Perhaps bowing to international pressure, Japan has announced it will restrict its commercial whaling operation to territorial waters, giving up its annual hunt in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, recognized by most countries as a whale sanctuary.
[map] Japan's membership in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is set to expire on June 30th. Commercial whaling in its own waters will begin on July 1st. The IWC imposed a ban on commercial whaling in 1986. In late March the factory ship,
Nisshin Maru, returned to port with the meat from 333 minke whales killed in the Southern Ocean. The Japanese people eat an average of about an ounce per person per year, or a total of between 4,000 and 5,000 tons annually. The Japanese whaling industry is heavily subsidized by the government; some conservationists think that the Japanese reluctance to give up
whaling entirely is related to memories of wartime protein shortages. a Japanese IWC representative declined to give the press an estimate of the size of its first harvest since the government still must decide if a whaling is, or can be, a viable economic activity.
The conservation organization Sea Shepherd mounted a continuous campaign of harassing the Japanese whaling fleet from 2005 to 2017.
{17.01.14} The confrontations became potentially violent when collisions occurred at sea between Sea Shepherd vessels and Japanese whaling ships. A high-tech Sea Shepherd trimaran, once an ocean racer, was effectively decommission in one collision.
[photo] Eventually, the Japanese government invested in military surveillance equipment in 2018, which prevented the whale advocates from mounting another intervention. Sea Shepherd is credited, however, with saving the lives of over 6,000 whales. When Japan withdraws from the 89 member commission, the way will be clear to officially establish the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, effectively ending whaling in the southern hemisphere. Southern whales have endured more than a century of continuous whaling. Iceland and Norway also have active whaling industries.
Perhaps bowing to international pressure, Japan has announced it will restrict its commercial whaling operation to territorial waters, giving up its annual hunt in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, recognized by most countries as a whale sanctuary. [map] Japan's membership in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is set to expire on June 30th. Commercial whaling in its own waters will begin on July 1st. The IWC imposed a ban on commercial whaling in 1986. In late March the factory ship, Nisshin Maru, returned to port with the meat from 333 minke whales killed in the Southern Ocean. The Japanese people eat an average of about an ounce per person per year, or a total of between 4,000 and 5,000 tons annually. The Japanese whaling industry is heavily subsidized by the government; some conservationists think that the Japanese reluctance to give up
whaling entirely is related to memories of wartime protein shortages. a Japanese IWC representative declined to give the press an estimate of the size of its first harvest since the government still must decide if a whaling is, or can be, a viable economic activity.