Whaling
How many of you knew that whaling still happened? That, despite an international ban on the killing of whales, some nations continue to slaughter these magnificent animals that are only just recovering from the brink of extinction?
Japan, Iceland, Norway, and Russia are the biggest offenders, with Japan clearly taking the lead. They’re also the country I will focus on. Japan currently whales under the auspices of “research whaling” which they believe gives them the right to circumvent the IWC moratorium on whaling. Every year they self-allocate themselves a quota of about 1000 whales, primarily minke, the smallest of the baleen whales. They insist, despite convincing evidence from numerous international sources, that catching and killing the whales is the only way to determine some information about them. And yet, over the life-span of Japanese “research whaling”, as far as I am aware, no new information has been published and no interesting scientific material has been gathered. I’m not even sure they are trying to do any science on the whales they kill.
Every summer (winter for us) Japan sends a whaling fleet to Antarctica, and every year for the last decade or so, activists have been there to try and stop them. The latest year, Sea Shepard, the main anti-whaling group, prevented them from catching 90% of their quota. Sea Shepard’s goal is to make Japanese whaling simply unsustainable by preventing them from catching enough meat to sell to offset the cost of maintaining the ships. That’s kind of the biggest reason why the international community is opposed to this whaling. Japan has shown no new knowledge garnered from the slaughter and they go back to Japan and sell the meat. It very clearly is commercial whaling under the guise of research.
Japan also engages in what amount to hostile takeovers of other countries delegations to the International Whaling Commission. In the last meeting of the IWC, several South American countries proposed a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic. Japan, several Caribbean countries, and Iceland walked out, preventing a vote on the proposal. The Caribbean countries that walked out do not, and have never whaled or even expressed interest in whaling. The reason they walked out was because Japan covertly paid the delegates to do so. It sounds horribly corrupt and it is, but there really isn’t any way to prevent it. It isn’t illegal, it’s just wrong.
Hopefully, as time passes, Japan and the other nations that continue whaling, will realize that their actions are not sustainable and that harmless activities, such as whale watching, can bring in far more money at far less a cost.