Can Australia police the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary?
DR. CHARLOTTE EPSTEIN: “So there are two kinds of whale sanctuaries. There’s a sanctuary that a country can declare over its waters, alright. So a country like Mexico has a sanctuary. Australia has declared all its territorial waters to be a whale sanctuary. That’s one thing. That’s a country sanctuary. That’s different from the whale sanctuaries that have been accepted by the IWC — […] that’s where specific whale sanctuaries have been declared in common by the countries coming together. And specifically, there’s one in the Southern Oceans that was […] established in 1994. “So Australia has declared its waters to be whale sanctuaries, and they are actually enforcing it quite seriously. [But] in these international waters, including in the international Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary — the sanctuary proclaimed by the IWC — Australia does not have enforcement powers. That’s an important difference.