By Rebecca Regnery
In a strong rebuke of Japan's plan to vastly increase the number of whales it kills, the International Whaling Commission passed a resolution on Wednesday to condemn the island nation's so-called "scientific" whaling program in Antarctica, which will nearly double its take of minke whales this year to at least 850 and look to start killing endangered humpback and fin whales.
This is not the first time Japan has felt the sting of its fellow IWC members over scientific whaling, which is allowed under a loophole in the commission's convention. The IWC has passed about 20 similar resolutions over the years. This year's resolution at the 57th meeting of the IWC in Ulsan, South Korea, was proposed by Australia and co-sponsored by 25 other countries. It passed with 30 votes for, 27 against, and 1 abstention from the Solomon Islands.
"Japan's scientific research suffered a battering at the meeting today. Country after country lined up to attack the credibility of the research and to express their alarm at Japan's intention to double the hunt of minke whales and to start hunting endangered humpback and fin whales," said Humane Society International President Patricia Forkan.
Brazil's commissioner to the IWC cut to the chase about what Japan's really trying to accomplish with the massive expansion of its scientific whaling program. The plan, the commissioner noted, "clearly services better the purpose of maintaining a market for whale meat than of fostering science."
After the vote, the Japanese delegate made a long, emotional speech chastising those who supported this resolution, claiming they have no compassion for the hunters who put their lives at risk to slaughter whales in the name of science. Despite the chest-puffing rhetoric, the Japanese contingent knew that IWC members were in no mood for a resolution that the pro-whaling nation wanted to propose—one praising the research from Japan's own scientific program. Japan's ploy was political and symbolic: Japanese delegates knew that if they had the majority of votes, their resolution would pass and therefore provide an official IWC stamp of approval for their scientific whaling program. As such, Japan withdrew the proposal because of the voting balance.
Where Resolutions Fall Short
As the Japanese delegate pointed out, Australia's resolution, like those before it, is mostly symbolic. The IWC does not have the power to prevent Japan from carrying out its plan to increase the annual Antarctic hunt to as many as 935 minke whales (Japan is currently killing 440 per year), and start implementing plans to kill 50 humpbacks and 50 fin. Those numbers are in addition to Japan's annual North Pacific kill of 150 minke, 50 Bryde's, 50 sei, and ten sperm whales. Some of the species are considered endangered, and some of the hunts have occurred in areas designated as whale sanctuaries by the IWC.
"While it was essential that Australia secured this resolution and delivered such a strong protest from the international community to the Japanese government," said Forkan, "Japan is impervious to this level of pressure, and has already indicated they will go ahead with the hunt regardless."
Japan's deafness to differing opinion extends to the IWC's Scientific Committee, which this year reviewed a paper, signed by 63 marine scientists, that criticizes Japan's new scientific whaling proposal as premature and at risk of pushing some whale stocks toward extinction. The paper points out that Japan's new annual quotas are higher than the total number of whales killed by the country for scientific purposes in the three decades preceding the commercial whaling moratorium, which was implemented in 1986. The paper also notes that the new quotas will result in annual catches that are more than half the total cumulative catches for scientific purposes for all nations in the past half century.
"That Japan routinely ignores critical comments from the IWC's leading whale biologists should provide further evidence that the killing is not about science at all," Forkan noted.
Japan claims to be studying the number of fish that whales eat and how whales compete directly with commercial fisheries for food. This argument has been repeatedly challenged by scientists, including Drs. Kristin Kaschner and Daniel Pauly in their groundbreaking report, Competition Between Marine Mammals and Fisheries: Food for Thought.
What's more, some of Japan's scientific whaling has taken place in the Australian Whale Sanctuary, a violation that prompted Humane Society International's Australian office to seek an injunction in the Federal Court of Australia to stop Japan from thumbing its nose at the law. HSI's request to sue the company that kills whales in the sanctuary was rejected by the courts and the Australian government in favor of diplomacy. HSI filed an appeal of the court's ruling on June 17.
What all of this points out, Forkan noted, is that the IWC convention itself, the 1946 document that set up the International Whaling Commission, needs to be amended to remove the loophole for scientific research.
In other actions on Wednesday, pro-whaling nations and anti-whaling nations each submitted a proposal on sanctuaries. Brazil and Argentina wanted to create a South Atlantic Sanctuary, while Japan wanted to abolish the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. Neither achieved the three-quarters majority required to pass. .
Day 4: No Coastal Whaling
Japan floated a proposal to create a new minke whaling category for small coastal communities, but it failed to receive even a simple majority, much less the three-quarters majority needed to pass. Only 26 nations supported the proposal, with 29 opposing and three abstaining. The vote came as no surprise to Japan, which then retracted another similar request for "small type coastal whaling" for Bryde's whales.
Rebecca Regnery is Program Manager for HSI's Oceans and Wildlife Protection section.
