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"We believe there is, in fact, an opportunity to do that, and we have contracted a lawyer in Australia who has done an evaluation of the possibilities of legal action. We think the like-minded countries should look at them."
"They need to take this issue to the International Court, because international pressure is required. Trade sanctions should certainly be a possibility." Mr. Singh added: "I have been attending IWC meetings for years, and a number of resolutions which have been passed aimed at stopping scientific whaling have had no effect whatsoever. Diplomatic demarches, notes to Japan, have had no effect either."
"If there is any seriousness in terms of saving whales, this seems to be the way."
But time is pressing if the anti-whaling countries want to act, because in June, at the IWC meeting to be held in St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, the whaling nations seem likely to secure a voting majority for the first time.
It would be the result of an intense diplomatic campaign by Japan to get small developing countries to join the IWC and vote in its favour, by offering them substantial aid. Over the past six years, at least 14 nations have been recruited to the IWC as Japan's supporters, most of which have no whaling tradition. Some of the newcomers, such as Mongolia and Mali, do not even have a coastline.
Mark Simmonds, international director of science for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, believes the Japanese already had their majority at last year's IWC meeting in South Korea but administrative hitches meant they were not able to exercise it. This year, he thinks, they will.
"This would be the most enormous setback for whale and dolphin conservation," he said. "People don't realise how significant it is and how close it is. The world needs to be alerted to it."
The whaling moratorium, voted through at the IWC meeting in Brighton in 1982 and brought in four years later, has been a rare environmental success story. It was intended originally, not as an outright and permanent ban on whaling, but as a pause to give whale stocks time to recover while their numbers were assessed comprehensively, and new ways of managing hunting were introduced, based on the close study of whale population dynamics.
Most anti-whaling countries, including Britain, are now firmly of the view that commercial whaling should never resume. Britain's original position was to be "guided by the science" but that view has hardened over the years, and the UK now believes "that properly regulated whale watching is the only truly sustainable use of whales and other cetaceans [dolphins and porpoises]."
Hunted: The Main Targets
Common Minke Whale
Balaenoptera acutorostrata. The smallest of the great whales, usually about 35ft long and weighing about nine tons. This is the whale that is most commonly seen around the coasts of Britain and it is the main object of the summer whale hunt by Norwegian and Icelandic boats.
Antarctic Minke Whale
Balaenoptera bonaerensis. Slightly larger version of the North Atlantic minke. Because it was the smallest, it was targeted last during the centuries of commercial whaling, so it is still relatively abundant. The main target of the Japanese whale hunt, for "scientific" reasons.
Fin Whale
Balaenoptera physalus. The second-largest of all the whales, exceeded only by the blue whale. Can be 75ft long and weigh 75 tons. Despite its classification as an endangered species - the result of commercial whaling, especially in the southern hemisphere - it is now being hunted again by the Japanese.
Humpback Whale
Megaptera novaeangliae. Medium-sized whale, typically 45ft long and weighing 30 tons, widely distributed from the Arctic to the Antarctic. This species is probably the best known, and most photographed, because of its habit of making spectacular leaps out of the water. Heavily exploited in the past, it is now recovering in many places thanks to the whaling moratorium, but it is again being targeted by the Japanese.
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