Whaling
In good news for every whale in the ocean the recent blaze on the Nisshin Maru has lead to Japan prematurely cancelling the annual Antarctic whale slaughter, oops research. The slaughter of one of the worlds truly amazing creatures is claimed to be required for scientific research. This is utter baloney, there are better ways to research whales than kill and ingest them. With this news I decided to do a little research on the history of whaling and the rogue states calling for its wide scale return.
It is a well known fact that Japan want the International Whaling Commission (IWC) ban on commercial whaling lifted. Thankfully they have not been successful. That said the Japanese government are accused of trying to rig the IWC vote by bribing other nations to vote with them. The scam according to Greenpeace is to offer assistance to small nations with struggling fisheries in exchange for voting along Japanese lines at IWC meetings. Through this Japan has gathered enough strength to block any attempts at introducing a South Pacific Whale Sanctuary (SPWS). If the scam continues commercial whaling will resume, and one of the worlds true wonders will soon disappear.
The Japanese are not the only perpetrators of this crime against nature. The Norwegians are also in on the act. In fact the Norwegians have an even shakier story to tell. Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1993 based on some contrived data that suggested the Minke whale population was large. Real data does not support this argument. Further, Norway claim that their hunt is small scale and traditional in nature. However, the Norwegians began to hunt Minke whales commercially in the 1930’s during the height of the whale trade, there is evidence that limited hunting of Minke whales occurred before this. Further, it is established that in order to reach the hunting grounds that Norwegian whaling vessels regularly cross international waters and travel more than a thousand miles. That is something I would love to see 12 men with spears in a traditional raft do.
Japan though will be out slaughtering defenseless whales between April an June in the Pacific.
The true driver for the Norwegians is the sale of whale meat. Whale meat though is not a large market in Norway and the current commercial hunt far exceeds the demand in Norway. The true goal is to export the whale meat to the large Japanese market. Such trade is currently prohibited with whale products listed on Appendix I of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Japan and Norway are both lobbying for this restriction to be removed, thus offering legal export. Again such a decision would be a crying shame for one of the seas wonders.
I hope that these two rogue states will continue to be thwarted in trying to reestablish this barbaric industry. In fact I would go further and expect other countries to become more active and prevent the unjustified and inhumane slaughter.
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