Hunting fleet heads for Pacific despite anti-whaling laws
Four Japanese whaling ships set sail from a port in the country’s northeast on Friday aiming to hunt up to 51 minke whales under what Japan describes as a “scientific research” whaling program.
The mission proceeded despite an International Court of Justice order that Japan stop its whaling program. The court ruled that Japan’s research whaling in the Antarctic Ocean violates the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.
Japan has scaled down its activities in the Antarctic and the Pacific, and maintains its whaling is for scientific purposes and not for commerce.
The mission in the northwestern Pacific Ocean was developed to examine the effects of the whales on other marine life by checking the cials in Hokota, about 100 kilocontents of the whale stommeters northeast of Tokyo, achs and other examinations, said they had been able to save according to the Association only three of the 149 animals for Community-Based Whalthat had beached and that the ing. rescue effort had been called Commercial whalingoff.was banned in 1986Tby the Internahe rest of the creatures, a tional Whaling Commission member of the dolphin family and most former whaling usually found in the deep nations followed the ruling, ocean, had either died or were with the exception of Iceland dying, they said. and Norway, which have “It was becoming dark and lodged official objections to too dangerous to continue the the ban and continue to hunt rescue work at this beach, commercially, and Japan, where we could not bring which whaling opponents heavy equipment,” said an uniclaim is hunting commercially dentified Hokota city official. by exploiting a scientific “Many people volunteered research permit as a loophole. to rescue them but the dol
Before the ships set sail on phins became very, very weak,” Friday in a 90-kilometer radihe said. “Only three of them us from Ayukawa port, the have been successfully head of the Association for returned to the sea, as far as Community-Based Whaling, we can confirm.” Yoshiichi Shimomichi, said he hopes the results will help to prove that the numbers of whales are sufficient for Japan to resume its commercial whaling operations in the future.
Japan plans to kill 333 minke whales a year over the next 12 years, a number conservationists contend is far more than necessary for just research purposes.
Japan imports around 70 tons of minke whale meat per year.
Dolphins feared dead
Also on Friday, rescuers were forced to abandon efforts to save around 150 melonheaded dolphins that became stranded on a beach in Japan, after franticly trying all day to save them.
As darkness fell, local offi-