Whalers resume commercial hunt despite protests
TOKYO — Japanese whalers returned to port Monday with their first catch after resuming commercial whaling for the first time in 31 years, achieving the longcherished goal of traditionalists that is seen as largely a lost cause amid slowing demand for the meat and changing views on conservation.
A fleet of five boats left the northern Japanese port of Kushiro earlier Monday and brought back two minke whales.
It was the first commercial hunt since 1988, when Japan switched to what it called research whaling after commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission. Japan gave six months’ notice that it was withdrawing from the IWC, a move that took effect Sunday.
The Fisheries Agency said the hunts will stay within the country’s exclusive economic zone, and the catch quota for the rest of this year will be 227 whales, fewer than the 637 that Japan hunted in the Antarctic and the northwestern Pacific in its research program in recent years.
As the boats left port, whalers, their families and local officials in two major whaling towns, Shimonoseki in southwestern Japan and Kushiro in the north, celebrated the fresh start.
“We hope commercial whaling will be on track as soon as possible, contribute to local prosperity and carry on Japan’s rich whale culture to the next generation,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters in Tokyo.
Fisheries Agency officials said the whale meat will be auctioned at a local fish market Thursday and later hit stores, mainly in the region but possibly in Tokyo. Whalers are hoping for a special price for the historic meat that is higher than the average 2,000 yen per kilogram ($18 per 2.2 pounds) that their counterparts from Antarctic research whaling used to get.
While the resumption of commercial whaling was condemned by many conservation groups, others see it as a facesaving way to let the government’s embattled and expensive whaling program gradually succumb to changing times and tastes.
Despite the attention, tax money and political support from ruling party lawmakers, whaling in Japan involved only a few hundred people and accounted for less than 0.1% of the total meat consumption in fiscal 2017, according to government data.
Whale meat was an affordable source of protein during the lean times after World War II, with annual consumption peaking at 223,000 tons in 1962. But whale was quickly replaced by other meats. The supply of whale meat fell to 6,000 tons in 1986, the year before the moratorium on commercial whaling imposed by the IWC banned the hunting of several whale species.
Under its research whaling, which was criticized as a cover for commercial hunts because the meat was sold on the market, Japan caught as many as 1,200 whales a year. It drastically cut back its catch in recent years after international protests escalated and whale meat consumption slumped at home.