Marine biologists at this month's annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at Ulsan in South Korea will require considerable patience and fortitude. "It's like banging your head against the wall," complained one scientist there for the preliminary scientific-committee meeting. The main bone of contention at this years meeting is a proposal by Japan to double the scope of its 'research whaling' programme — its thinly disguised arrangement to continue some whaling despite a moratorium on commercial whaling that the IWC implemented in 1986 (see Nature 435,550; 2005).
展开▼
