Japan defends whale hunts for ‘science’

Portoroz, Slovenia: In the crosshairs of anti-whaling nations, Japan defended its annual Southern Ocean whale hunt, insisting it was gathering scientific data even as detractors accused it Thursday of harvesting meat under false pretences. Japan denied claims at the 66th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that it was abusing an exemption to a 30-year-old whaling moratorium which allows kills for science. And it insisted its actions were in keeping with a 2014 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found that permits issued by Japan were “not for purposes of scientific research” and instructed the country to halt its JARPA II programme. “Reports oftentimes say (that) irrespective of the ICJ judgment Japan started the research, or in violation of the ICJ judgment... And that’s not true,” Japan’s commissioner to the IWC, Joji Morishita told fellow delegates on Thursday. In the judgment of the court itself, “it is clear that the ICJ assumes there can be future research activities,” he insisted. After the court ruling, Japan cancelled its 2014-15 hunt, only to resume it the following year under a new programme called NEWREPA. It killed 333 minke whales in the Southern Ocean — many of them pregnant, according to observers. The meat from Japan’s hunts ends up on supermarket shelves and in restaurants, in line with an IWC stipulation that whales taken for research must be eaten. Under an IWC moratorium that entered into force in 1986, all whaling other than for aboriginal subsistence, or science, is prohibited.