Earlier this year whales won a historic victory when the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan’s scientific whaling program in the Antarctic was illegal and ordered it be ended, but Japan is back at it with plans to continue under a new proposal. Despite a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling that was put in place in 1986, Japan has continued with annual whale hunts that it claims are being conducted to collect scientific data. Whale advocates, however, have long argued that Japan has been abusing a loophole in the moratorium that allows for lethal scientific research whaling. Fortunately for whales, the court agreed, ruling that Japan’s program breached international law, had no justifications for the quotas it was setting and that it had failed to consider non-lethal alternatives under it’s JARPA II research program.
Earlier this year whales won a historic victory when the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan’s scientific whaling program in the Antarctic was illegal and ordered it be ended, but Japan is back at it with plans to continue under a new proposal.
Despite a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling that was put in place in 1986, Japan has continued with annual whale hunts that it claims are being conducted to collect scientific data. Whale advocates, however, have long argued that Japan has been abusing a loophole in the moratorium that allows for lethal scientific research whaling.
Fortunately for whales, the court agreed, ruling that Japan’s program breached international law, had no justifications for the quotas it was setting and that it had failed to consider non-lethal alternatives under it’s JARPA II research program.
While Japan initially said it would respect the ruling, some feared the country would come back with a new proposal and last week those fears were confirmed when the Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries submitted a new proposal to continue it’s “scientific” whaling program in the Antarctic.
Joji Morishita, the head of Tokyo’s delegation to the International Whaling Commission, said Japan would defy “eco-imperialist” anti-whaling nations and resume the slaughter next year.
Under the new plan, called NEWREP-A, Japan will leave humpback and fin whales alone, but will still target minke whales and has plans to kill 333 annually over the next 12 years. Even though that number is far lower than previous quotas set, Whale and Dolphin Conservation and other conservation organizations point out that Japan hasn’t caught more than 300 of them each year, so the numbers actually mean more will be slaughtered.
Under the new plan, Japan also tries to justify the need to continue killing in the name of “research,” saying:
After giving serious scientific consideration, it has been concluded that age data at the annual scale can be obtained only through lethal sampling methods, and thus lethal methods need to be employed under this program.
Not only that, but this time it also intends to hugely expand the territory it operates in, with the new area overlapping with the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, which was created in 1994 to protect whales and provide them with a refuge.
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Whale image via Shutterstock.
