AVARUA, Cook Islands — Combating Japan's effort to resume commercial whaling in the South Seas, island nations and territories across the South Pacific have begun creating a patchwork of whale sanctuaries to protect the giant mammals.
During the last year, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Niue have banned whaling in their territorial waters. Environmental activists hope that other nations, such as Fiji and the Solomon Islands, will follow suit.
In some cases, the sanctuaries are huge. Extending 200 miles from shore, they comprise the same area as the islands' territorial waters, known as exclusive economic zones.
French Polynesia's whale sanctuary, for example, is 1.9 million square miles, more than half the size of the United States.
Although there has been little whaling in the region for decades, advocates say the sanctuaries will help protect whales if Japan tries to expand what it calls "scientific" whaling into the South Pacific.
The havens would also provide long-term protection for the animals should Japan succeed in rolling back the International Whaling Commission's 16-year-old ban on commercial whaling, sanctuary advocates say.
"Having declared a whale sanctuary makes it harder for any whaling country to go in there, and it gives people a sense of pride that they have done their part to help save the whale," said Mike Donohue, a New Zealand Conservation Department whale expert and a leading sanctuary advocate.
The recent sanctuary designations add to the areas of the South Pacific that have been off limits to whale hunters since Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Tonga banned whaling in their territorial waters in the 1970s.
The Cook Islands, an autonomous territory of New Zealand 3,000 miles south of Hawaii, started the recent wave of whale protection last September when it declared its 700,000-square-mile exclusive economic zone a haven for whales.
"We are closely attached to whales," said Cook Islands Environment Minister Norman George. "We hate them to be hunted and slaughtered. We just love whales."
Despite their small landmasses, many of the island nations are spread out over vast distances, and their territorial waters make up much of the South Pacific.
Altogether, the newly protected region covers 4 million square miles, an area larger than Europe.
