A few items relating to the gastronomic leg of the cetacean research cycle. Just in case you're contemplating researching some whale meat some time.

From National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition Saturday" of May 26, an audio report on the cooking of whale meat by the Inupiat people of Alaska's North Slope, a practice which is now safe until at least 2012.

Not on Youtube, but from Greenpeace and not embeddable here. "Whales After Dark", starring Australia's Malcolm Turnbull and New Zealand's Chris Carter.

View it here.

Greenpeace have set up a tent outside IWC59, where they are recording video blog entries for what they call the Whale Broadcasting Corporation. Their programming includes such items as "WBC News Update", "Good Morning Anchorage", and "Whales After Dark".

The latter sounds like a cetacean porn show, but Monday's premier episode was in fact a discussion panel including, among other luminaries, the Eastern Suburbs' very own John Howard mouthpiece, Malcolm Turnbull.

Aboriginal subsistence hunting of approximately 56 bowhead whales a year till 2012 has been approved on day two of IWC59.

Here's the background paper prepared for the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Committee, and a paper submitted by Russia on behalf of the Chuktoka people. The "needs" statements for Japan and Greenland are yet to be discussed.

"We determined that addressing the challenges of energy security and sustainable development should be based on well-functioning markets that are progressively characterised by free and open trade, secure and transparent frameworks for investment, market-based price signals, market transparency, good governance and effective competition."

- Paragraph 5, The Darwin Declaration on Achieving Energy Security and Sustainable Development through Efficiency, Conservation and Diversity, 29.5.07

IWC meeting set to start, Japan seeks small-scale coastal whaling (Kyodo via Yahoo! Asia News)
"The International Whaling Commission will begin a three-day annual meeting Monday in Anchorage, Alaska, with Japan seeking the resumption of small-scale coastal whaling."

Japan is notorious for signing up countries for IWC membership in return for giving foreign aid. However, Great Britain has jumped on the branchstacking bandwagon in the name of the anti-whaling forces.

Britain has signed up Croatia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Greece (who, at least, all have a coastline), and have encouraged Costa Rica and Peru to pay their IWC subscriptions so that they can vote at the Anchorage meeting this week.