want to protect them.

Still, in spite of the pressure to save these animals, the commission's pro- and antiwhaling forces remain hopelessly deadlocked. Japan, Norway, and Iceland insist that whales have recovered enough to justify a "sustainable" commercial hunt. To ensure support for its cause, Japan doled out more than $160 million in fisheries aid between 1987 and 2000 to six Caribbean nations that are commission members. In addition, Panama, Morocco, and the Republic of Guinea received a total of $14.6 million from Japan in 2002 alone. All nine countries voted against the conservation committee.

Yet even more disturbing was the commission's failure to address the most significant threat to whales, dolphins, and porpoises: commercial fishing gear. According to a recent study, more than 300,000 cetaceans die every year when they become entangled in the lines and nets that are invisible to the animals' sight and sonar. Victims include the Baltic harbor porpoise, of which only 600 remain, and the Mexican vaquita porpoise, which now number only about 500.

So what will it take for the IWC to make real progress? On the last day of the conference, Greenpeace activists marched into a courtyard just outside the meeting area carrying three dead harbor porpoises on stretchers. Gazing out a large plate-glass window, the faces of many of the delegates turned noticeably somber at the sight of the animals, which had drowned after becoming entangled in nets in the Baltic Sea.

Masayuki Komatsu, however, was nowhere to be seen.
-- Dick Russell