Japanese Whalers Killed 122 Pregnant Minke Whales. When Will the Slaughter End?
A new report finds that Japanese whalers, on one of their “scientific” investigations, killed 122 pregnant minke whales, sparking fury among campaigners and national governments alike. How can we stop this kind of senseless slaughter from happening again?
According to a technical report submitted to the International Whaling Commission that uses Japan’s own data, Japan actually caught 333 minke whales during its last 12-week summer expedition season. Those figures show that 128 of those whales were female, and 122 were carrying calves.
While it is true that minke whale are classed as of “Least Concern” under the Endangered Red List, the Whaling Commission does hold concerns that populations have declined since the 1980s. The reasons for this have not been established, but climate factors and prey competition are among the most likely causes.
Japan knows this, and knows that it is forbidden from commercial whaling. Since the whaling moratorium was brought into effect around 30 years ago, though, Japan has systematically exploited an exemption for scientific exploration in order to continue to supply its whale meat trade.
https://www.care2.com/causes/japanese-whalers-killed-122-pregnant-whales-when-will-this-end.html
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Hunting whales is irrelevant to feeding Japan's population, draws global condemnation and is certainly not economic. So why does Japan still do it?
The answer from the Japanese government is that whaling is an ancient part of Japanese culture, that fishermen have caught whales for centuries, and that Japan will never allow foreigners to tell its people what they can and cannot eat.
From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s whale meat was the single biggest source of meat in Japan. At its peak in 1964 Japan killed more than 24,000 whales in one year, most of them enormous fin whales and sperm whales.
Today Japan can afford to import meat from Australia and America. There is no deep-sea commercial whaling in Japan. The fleet that is now hunting in Antarctic waters is paid for by Japanese taxpayers to carry out what the Japanese government describes as "scientific research".
Japan's other justification is that it needs to kill hundreds of whales each year to study them. But the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has systematically dismantled that argument. In 2014 it ruled that there was no scientific case for Japan's programme of "lethal research" in the Southern Ocean, and ordered Tokyo to stop.
For a year Japan stopped. But last year it sent its fleet to sea again insisting, to widespread disbelief, that its new, smaller, Antarctic whaling programme satisfies the ICJ's requirements.
It may seem incredibly banal. But Japan's determination to continue whaling may come down to a handful of MPs from whaling constituencies and a few hundred bureaucrats who don't want to see their budgets cut.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35397749
