My first encounter with whales was unforgettable. I had just moved to Hermanus - a whale watching Mecca close to Cape Town which thrives on the back of the Southern Right Whales that migrate into the bay to give birth every year.

It was a calm, breathless day and from my vantage on the cliffs you could see the mist from the blows of scores of whales like a sea of geysers stretching across the bay. Suddenly a whale broke the surface near the foot of the cliffs. Within minutes the one became two - the newborn calf taking its first breaths and joining its mother to head back to the open ocean.

This epic meeting is over.

What seemed improbable at the outset proved possible: we saw off the very real threat that the IWC would end the ban on whaling, levelling one of the most significant landmarks for the environment movement ever and dealing a body blow to international efforts to protect our oceans.

I am proud of the role AMCS has been able to play working with our government and others to ensure the deal being done with the whaling nations was killed off. I am equally proud of the role the Australian Government played. They were one of the first to realise that doing no deal was better than doing a bad deal.

So, we head home secure in the knowledge that the ban on whaling remains firmly in place. But this isn't the end, it is only the beginning.

If my years at the IWC have taught me anything, it is to expect the unexpected. The blindside is the mainstream.

Yesterday we saw a great result for the whales. Today, in a surprise move, the USA - the main broker of the dangerous deal with the whalers that fell over in a heap yesterday - tried to recover some ground by resurrecting part of the proposal. Many have seen their efforts to umpire the dispute between whaling and anti-whaling nations in the IWC as having been misguided from the start. 

The USA muddied the waters further by proposing 'aboriginal subsistence whaling' quotas (whale catches for indigenous peoples) be set for the next 7 years. Ironically, indigenous whaling is the type of whaling the IWC manages best. There is already a very clearly defined process for assessing and approving whaling by aboriginal peoples.

When we resume tomorrow, their surprise proposal looks likely to spark the first vote of this meeting. Going into the last day of the meeting, our business is far from over and there are still some big decisions ahead.

By no means has the fat lady sung yet, here at the IWC meeting Agadir, but she has certainly warmed up her throat in style.

The proposal to end the ban on whaling foundered today, fought off by the combined efforts of solid pro-conservation governments and NGOs. It has been the most decisive day here yet. After 48 hours of closed door meetings, negotiators emerged into the light of day. It was quickly clear these last-gasp meetings had failed to make the bad deal palatable enough to be swallowed by anti-whaling countries.

And much of the credit lies with the Australian Government. Supported by Australian NGOs including AMCS, they played the key role in marshalling opposition to the deal that would have legitimized whaling in sanctuaries, legitimized whaling of threatened species and issued commercial whaling quotas for the first time in 24 years. This is a great result - a victory for the whales, a victory for common sense.

Moving forward, those who care about the conservation of whales must now ensure the last rites for the dangerous deal aren't terminal for the future of the IWC. For the sake of the whales, the IWC desperately needs an overhaul. It can be more effective, but not whilst it continues to ignore the elephant in the room - the whale hunting Japan, Iceland and Norway do year in year out in total disregard for the whaling ban.

But, for now, like an opera singer about to burst forth in song, the IWC must draw a deep breath. There will be tough talks about the future of the IWC ahead, yet for now we can rest in the knowledge that the ban on whaling remains firmly in place.

Tuesday 22 June, Vacuum leads to talk of cleaning up IWC

Nature abhors a vacuum, and with proceedings at the IWC suspended all day there was a substantial vacuum for those shut out of the meeting rooms. This created space for NGOs and the media to focus attention on the damaging claims of corruption within the IWC - over the last week there have been several damning exposés published in the UK's Sunday Times concerning secret payments paid to certain delegates in exchange for voting in certain ways at IWC meetings. 

The IWC desperately needs to investigate these allegations of 'vote-buying' to salvage its credibility already dented by yesterday's move to hold closed door meetings. This is no way to run a modern, international agreement. This is no way to preside over the future of the world's whales.

When the meeting reconvenes tomorrow, it will quickly become clear whether the IWC Chairman's attempt to divide and conquer by holding these backroom talks and excluding civil society from the discussions has succeeded in paving the way for a whaling deal. Perhaps not - if anything opposition to the proposal from IWC member countries does appear to building. Could it be that finally the weight of public opinion, the voices of those who have sent petitions in their thousands, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands to compromise minded countries have finally been listened too?

Hopefully, but it is too early to say this proposal is not dead in the water yet. We're intensifying efforts to make sure those last countries still pushing for a compromise with the whaling nations see sense and kill off the dubious deal.

Almost as soon as the doors were thrown open to officially start the 62nd annual meeting of the IWC, they were closed again.

The opening formalities over, the Chair Anthony Liverpool from Antigua & Barbuda, suspended the meeting until Wednesday. Negotiations over the weekend on the compromise proposal before the IWC had failed to come to an agreement and more time was needed for face to face meetings between whaling and anti-whaling nations. So, for the next two days there will be round after round of this sort of 'diplomatic speed dating' as countries court each other in an attempt to hammer out a package they can all agree on.

It is an incredible turn of events. Many conservation groups are outraged that one of the most significant issues the IWC has faced in years is being debated in private, out of camera and to the exclusion of civil society NGOs. It gives the inescapable sense that a deal is being stitched up behind closed doors...

Jonny is here at the IWC for the first time in over 30 years, drawn back into the fray by the very real possibility that the ban on whaling he played a part in securing may not survive this meeting. Spending some time hearing the history from him first hand was a reminder about how monumentally difficult the ban on whaling was to secure in the first place. Individual countries like Australia had to be persuaded to stop whaling one by one to lay the foundation for the global agreement to ban whaling in 1982. Listening to the challenges the campaigners faced all those years back was a wake up call that if we give the whaling ban up now we may never get it back.

Friday 18 June, Tough talking ahead at IWC

Today, the week of IWC Committee meetings ended. These preparatory discussions set the direction for the decisions that will be taken by the full IWC which begins on Monday.

Ahead now lies a weekend of feverish meetings amongst governments, delegations and NGOs - hurried closed door negotiations as the window of opportunity closes for those looking to secure a future for whales or whaling, depending on your perspective.

I'm the proud dad of a four year old. When my daughter was in the midst of her 'terrible twos' I was given the best piece of parenting advice I can recall: "The hard path gets easier. The easy path gets harder." In other words, it is best to be strong from the outset and not to cave in to undue demands from your toddler, otherwise you're creating a rod for your own back.

This is the very same advice I am giving to colleagues here going into this weekend of negotiations about the future of the IWC and the future of the global ban on whaling.

For non-whaling nations, there is an apparently easy path - stitching up a deal that gains little for whale conservation, conceding much to the whaling nations. While the deal on the table may be appealing if your objective is securing a temporary truce between whaling and anti-whaling factions in the IWC, it is not a peace treaty for the 12,800 whales that would be allowed to be caught as terms of the deal.

Importantly, it also fails in securing a future for the IWC, as it does nothing to tackle the causes of the impasse the IWC finds itself in. This poses the question of what would be gained by anti-whaling nations in exchange for agreement to set legitimate commercial whaling quotas for the first time since 1982?

Instead, in negotiations ahead this weekend, governments must work out a way to address the IWC's problems without caving in to the whalers. Yes - a way must be found to close down the loophole that allows hundreds of whales a year to be killed under the disguise of scientific research. Yes - a way must be found to prevent whaling countries simply opting out of the global bans on whaling and international trade in whale meat.

It is not going to be easy, but one thing I can assure is that things will only get harder for the IWC and harder for whale populations unless anti-whaling nations stand strong and reject the so-called compromise proposal on the table.

Wednesday, 16 June, It's time to save the whale, again

The Moroccan port town of Agadir on the north-west Atlantic coast of the African continent is the battle ground for the most significant meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in almost 30 years.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that the very future of the world's whales is at stake.

The IWC itself stands poised at a crossroads. There are two paths at the feet of those arriving for the meeting. There is the very real possibility that the 88 member nations of the IWC will choose to take the path that ends the global ban on whaling, allowing hunting of a world-wide threatened species, approving whaling within a protected whale sanctuary and re-opening the international trade in whale meat along the way.

But there is another path; one that drags the IWC into the 21st century as a modern conservation focussed treaty; one that protects whale populations from the Armada of threats they face. This path ends the fiction of so-called 'scientific' whaling and recognises - as the whale watching boom-towns of South Africa's Hermanus or Australia's Hervey Bay have shown - whales are worth far more alive than dead.

I'm sitting in Casablanca airport waiting for my last connection in the day and a half journey from Brisbane to Agadir. As a veteran of more than a handful of annual IWCs, I can't remember approaching a meeting with such a sense of concern. Not since the global ban on whaling was agreed in 1982 has the outcome of an IWC meeting been so potentially monumental. The decisions taken over the coming 10 days have the potential to undo a generation of progress and overturn one of the most successful international conservation agreements ever made - the global ban on whaling.

Most critically, the nations of the IWC will consider a compromise proposal notionally to heal the rift between whaling and anti-whaling countries that has beset the Commission in recent years. However, the proposal offers little for whale conservation, while rewarding Iceland, Japan and Norway - the three whaling nations that exploit loopholes and breach international law to kill hundreds of whales a year - with whale quotas and a lifeline for their dying whaling industries.

The moratorium was too hard-won to be given up so softly. It spared hundreds of thousands of whales from the harpoons and laid the foundation for populations of humpbacks, fins and blues to begin the slow climb back from the brink of extinction, but its days may be numbered.

The battle is on to save the whale, again.

Darren Kindleysides, AMCS Director