Japan will resume whale hunting despite international protests, officials on the island nation have announced. The statement came on June 22 from the chief whaling negotiator for that country.
Joji Morishita stated his nation will once again begin to hunt the marine mammals in the waters off Antarctica. He also told the press that the debate over whale hunting had moved from the realm of science to that of politics.
Japan claims the practice of killing the highly intelligent creatures benefits scientific research, but many wildlife investigators question the notion. An international moratorium on whale hunting allows for an exemption in the case of scientific investigations. However, the government in Tokyo has never denied that meat from the animals is also being sold as food in Japan.
Tokyo has announced plans to slaughter 4,000 minke whales over the course of 12 years, once hunting resumes in the Southern Ocean.
On June 19, the International Whaling Commission released a report on the current state of affairs for whales around the globe. The report stated that Japan has not provided sufficient evidence the practice has a beneficial effect on scientific research. However, the Scientific Committee did not reach a definitive conclusion on the value of the hunt itself.
"[S]ome scientists believed that the additional information provided by Japan was sufficient to allow the programme to go ahead as planned and others did not. All recognised the importance of continuing to work on additional analyses," the International Whaling Commission reports.
Officials in Tokyo have stated that even though the whales are being processed into food, populations of the animals are large enough that hunting can be ecologically sustained. Japan's chief whaling negotiator said he is worried about a snowball effect, should his nation give in to international demands to cease hunting whales, which he referred to as "environmental imperialism."
"If you keep on like this, I worry that a country which has international political power could impose its standards and ethics on others. For example, if India becomes the world's No. 1 power and starts to say 'Don't eat beef', what shall we do?" Morishita asked.
Minkes, also known as little piked whales, are fast swimmers, reaching top speeds between 18 and 24 mph in the water. This allows the animals to keep pace with many marine vessels.
"Only in recent decades have minke whales been taken by whalers to any extent; they were thought to be too small to be a worthwhile catch. But as the larger whale species became depleted, the whalers began to hunt the minke as a replacement. Since the late 1960s and 1970s, Japan, Russia (which has now ceased whaling), and (to some extent) Norway have focused their whaling efforts on minke whales," the American Cetacean Society reports.
The group estimates there may be 1 million minke whales alive today.
Photo: Martin Cathrae | Flickr
