The report of the workshop would be made available to the Planning and Co-ordinating Committee of the Marine Mammal Action Plan at its next meeting in 1995. It was further agreed that copies could be made available on demand to any enquirers, by the sponsors or by any of the participants. It was particularly important to ensure that interested scientists were made aware of its existence, through short notices in magazines, specialist newsletters and the like.
First, decisions about research priorities are inevitably closely linked with the objectives of management as they may be specified as an outcome of consultations among many stakeholders in the target resource: local and national authorities, operators of whale watching activities, bodies concerned with promoting eco-tourism, private vessel owners, the general public and, of course, the scientific community.
Second, this workshop was presented to them as the first in a coordinated series of workshops that will examine other aspects of the problem, leading to a conference in which an attempt will be made to integrate the various aspects. There was a consensus that whale watching provided opportunities for public education concerning cetaceans' characteristics, lives and their roles in marine ecosystems. The participants felt that scientists can be helpful in developing and contributing to such programmes. In addition they agreed that it would be useful to try to assess the influence of the experience of whale watching on the people who have taken part in it, with respect to attitudes of the public to marine life in general and to cetaceans in particular. The participants considered that their professional skills and specialised knowledge could contribute to the design and conduct of such assessments.
In trying to evaluate the effects of any system of rules (a term defined for the purpose of the workshop a including regulations, guidelines and codes of human behaviour), with a view to improving that system, it is essential for scientists to have reliable information about the extent to which such rules are in fact followed. Also, the formulation of rules based on the results of research programmes may be affected by legal and enforcement considerations.
It is likely that any system of rules will be the outcome of an attempt to find an acceptable compromise between the needs of the whales and dolphins, as individuals and as populations, and the desire of people to interact with cetaceans. Another compromise must be found between the enhancement and the regulation of whale watching, the goal being the sustainable development of this activity. This mean that the successful evolution of any such system, calls for continuing consultations among scientists, authorities and the commercial and private operators. Such a system may include both rules governing behaviour of individual observing platforms and those governing the overall size, growth rate and nature of the whale watching activities in a locality.
The participants noted that whale watching vessels had in many situations provided useful platforms from which certain kinds of scientific research have been carried out. They agreed that use of such 'platforms of opportunity' should be encouraged.
There are also social and economic scientific considerations of whale watching that were not discussed at this workshop but may yield information on whale watching. Whale watching impacts on cetaceans are discussed in detail in this report. However, the impacts on humans and society were not discussed and will be a focus of a later workshop.
Lastly, the participants recognised that scientific research directed to assisting the management of whale watching should be conducted as far as possible in ways, and using techniques, that are minimally intrusive. However, the special nature of such research will commonly call for differences between the system of rules applied to commercial/recreational whale watching, and the rules applied to regulate research. Any such differences, and the essential reasons for them, should be fully explained to the public and the whale watching operators. Similar considerations apply to rules governing interactions for the purposes of photographing, filming and other types of recording whales for educationally-related purposes.
The participants authorised the Steering Group to complete the report (involving re-organisation of the working group drafts) and to edit it. The report in this form would be reproduced by IFAW and conveyed to the IWC, with copies being sent immediately to all participants.
It was realised that participants might have further comment to offer on the report and they were invited to do so. Subsequently, a final report would be prepared on the basis of any such comments, circulated to participants for their approval and published by IFAW on behalf of all the sponsors.
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