Whales worth more alive than dead, says new report

Whales are worth more alive than dead, an Australian minister said Tuesday, as campaigners publicised the billion-dollar whale-watching industry on the sidelines of the IWC conference.Environment Minister Peter Garrett welcomed a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which said that in 2008 whale-watching generated 2.1 billion dollars (1.5 billion euros) of tourism revenue worldwide.Garrett was speaking on the second day of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), where pro- and anti-whaling countries are thrashing out the issue of whether to permit increased hunting of the marine mammals."The bottom line is clear," said Garrett, who before his political career was a rock musician with Midnight Oil. "Whales are worth much more alive than dead."Responsible whale-watching is the most sustainable, environmentally-friendly and economically beneficial use of whales in the 21st century," he told reporters at Funchal, on the Portuguese island of Madeira.IFAW's whale programme director Patrick Ramage told reporters: "While governments debate what to do about whales, their citizens are pointing the way."In 2008, more than 13 million people had taken whale-watching tours in 119 countries, he added."More than 3,000 whale-watching operations around the world now employ an estimated 13,200 people," said Ramage.The 2.1 billion dollars produced in 2008 was more than double the estimated one billion dollars generated by the industry in 1998, said an executive summary of the report.The IWAF report defined whale-watching as covering all cetaceans -- whales, dolphins and porpoises.Garrett attended the launch of the launch to show his support.Australia is one of the IWC member nations fiercely opposed to the hunting of whales.They, like other anti-hunting nations, argue that hunting whales is not profitable, to the point that some whaling countries have to subsidise the industry.Anti-whaling nations are fighting to preserve the 1986 moratorium on whale-hunting, although Norway and Iceland are already defying it.Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, kills more than 1,000 whales a year through a loophole in the 1986 treaty that allows their killing for scientific research.