Japan whaling ships leave for Antarctic hunt

t_co

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Japan whaling ships leave for Antarctic hunt

Tokyo (AFP) - Two Japanese whaling ships and a surveillance vessel left Saturday for the annual hunt in the Antarctic Sea, Kyodo News said.

The three ships departed from the western port of Shimonoseki to join other ships to hunt up to 935 Antarctic minke whales and up to 50 fin whales through March, the news agency said.

The Fisheries Agency had kept secret the departure date of the whaling fleet as a precaution against obstruction by militant anti-whaling groups such as Sea Shepherd, Kyodo said.

Japan's whale hunts have long drawn criticism from activists and foreign governments, but Tokyo defends the practice saying eating whale is part of Japanese culinary tradition.

Japan says whales are studied as part of a bid by its whaling research institute to prove their populations can sustain commercial whaling.

Activists charge Tokyo's "research whaling" is cover for commercial whaling that is banned under an international agreement.

Japanese whalers and Sea Shepherd activists have routinely clashed violently in exchanges that have seen stink bombs thrown at Japanese crew and water jets trained on protesters.

Japan's whaling catch fell to a record low of 103 Antarctic minke whales in the last season due mainly to the anti-whaling group.
Just an FYI - even though Japan caught only 1/8th of its self-declared whaling 'quota' last year, it still had trouble selling off all the meat. The government would up having to subsidize the retail process... and it looks like it will do again this year.

Over 70% of Japanese don't like whaling. My question is why does the GoJ still do this? It's internationally and domestically unpopular, unprofitable, costs political capital...

Then again, governments around the world commit to stupid policies for no reason, so maybe we should not be surprised.
 

Tolaha

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Hate to agree with you! :fear:

Yep, this is indeed one of those cases were the Japanese are really wrong, with no disclaimers whatsoever. It is a practice that can have no justification in this age.
 

W.G.Ewald

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IWC membership


The purpose of the IWC as specified in its constitution is "in safeguarding for future generations the great natural resources represented by the whale stocks;" and the original members consisted only of the 15 whale-hunting nations. However, since the late 1970s and early 1980s, many countries which have no previous history of whaling (some of which are landlocked such as Switzerland and Mongolia) have joined the IWC. This shift was first initiated by Sir Peter Scott, the then head of the World Wildlife Fund. Labelling the IWC a "butchers' club", he mounted lobbying campaigns in developed countries with support from the green lobby and anti whaling block of IWC members to change the composition of the IWC's membership, which was instrumental in obtaining the necessary three-quarters majority vote to implement the moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. This campaign triggered the first accusations of vote-buying in IWC. According to Scott's biographer, Elspeth Huxley, China's decision to join was influenced by a World Wildlife Fund promise to provide $1 million to fund a panda reserve.
International Whaling Commission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

W.G.Ewald

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Hate to agree with you! :fear:

Yep, this is indeed one of those cases were the Japanese are really wrong, with no disclaimers whatsoever. It is a practice that can have no justification in this age.
Commercial whaling: Good whale hunting | The Economist

Countries such as China and South Korea have all indicated that they would start whaling if quotas were allocated and so increase pressure on quotas to go up, and, in addition, increase the value of each whale.
 

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