As so often in the past with whaling stories, the news that Japan has pulled its fleet out of the Antarctic, following harassment by conservationists, has been downplayed at home. The national networks here have largely ignored the story, even as much of the foreign media essentially celebrated this unexpected turn of events in the annual high seas showdown.
Even the nation’s primary public broadcasting organization, NHK, didn’t report the story until nearly two days after it broke elsewhere, and then offered up only the barest of bones.
It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Japanese journalists. Seen from a nation slowly asphyxiating in debt, old age and political gridlock, the fate of 1000 large animals thousands of miles away must seem like pretty small fry. Many editors here are mystified by the amount of coverage given to whaling in the British, Australian and New Zealand press. Their indifference, and the national media shaping of the whaling controversy largely in cultural and ethnocentric terms, helps most ordinary Japanese tune out of the debate raging elsewhere outside their borders.
But the foreign media doesn’t do a much better job of explaining why Japan keeps this campaign up. The editor of my newspaper once spiked a long piece attempting to explain why because he said it was ‘too pro-whaling.’ It subsequently ran in The Japan Times instead. Even informed conservationists often know little about why Japan continues to fight a campaign it has no chance of winning.
Clearly, it’s not because Japan's citizens love whale meat. Pro-whalers might snort disdainfully at Greenpeace survey’s claiming that 95 percent of Japanese had ‘never or very rarely eaten’ it, but that seems to tally with the experience of most people here—at least outside of a handful of local ports. Pro-whalers respond that it’s so only because foreign pressure has made the meat so expensive to harvest. But even after the 1986 international whaling moratorium and the start of Japan's ‘scientific’ whaling, 70 tonnes of whale meat was left unsold from a catch of 1,873 tonnes after the fleet returned to port in spring 2001—a fraction of the 230,000 metric tonnes consumed in the peak whaling year of 1962.
Tokyo's drive to reverse the moratorium should be seen in political and not cultural terms. It is, for one thing, one of the few issues where Japan can angrily stamp its feet on the world stage and sometimes espouse the sort of nationalist rhetoric long expunged from mainstream debate here—a pressure valve of sorts. And the Japanese Fisheries Agency (JFA), which controls the nation's whaling policy, has never shaken off the belief it was bamboozled and blackmailed into abandoning commercial hunts by the US-led West.
One event, in particular, is forever burned into the JFA's collective consciousness. In June 1979, anti-whaling protester Richard Jones, who later became an Australian senator, dumped red paint over Japanese delegates at the International Whaling Commission's conference in London. Caught up in the growing environmental movement, the bureaucrats professed no idea why they were being blamed for the destruction of whale stocks, when historically the United States and Europe had also widely hunted whales. As nationalists here seldom fail to point out, it was whaling and the need for ports by American ships that helped open up 19th Century Sakoku Japan.
One of the little known steps in the sequence to the whale wars came in the 1980s, when Washington was under political pressure to limit access to its coastal waters, which yielded nearly a million tonnes of fish per year to Japanese boats. Japan agreed to withdraw its objections to the IWC whaling moratorium in return for a US pledge to keep this access open. But months after Japan formally agreed to the ban in July 1986, its US fishing quota was halved. Two years later, it had fallen to zero. Japan, which had earlier formally withdrawn its objection to the whaling moratorium, stepped up the infamous practice of ‘scientific whaling.’
So much for the history, but what about now? The smarter bureaucrats at the Fishery Agency know it has no chance of winning a two-thirds majority to overturn the IWC ban. They also know there’s very little chance of reviving the commercial industry, which is kept alive on government life-support. What the agency can do is fight for the status quo, and the symbolic right to whale sustainably. They can also occasionally skewer Western hypocrisy. Why do American hunters kill five million ‘beautiful, Bambi-eyed deer’ annually, wondered Japan's top whaling diplomat Joji Morishita at a 2009 FCCJ press conference: ‘I've no problem with that, as long as it's sustainable.’
Fixing what’s basically a case of wounded national pride should be straightforward, but after two decades the pro- and anti-whaling camps are deeply dug in and have little reason to compromise. Western politicians lose nothing domestically by not budging an inch on Japanese whaling. Their Tokyo counterparts can condemn Western ‘cultural imperialism’ and bask in the reputation as defenders of Japan's right to the ‘sea commons.’
So can the latest spat give both sides a way out? Japan can plausibly blame the cancellation of the annual cull after a reported catch of just 30 whales on fears for the safety of its crew. The retreat, after years of being harried by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will embolden the direct action environmentalists and their supporters. And a return to the high seas by Japanese whalers, particularly with the industry in such bad financial shape, will be tougher next year.
This might then be the time for the anti-whaling side to press the advantage for a solution that has been around for decades: allow Japan the right to hunt more whales around its own exclusive fishing waters in exchange for pulling out of the high seas. One reason Norway, which hunts almost as many whales as Japan, gets far less attention is because it doesn't send its trawlers outside its own waters. Some Japanese diplomats have taken note, and are growing tired of the battering Japan takes every time its fleet leaves port.
If Tokyo can be persuaded to abandon its Southern Ocean cull, limit or stop expeditions to the North Pacific and submit to monitoring of its coastal catch, this could be the way out of this annual diplomatic farrago. In the meantime, it would help enormously if the Fisheries Agency fessed up on scientific whaling, admitting what everyone knows: That it’s a con trick designed to keep the industry ticking over while Japan battles to overturn the moratorium.
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sidewinder
The Japanese are poaching endangered whales in a whale sanctuary in complete defiance of a global moratorium on whaling all in the name of “Science” and guess what? The meat ends up on dinner plates, school lunch boxes and in the pet food aisle of supermarkets.
kujirakira
Within the first sentence McNeill is already back to lying about Japanese media. When it was Japanese media who first broke the story, and the conservative yomiuri which has had the most revealing and interesting articles.
Meanwhile, Australian press can’t even figure out that ICR is a non-profit and continue to overtly lie about stockpile numbers for which there are monthly reports from MAFF online.
With that said, I’d like to see the day McNeill didn’t downplay the fact that whaling is sustainable, or that GP’s “there’s blackmarket for whale meat that nobody wants to buy and that’s why we stole it…” excuses were thoroughly debunked by a panel of 12 citizens who confirmed that Tokyo Prosecutors made the correct decision, etc. etc. etc.
We could continue down this route endlessly, showing how it is that McNeill is actually the one picking cherries. However, the fact remains — McNeill is just a hack looking for an easy dime. And playing up the usual prejudices and bigotry of anti-whalers and making it seem like their thuggish actions are “making a difference” is certainly a very easy dime. As Paul Watson’s own salary, higher than the CEO of ICR, can attest.
What follows is the only honest article I’ve ever seen the guy write. Pretty much says it all though…
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20030923zg.html
「
Intense competition in most print markets means less space for analysis and “public-service” style journalism, more for sexier stuff that grabs the roving eye.
The main (political and economic) stories are distilled to a sort of standard template (“Japan is an economic basketcase,” being a typical example) that often don’t allow for more analysis (“Japan’s political economy doesn’t work like the West” for example).”
」
freeDOM
The anti-whaling side will never make deals or compromise. We understand that whales and dolphins are intelligent beings. So intelligent that many experts think they should be classified as non-human persons. They are not fish to be slaughtered and eaten. The international community understands this. Why would Japan want to continue whaling when they have thousands of tons of frozen whale meat that few want to eat. The government is trying to get rid of it in school lunch programs.For god sake I can`t wrap my brain around it!
Pressure is being put on Iceland to stop whaling if they want to join the EU. Groups will be in the Faeroe Is. (Denmark) to try and ward pilot whales (a species of dolphin) away from the fjiords of slaughter in the annual “Grind“- a traditional hacking to death of these intelligent beings. It`s even worse than Taiji, if thats possible.
Listen, the oceans are dieing! Sharks have all but disappeared for shark-fin soup. Bluefin tuna- on the verge of extinction! Ocean dead zones from over-fishing. The list goes on and on.
We ALL need to stop the killing, for ANY chance for the ocean to recover.
WACKY JAPAN ARTICLE
IN JAPAN’S CURRENT RECESSION, [DEMOGRAPHIC] IS CHANGING AND STARTING A BOOM/SENSATION/CRAZE/PHENOMENON THAT IS SWEEPING THE NATION, EXCEPT IT ISN’T. WE WILL PROVE THIS BY EXPLAINING HOW A SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE REPRESENTS ALL OF JAPAN. [DEMOGRAPHIC]‘S CHANGE IS CAUSED BY THE RECESSION/THE LOST DECADENCE/INCOMPETENT JAPANESE MEN/THE DOWNFALL OF JAPANESE SOCIETY. IN CONCLUSION, JAPAN IS VERY WACKY AND BACKWARDS.
AnimuX
The author has factually misrepresented the use of scientific whaling by Japan by implying that the research whaling programs began because of a broken deal between the USA and Japan over fishing rights.
However, history shows that Japan had initiated its research programs prior to the U.S. exclusion of Japan’s fishing industry from the U.S. EEZ.
1) In 1976 the IWC set the Bryde’s whale quotas to zero and in response Japan issued itself a scientific permit under Article VIII and killed over 200 of them in a single season. (prelude of future events)
2) Japan revealed new proposals for “research whaling” before the 1986 season when the moratorium began.
3) The USA negotiated an agreement with Japan to stop commercial whaling by 1988 and during the first two years of the moratorium (85/86 and 86/87) it would not use the US Pelly or Packwood-Magnuson amendments to enact sanctions.
4) Japan continued whaling “under objection” to the moratorium during the ’85/86 season through the ’87/88 season while pushing proposals for JARPA at the IWC annual meetings. (a two year “feasibility study” was undertaken before JARPA officially started in 1988)
5) February 9, 1988 Japanese whalers killed the first Antarctic minke whale under the new self issued research whaling permit for JARPA.
6) U.S. President Ronald Reagan responded by cutting off Japanese fishing privileges in U.S. waters on April 6, 1988 under the Packwood-Magnuson Amendment.
Now, it is true that environmental groups and U.S. fishermen were pressuring the Federal government at the time for making a deal with Japan over whaling and allowing Japan to access Alaskan fishing grounds within the U.S. EEZ.
It’s even true that the USA reduced the quotas allowed to Japanese fishermen within the U.S. EEZ prior to 1988.
But to state that Japan started scientific whaling because the U.S. somehow “double-crossed” them on whaling is a lie.
Allan Thornton – EIA
David McNeill takes great pains to support and justify thirty years obstruction of whale conservation measures by the Japanese whaling industry. Devoid of factual accuracy, McNeill claims that the Japan Whaling industry and their government mouthpieces only began Special Permit catches ( “scientific whaling”) after the International Whaling Commission (IWC) ban on commercial hunting came into effect in 1986. In fact Japan’s whalers first began Special Permit catches in the Indian Ocean in 1978, catching hundreds of Bryde’s whales to circumvent the legal restrictions on commercial catches agreed by the IWC. Additionally, Japanese whaling companies had a long history of purchasing whale products produced by illegal hunting by “Pirate whalers” hunting protected species in the Atlantic, including humpback whales, and other catches from Japanese satellite whaling operations set up in Taiwan, Peru, Chile and the Philippines.
The Japanese whaling industry was forced in 2008 to abandon its continued commercial whaling operation conducted by the Kyodo Senpaku, then owned by Nippon Suisan, Maruha and Kyokuyo – Japan’s three largest seafood companies that had also been involved in commercial whale hunting forup to 100 years -after a worldwide campaign targeted Nippon Suisan’s lucrative subsidiairies
such as the US Gorton’s company – the biggest first distributor in America. Nippon Suisan, Maruha and Kyokuyo also stopped selling all whale products – eliminating $50 million worth of trade
in whale products.
Since then the Government of Japan continued to operate the whaling fleet even as thousands of
Japan’s top supermarkets stopped selling all whale, dolphin and porpoise products. With the passing on of the older whale meat eating generation, the whaling industry has been dead for
years sustained by large scale subsidies by the Government of Japan and a costly, corrupt campaign to buy in support from the world’s poorest and most vulnerable nations to support its effort to
overturn the IWC ban on commercial hunting.
Japan claims its commercial whaling is based on a “sustainability” policy. One only needs to look at the massive commercial overhunting of small whales, dolphins and porpoises around the coast of Japan to confirm the same old policy of overhunting continue within Japanese Fisheries – whether for coastal cetaceans or blue fin tuna.
AnimuX
The author also glibly comments, “so much for the history” without mentioning Japan’s long established history of regulatory violations even before the moratorium on commercial whaling existed.
Japan has historically violated size limits, species protections, seasonal limits, sanctuary boundaries, all manner of quotas, and even facilitated “pirate whaling” (that’s front companies with foreign labor killing whales in secret and smuggling the unreported meat to Japan).
So much for historical accuracy at “The Diplomat”.
vince
The Japanese Whale Research Program under Special Permit in the Antarctic (JARPAII) includes 50 Fin
whales (Endangered ESA & IUCN) and 50 Humpback whales (Endangered ESA & vulnerable IUCN) and of course
hundreds upon hundreds of Minke whales (“The cockroaches of the sea” said a Japanese official).
Even though they have a special permit for 50 Humpbacks, they seem to be leaving these alone (although
this may be hard to prove) for the purposes of political bargaining.
The Japanese Whale Research Program under Special Permit in the North Pacific (JARPNII) deserves a
special mention here because it is the hunt that is not as well known as JARPAII. The North Pacific
hunt consists of a much larger variety of endangered whales. They include:
- Sei
- Bryde’s
- Sperm
Along with a large haul of “common minke” whales.
So it really does look like important science is being undertaken (NOT) when they are plucking endangered whales out of the oceans – the same whales struggling to get back to pre-whaling industry numbers which face even more challenges these days due to pollution, shipping ( & ship strikes), sonar tests (noise pollution, some of which can be lethal), loss of breeding grounds, climate change and loss of food sources (humans taking krill now too). And lastly, these science expeditions seemingly keep increasing their quotas of “samples needed” as Japan is longing for the day when they can begin full commerical whaling and until that day, they will continue to commercially whale under JARPAII and JARPNII.
Therefore, Japan is an absolute international disgrace driving whales and tuna to extinction.
David McNeill
Thanks to AnimuX for these comments. My aim wasn’t to make a direct causative link between US actions on fishing rights and scientific whaling, but merely suggest that the volatile bilateral trade relationship of the 1980s was a factor in the Japanese decision to shun compromise when it was on the table. The bigger point is that there isn’t in my view enough attempt in the foreign media to understand the origins of the dispute or its political DNA, which means Japanese actions appear unexplainable and irrational.
Mark J. Palmer
The author is right to ask why Japan clings to whaling when indeed fewer and fewer people eat whale meat (largely due, incidentally, to public concerns over mercury contamination, which is extremely high in the meat of some whale and dolphin species — an issue which the Japanese government is trying to cover up). But those of us in the environmental community who have been thinking about this for a long time have indeed asked ourselves why? The author misses two important aspects of this question:
As noted by Professor Jun Morikawa in his 2010 book “Whaling in Japan: Power, Politics & Diplomacy,” the Japan Fisheries Agency has many bureaucrats on the payroll who benefit financially from promoting the whale issue through government subsidies and sale of whale meat. Indeed, while whaling has been reduced by almost 90% since the moratorium on commercial whaling, Dr. Morikawa notes that the whale staff in the Japan Fisheries Agency has remained the same.
I think the more important issue with the Japan Whaling Association and the larger Japan government, although they seldom admit it, is that if environmentalists are successful in stopping commercial whaling on the high seas, then Japan will be vulnerable to attacks on other fisheries issues that are much more important to the Japan Fisheries Agency and the politically powerful fishing industry — tuna, shrimp, you name it. 80% of Japan’s protein comes from the sea, and many of the generation in power in Japan bitterly remember the post-war years of severe food scarcity.
This is why the suggestion of trading coastal whaling for whaling in Antarctica is a show-stopper for Japan. Coastal whaling gives little incentive financially for Japan (as they have already helped wipe out most of the whale stocks offshore and are busy now eliminating the dolphin stocks, too). And it certainly undermines their claims of access to all oceans of the world for fishery resources regardless of the impact on fish stocks.
– Mark J. Palmer, Associate Director, International Marine Mammal Project, Earth Island Institute
Capt’n Dirk Hartog
“Japan can plausibly blame the cancellation of the annual cull after a reported catch of just 30 whales on fears for the safety of its crew.” that is interesting. The Japanese claim to have got over 170 Minke whales plus two Fin whales before pulling up stumps and going home. Where do you get this figure of 30 from because I am really interested. 30 Minke whales seems to be the estimate that of Captain Watson figures are of somewhere between 30 to 50 whales but well below 100.
Keeping track of the Whale fleets movements it appears the they may have got at least 19 days to do whaling unobstructed. To get the 175 whales within that time with the one available whaling vessel, the Japanese would have to harvest about 9 whales a day. Normally they have three ships catching around 10 whales a day over the 100 day period which gives them the rough quota of 1000 whales. To get that they would have to working 24/7 and taking everything in their path.
The other two whaling ships where tailing the Ship Shepherd fleet and basically unable to hunt. Could explain why the whalers claimed they were exhausted, not because of being chased by SSCS but because they were working day and night.
If they actually did only get 30 like you stated in your article, then you can see how embarrassing low that number is and how effective that would make the Sea Shepherd appear. Also how expensive that would make the meat. If each whale is worth around say $250K and they only got 30 whales then that is about $5million. Divide that by the 188 crew of the whale fleet and that works out to about $26K each crew member. That does not even cover fuel and other overheads, like bribing Small Island Nations to join the pro-whaling camp at the IWC.
The Japan touted the 900 plus minke whales this year as their quota, Greenpeace claim to quote whaling insider information of around 200 whales because the freezers were already stuffed full of whale meat. So they would settle for that. Capt’n Paul Watson calculated around tops of 50 Minke whales.
Maybe just as thought it was less than 100 whales but the Japanese Whalers inflated the figures just to save face? It would not be the first time they fiddled the books, well you would have to if you were running a whale meat black market on the side. Honesty and transparency has not been the virtues of the whaling program. Bowing at 90 degrees has not cleaned up all the lies, it means they got caught out. What is the saying “sorry is no cure”.
Capt’n Dirk Hartog
Dave you are on board, good to see that, I actually found your article very interesting. I enjoyed getting a different take on the subject. It was a good article so thank you. Plus I get the hypocrisy of the western nations, good news however I am vego, I am appalled with the deer hunt, duck shooting, sealing, shark finning, blood sports you name it. So you can not say that I share the same hypocritical point of view as my fellow country men. At the age of 4 I threw myself under a falling axe to save a turkey and held onto it screaming my heart out to save it life of one. At the age of 8 I declare to be a vegetarian. My parents were farmers in a very culturally entrenched farming community. If a 4 year old can do it?
David@Tokyo
Mark J. Palmer, himself notes that whaling has been reduced significantly since the moratorium, yet instead puts the obvious consequences down to other less plausible explanations. The fact that the commercial moratorium cut supply of meat to the market quite drastically would be the most obvious reason why less whale meat is consumed today than prior to the moratorium.
Judging by the often quoted stockpile data, it would appear that more whale is consumed in Japan these days than was consumed in the 1990′s, when supply of whale meat was tightest after the moratorium had been imposed.
Recently some other environmental group raised attention to a so-called “record” level of whale meat stockpile in 2010, when in reality the stockpile had just returned to levels seen as recently as 2006. In both cases these “record” levels of stockpile pale in comparison with the 230,000 tons mentioned in the article.
Evidently with this issue it is difficult for the un-initiated to separate facts from fiction.
Whaling is wrong, feel some. Any old information that sounds like a good reason to justify the position is used to do so – even when it contradicts other facets of the anti-whaling arguments.
The Japanese aren’t so much clinging to whaling as it is simply just that people don’t see why whales are more special than other animals and why they should be off limits as far as eating them goes. This is the standard answer one sees on Japanese variety shows when the topic is raised from time to time.
It’s not that the Japanese are (currently) desperate to eat whale, but at the same time they don’t understand the desperation of people who call themselves environmentalists to stop it, and they would like to see a little mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences.
Until the anti-whaling people (non-Japanese and Japanese alike) can come up with arguments that aren’t devoid of logic or full of inconsistencies, I expect that the non-anti-whaling people of the world will fail to be convinced of a need for anything to change.
However I think Mark Palmer gets this bit exactly right, at least:
“if environmentalists are successful in stopping commercial whaling on the high seas, then Japan will be vulnerable to attacks on other fisheries issues that are much more important”
Not only Japan – but all nations who exercise their rights to harvest marine resources under the UN Law of the Sea convention. This is something that anti-whaling nations haven’t had to face up to, but once the likes of Sea Shepherd run out of Japanese targets there’s no reason to think they will stop there. I imagine the response to Sea Shepherd from the non-whaling nations will reveal their hypocrisy quite glaringly when this does come to pass.
David@Tokyo
“Everyone knows”?
That the research whaling has kept the Japanese whaling industry ticking over is certainly a side-effect (a positive one from Japan’s perspective), but this doesn’t mean that it is merely a “con trick” devoid of any scientific value. IWC Scientific Committee reports certainly are not unequivocally damning of the research. While anti-whalers selectively quote reports to push this argument, yet selective quoting does little to deny the positive statements that have been made of the Japanese research contributions.
One ought to recall the context of the research is the ICRW (international convention for the regulation of whaling) – an international agreement whose object and purpose that Japan and allies continue to believe in, even if others such as Australia do not. The real “con trick” in this context was the moratorium. The IWC was never advised by its Scientific Committee that such a measure was necessary or appropriate, but the IWC adopted the moratorium anyway, ostensibly as a temporary measure to be reviewed “by 1990 at the latest”. Yet 2 decades later it remains in place, due to the intransigence of anti-whaling nations who now shamelessly ignore the ICRW’s mandate completely, as well as more recent unequivocal advice from the Scientific Committee that there exist whale stocks for which sustainable catch limits can be set.
Furthermore, the Wikileaks revelation that Australia’s government has little confidence in its chances of success in its ICJ case against Japan’s research whaling (not to mention the US’s public characterisation of it as an “uncertain gamble on whales lives”) while Japan’s government is reportedly confident of legal victory and looking forward to the opportunity to having its case heard, too ought cast doubt over the bold “everyone knows” assertion.
AnimuX
David@Tokyo rehashes some of the more common claims by pro-whaling antagonists.
1) Implies that whale meat demand has dropped because supply has been stifled by the moratorium:
Jun Morikawa, author of “Whaling in Japan”, has debunked this by clearly showing whale meat was only ever a substitute meat for most people in Japan during the post WWII recovery. Once the economy improved, Japanese families bought meat other than whale, even when the price of whale meat was lower than other options. Demand for whale meat in Japan has been dropping consistently since the 1960s.
2) Implies that all objections to whaling are based on emotional attachment or cultural differences or even racism:
The fact is, the “Save the Whales” movement began because as people learned more about whales they also learned whaling nations like Japan were decimating the animals and driving many species to the brink of extinction.
The history of modern whaling is rife with incidents of regulatory violations and unilateral subversion of the International Whaling Commission. Japan has violated size limits, species protections, seasonal limits, all manner of quotas, and even facilitated pirate whaling (that’s front companies with foreign labor illegally killing whales in secret and smuggling the unreported meat to Japan) – even before the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.
Today Japan kills both endangered and non-endangered species including:
Endangered Sei whales.
Endangered Fin whales.
Vulnerable Sperm whales.
Data Deficient Bryde’s whales.
Common Minke whales (up to 46% from the vulnerable J-stock according to DNA study).
Data Deficient Antarctic Minke whales (which may be in decline according to IUCN data but more information is needed).
Not to mention that there is no humane way to kill a whale as demonstrated by so many video documented incidents where whales took from 15 to 45 minutes to die after being struck by an explosive penthrite grenade tipped harpoon (sometimes more than once) and shot repeatedly with high powered rifles.
Or the safety of entering meat into the human food supply from animals that aren’t observed for disease like farm livestock, some of which have been found to accumulate toxic amounts of chromium, mercury, DDT derivatives, PCBs and other pollutants.
3) They imply that the scientific data gathered by Japan is both wanted, necessary and considered valuable by the IWC.
It’s important to point out that the International Whaling Commission has passed multiple resolutions calling on Japan to stop killing whales and the IWC scientific committee has often disputed the necessity and value of Japan’s so-called research.
Some quotes from the IWC:
“If a Sanctuary is in place, it can be argued that information on improving management of whaling in that region is unnecessary. On many occasions, the Commission has (by majority vote) passed a Resolution urging Japan not to issue a permit for these catches.”
“There was considerable disagreement within the Committee over most aspects of this research programme, including objectives, methodology, likelihood of success and effect on stocks.”
“In 2000, the Commission adopted a Resolution by majority strongly urging Japan to reconsider issuing the permit. It adopted a similar Resolution in 2001. A further Resolution was passed in 2003 (24 in favour, 21 against and 1 abstention).”
“As in previous years, there was severe disagreement within the Committee regarding advice that should be provided on a number of issues, including: the relevance of the proposed research to management, appropriate sample sizes and applicability of alternate (non-lethal) research methods.”
“In 2005 a Resolution was passed (30 votes to 27 votes with 1 abstention) that strongly urged the Government of Japan to withdraw its JARPA II proposal or to revise it so that any information needed to meet the stated objectives of the proposal is obtained using non-lethal means.”
“In 2007 the Commission passed a Resolution asking Japan to refrain from issuing a permit for JARPA II by 40 votes in favour, 2 votes against and 1 abstention”
“Some members expressed concern that most of the objectives of the programme did not address questions of high priority for the rational management of the stocks concerned and would not contribute significantly to research needs identified by the Committee. Although the primary objective of the proposal (which pertained to top predators) was scientific in nature, they believed that none of the objectives or sub-objectives were necessary for the management of any of the large whale species being killed.”
“Others argued that the assumptions inherent in the proposal about that objective were too simple, and unduly emphasised direct negative effects of cetacean predation over the balance of the several potentially negative and positive effects of fishery resources and cetaceans on each other. Therefore, they concluded that the objective as structured and proposed is not relevant to the interests of the IWC.”
“Others noted that they did not agree that the feeding ecology objective was appropriate, and therefore did not feel that lethal sampling was required. For the stock structure objective, they argued, non-lethal biopsy sampling would allow much larger sample sizes and hence allow greater statistical power.”
“Concern was also expressed that with the sample size and methods proposed, it was unlikely that several of the objectives of the programme would be met, especially with respect to sperm whales. They commented that the ecosystem modelling approach was poorly developed and that the likely precision of any fisheries information (both past data and future) was poor.”
*1989*
“Now, THEREFORE the Commission
ACCEPTING that the Scientific Committee was not unanimous in its view of the research programme described in SC/39/O 4, including the improvements described in SC/41/SHM113 (IWC/41/4);
CONSIDERS that the programme does not fully satisfy the criteria specified in both the 1986 Resolution on Special Permits for Scientific Research and the 1987 Resolution on Scientific Research Programmes, more particularly in that the proposed research is not structured to provide or demonstrate that any existing methodology can solve the problems or satisfy the objectives which have been set, and therefore the proposed research does not contribute information essential for rational management of the stock, neither will the proposed take of minke whales in the Southern Hemisphere in 1989/90 under Special Permit materially facilitate the Comprehensive Assessment, nor has it been established that the proposed research addresses critically important research needs;
INVITES the Government of Japan to reconsider its research programme in light of the criticisms based on the above-mentioned criteria.”
John Chan
@AnimuX, please tell us more truth about whaling, we don’t want to be misled by the Japan Imperial fishery ministry and their 50 cents propagandist like David@Tokyo.