ST JOHN’S, Antigua – The Antigua & Barbuda government has defended its membership in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and has again backed the Japanese commercial whaling bid.
This year, interest groups urged OECS nations to get out of the IWC since, with the exception of St Vincent & the Grenadines, they do not hunt whales.
Senator Joanne Massiah, alternate IWC commissioner who represented the country at the Panama meeting last week, told OBSERVER Media that the region’s presence at the IWC is necessary.
“Unless we participate in these international meetings we are going to have people far remote from us making decisions about what we can and cannot eat, how we can prepare it and what we can do when they don’t have any vested interest in our country,” Massiah said.
She said Antigua & Barbuda was also supporting the interest of St Vincent & the Grenadines, the only whaling nation in the OECS.
“And as we tend to do in our region, we vote as a bloc. We support each other because issues that concern St Vincent also concern Antigua & Barbuda,” Massiah added.
For the past three years however, Dominica has been abstaining from voting at the IWC, unlike Antigua, which this year again, supported Japan’s pro-whaling stance.
Japan hunts whales for purportedly scientific purposes, which many environmental groups describe as a front for commercial whaling.
Senator Massiah has a different view; she believes the twin island nation’s best interest is represented based on how it votes at the IWC.
“The reason why we support sustainable use is very sound; we are an island nation surrounded by water and I think the issues that surround the marine resources are ones that we have to pay keen attention to,” Massaih said.
“The ocean has historically been a tremendous source of livelihood for a number of people in the region. And I think the fact that we have been able to sustain our management of marine resources speaks well for a developing country,” she added.
The senator has attended every IWC meeting since 2004 and said she is well aware of the issues and was able to represent the interest of the country well.
One of the highlights for her was the nomination of a St Lucia native, Jeannine Compton Antoine, to the chair of the IWC.
the Antiguan mentality truly disgusts me.
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Here in Brazil we are trying to get a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic and Japan and its cronies always manage to get it voted down. I would love to visit your country but thousands of people simply check the list of those that back the Japanese whalers and decide, on principle, to go some place else. From these comments I get the impression that the good people of Antigua are not happy with the way their government is conducting themselves on the environmental front.
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Does Massiah actually live here? Does she eat whale? What is she talking about? She knows nothing about marine life here in Antigua. By the way, who is she representing? Not me! I am ANTIGUAN. I CARE about our marine life and the joy it brings to me and my kids.
MASSIAH you really anger me.
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Too bad that the only time your country makes the news in Canada is by backing the continuing decimation of the whale population. I guess I will need to strike your country off my list of possible tourist destinations. No doubt many others will too.
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Once more we can tell Mr M. Dick that he is not welcomed in our country or in our waters.
We can all push out our whaling boats and go and harpoon Moby because we have the government say so. Well they “voted” for us.
The fact that no one to my knowledge participate in this blood sport may have missed our wise government.
To what is she referring when she said that “we have been able to sustain our management of marine resources”? Is she aware of the plight of the fishing industry and the mismanagement within it?
Has anyone told her that we have over fished our fish stock and that we have no working policy to manage its decline?
Just to give you a clue madam. Address the decline in the Chub fish the poor stock of Snappers in our waters.
Go to the market early and see what the fishermen are bringing in and listen to their tales of woe. Ask them how many whales they caught.
Address the pollution in our coastal waters caused by a failure to manage the few remaining mangrove along our shores.
I am going to re-read the article again because I am sure that the good lady is talking or as they say “speaking to” another subject
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well said toonuff
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have a look at this little video which shows that the minister doesn’t know what she’s speaking about. youtube.com/watch?v=KbUTu_q5VjE
Any child visiting Antigua let alone the people who live here knows that our marine recources have been terribly managed and are in horrible shape. We have some of the worst reefs in the Caribbean and have no noticeable management at all.
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Senator Massiah, do you really think your presence at the IWC was worthwhile, even if you did not go nobody going to tell us what to eat – and to my knowledge we do not eat whale in Antigua anyway, why would you condone the killing of whales? They are a population under threat of extinction, just like lobsters and many other fish from our shores…why not show some interest and get involved in preserving our precious resources instead of supporting commercial whaling in other countries.
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