Just a day after passing the ground-breaking Berlin Initiative, which makes conservation a cornerstone of the International Whaling Commission, delegates reversed course and failed to create two separate ocean sanctuaries for the massive marine mammals.

During the second day of the 55th annual IWC meeting in Berlin, commissioners voted 24-17 in favor of the South Pacific Sanctuary (with four abstentions) and 24 to 19 in favor of the South Atlantic Sanctuary (three abstentions), but the proposals needed a three-quarters majority to become law under the IWC treaty. It's at least the third time each sanctuary has been defeated at the IWC.

"What we witnessed today was yet another example of how Japan's ability to attract small nations into the IWC affects important resolutions such as the whale sanctuaries," said Executive Vice President Patricia Forkan, one of several HSUS representatives attending the IWC meeting in Berlin. "If not for these small, mostly Caribbean nations, the whale sanctuaries would likely now be law. It's the whales who will pay the price for this kind of politicking."

The pro-whaling nations argued that the sanctuaries not only provide blanket protection for whales whether or not a species is endangered, but that they are also legally questionable. According to the Associated Press, Iceland's chief delegate told the commissioners on Tuesday, " We feel that it goes against the principals of international law to close vast areas of the high seas to whaling without any regard to the abundance of whale stocks in those areas."

The Icelandic comment inspired dark, ironic laughter from some observers. After all, one observer noted, some anti-whaling countries are questioning the legality of Iceland's seat in the organization because the island nation "voted for itself on the proposal over whether it should be readmitted into the IWC." (See "U.S. Gets Its Subsistence Quota But at a High Cost: Iceland's Return to IWC" below.)

The day proved to be full of contentiousness. The Japanese delegation made good on its threat to boycott the meeting when the country's officials (save for a lone scientific advisor) failed to show up at 9 a.m. for the start of proceedings. On Monday, Japan threatened to walk out of debates in protest over the Berlin Initiative, whose passage strengthens the conservation agenda within the IWC itself. (A Japanese fisheries ministry official also told the AP on Tuesday that pulling out of the IWC "is one possibility.")

The island nation (as well as its Caribbean allies, which also boycotted the early IWC debates on Tuesday) returned to the table for discussions on aboriginal whaling, but as one observer said, "they soon skittered out again when the topic of 'whale killing methods' came up."

The revolving door approach to international debate prompted a Mexican commissioner to quip, "There are certain delegations that are disappearing from the room depending on whether the delegation likes the issue or not..."

Japan may have gotten its way on the ocean sanctuaries—much to the dismay of Brazil and Argentina, which proposed the South Atlantic zone, and to New Zealand and Australia, which championed the South Pacific zone—but the Japanese delegate did suffer a major setback on Tuesday. Japan proposed to loosen protections in the existing Antarctic whale sanctuary, but the bid was defeated 26 to 17.