Every year thousands of Americans stalk migrating great whales in our coastal waters. They do it with sharp eyes and quick cameras, and the result of their demand for a rare nature experience is a small but flourishing local industry.

In late November, a whaling fleet departed Shimonoseki, Japan, for a very different purpose: a real hunting expedition for Minke whales in the Antarctic whale sanctuary. In September, a fleet returned from the northern Pacific with a catch that included forty-three Bryde's whales and five Sperm whales. These larger species are considered endangered by the International Whaling Commission, and the catch limit is firmly set at zero. The United States, the commission and most marine scientists reject Japanese claims that the hunt is scientific research.

 To the dismay of its environmental allies, the Clinton administration ducked the issue. In late December the administration announced largely symbolic restrictions on Japanese fishing rights in U.S. waters and threatened to ``investigate'' Japanese firms that manufacture whaling equipment. 

The story of this bungled response is a tale of two international institutions, one strong and one weak. Quite reasonably, the United States feared that Japan's creeping reintroduction of commercial whaling opened a slippery slope. Instead of forging an international consensus of like-minded nations, the United States sought a quick fix. All too predictably, it threatened trade sanctions. The threat was empty because sanctions on Japanese automobiles or other products are clearly incompatible with our obligations within the World Trade Organization. The WTO reflects an international consensus, which our government shares, that trade should be nondiscriminatory.

 Alternatively, the United States could have taken its case to the whaling commission, where the issue seemingly belongs, but the commission is a voluntary organization whose only enforcement mechanism is moral suasion. Just as important, its purpose is to restore the whale fishery, not to change national attitudes toward whale hunting. Anti-whaling nations such as the United States have used the commission effectively in the past because certain whale populations were so clearly nearing extinction. Whale numbers have begun to recover since the commission-sponsored moratorium on commercial hunting took effect in the 1980s. Its success has reinvigorated the simmering international tensions over the future of commercial whaling.

 Although the group of nations that seeks to resume whaling currently is small (Japan and Norway are strong supporters), time is on their side.

 Limited commercial hunting by nations that do not share our views may be compatible with a stable or growing whale population, but this requires giving the commission the authority to set, monitor and enforce catch limits. Such a reinvented International Whaling Commission is quite unlikely. Even if it were possible, hunting would remain a constant diplomatic irritant.

 American views about Japan's whaling policies are shaped by the twin misperceptions that pro-whaling sentiment runs deep in Japan and whale products are an important part of Japanese everyday life. Few people eat high-priced whale meat, and there is no sizable industrial lobby backing renewed whaling. Japanese whaling policy originates within the bureaucracy, a gesture to a tiny industry.

 There is still time to put together a coalition of anti-whaling nations to exert coordinated diplomatic pressure on Japan to end whaling. There is little chance of backlash in Japan because the issue evokes no clash of cultures and economic stakes are small. 

Will the Bush administration be willing to prod our Japanese allies over this issue? The omens are not good.

 The recent tragic trawler accident off the Hawaiian coast diminishes the Bush administration's likely appetite for diplomatic disagreements with Japan. But if whaling policy cannot be separated from the rest of our cooperative political and military relationship with Japan, whaling opponents must prepare themselves for a steady erosion of the status quo.

 David H. Feldman is an economics professor at the College of William and Mary.
(dhfeld@wm.edu)

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