18th February 2011
The Japanese Government has announced it is ending this year’s controversial Antarctic whaling season early after weeks of harassment by anti-whaling activists at sea. The Japanese ‘research’ whaling fleet is returning to Japan after killing around 170 whales out of a target quota of 850 minke whales; 50 fin and 50 humpbacks. Only two fin whales have been killed. If true, some 800 whales will have been spared a cruel death.
Japan has slaughtered around 10,000 whales in Antarctic waters for ‘research’ since the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling in 1986. Japan’s whaling fleet also slaughters around 500 whales: 340 minke, 50 Bryde’s, 100 sei and 10 sperm whales in the north-Pacific each year for ‘science’. Scientific whaling is a legal loophole that Japan has used to continue whaling despite the ban on commercial hunting.
Scientific whaling is estimated to cost about 6 billion yen every season. Of this sum, about 800 million yen is covered by government subsidies, while the rest is primarily financed by the sale of whale meat. However with an estimated 6,000 tons of frozen whale meat stockpiled and with a diminishing market for whale meat, the whaling industry could finally collapse.
The Japanese Fisheries Minister Michihiko Kano would not comment on whether the Antarctic ‘research’ whaling would end permanently, but escalating costs and declining sales of whale meat are clearly taking their toll.
Some countries, led by the United States, have tried to reach a compromise with Japan over the resumption of commercial whaling, which included the scaling down of Antarctic ‘research’ whaling, but Japan refused to accept the deal and talks broke down at the IWC’s annual meeting in Agadir in June 2010.
Campaign Whale Director Andy Ottaway said, ‘The signs are that the Japanese whaling industry is dying and the end of this cruel, outdated and unnecessary industry cannot come soon enough. However, tens of thousands of dolphins and porpoises are hacked to death by Japanese fishermen every year to produce meat that is dangerously contaminated with mercury and other toxic pollutants harmful to human health. We will not give up until that cruel Japanese tradition is ended too”.