BOTH THE WHALERS and their foes seem to agree there's a sizable population of minkes, so for that species at least, the old extinction-via-harpoon arguments aren't compelling anymore. And both sides know that whaling is not the world's main killer of cetaceans. The fishing industry is. In 2003, Duke University Marine Laboratory and the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, co-released a study that estimated that 308,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises drown each year when they get caught on the fishing industry's dragnets and longlines.

These days, Greenpeace is more likely to focus on whaling's bottom line—arguing that, since it's relatively puny compared with revenues from whale watching, whale killing doesn't make economic sense. "People resonate most with the idea that whales should be protected because they're sensitive, awe-inspiring, and intelligent," says John Hocevar, 37, the Austin, Texas–based oceans specialist for Greenpeace. "But when it comes to legislating, that argument has the least traction. It all has to be about numbers."

Greenpeace cites a 2001 report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts–based animal-advocacy group, which estimates that nine million people go on whale-watching tours every year in 87 countries, generating $1 billion. Whaling, by contrast, generates roughly $4.1 million a year for Norwegian fishermen.

The number crunching doesn't mean Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd have become nothing more than accountants: Their opposition is still driven by a strong conviction that whales have an inherent right to swim free. In January, via satellite phone, I would talk to activists aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza and the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat during their clashes with the Japanese whaling fleet. Nathan Santry, 37, is one of 32 Greenpeace crew members who put his life on the line for whales—his job was to drive a small jet boat, and himself, between Antarctic minke whales and Japanese harpoon cannons. "Whales are a metaphor for the ocean," he says. "If you kill them, you're killing the ocean. There's just no logical justification, economic or otherwise, for whaling."

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson, 55—who in 1992 sabotaged a whaleboat docked in the Lofoten Islands—uses similar rhetoric. "To me, intelligence is the ability to live in harmony with nature and to survive within the ecosystem," he says. "Whales do this, but we are fouling our own nest. Who's more intelligent?"

Such arguments don't sway the Norwegians, and two can play the numbers game. Alan Macnow, a New York–based public-relations specialist who works for Japanese whalers, likes to frame the issue in terms of protecting the planet's depleted fisheries. "The world's whale species eat three to five times as much fish each year as all of the world's fisheries catches combined," he says. "Whale populations need to be managed in order to protect fish resources."

Greenpeace calls that argument nonsense, but it's a powerful propaganda tool in the whaling lobby's ongoing attempt to overturn the IWC moratorium. For years, Japan has been accused of trying to sway smaller IWC members—like Nauru, a tiny nation-state in the South Pacific—into siding with it by paying their IWC membership fees and extending favorable trade arrangements. Whatever its motives, Nauru sides with Japan, claiming that whales threaten the country's fish stocks. At the 2005 IWC meeting, Nauru voted in favor of Japan's "schedule amendment" for accelerating the implementation of a "revised management scheme"—a far-reaching overhaul of everything from quotas to membership rules that, if passed, would essentially replace the moratorium. Pushing it through would require a three-fourths majority, and both sides are girding for a fight at this year's meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis.

Of the 57 nations present at the 2005 IWC meeting, 23 voted in favor of implementing Japan's RMS changes, while 29 voted to stand firm, with five nations abstaining. The commission has grown by 26 members since 2001, with the percentages for and against staying roughly the same. But support for the moratorium has eroded since it was adopted in 1982, when it passed with a resounding 25 votes in favor and seven against.

Considering the trend, the RMS has at least an outside chance of passing in 2006. "It wouldn't surprise me at all," sighs Richard Ellis, who from 1980 to 1990 was a member of the U.S. delegation to the IWC. The end of the moratorium may simply be a matter of time.