SHIMONOSEKI (Japan): Defying a decades-old moratorium and furious international protest, a whaling fleet was set to leave southern Japan’s Shimonoseki port on Sunday on a hunt that will include the humpback — a favourite among whale-watchers.
Japanese whalers will head to waters off Antarctica despite a high-seas showdown with environmental groups last year, and a deadly fire that crippled the fleet’s mother ship and triggered strong protests over a potential oil spill.
This year’s hunt includes a target of 50 humpback whales, the first known large-scale hunt for the species since a 1963 moratorium put them under international protection.
The mission also aims to take as many as 935 Antarctic minke whales and up to 50 fin whales through April in what Japan’s Fisheries Agency says will be its largest-ever scientific whale hunt in the South Pacific.
Four ships led by the 8,044-ton Nisshin Maru were set to leave Shimonoseki on Sunday morning, the agency said. Two observation ships left northern Japan on Wednesday to accompany the fleet.
Japan, a major commercial whaling nation before a comprehensive ban in 1986, has killed almost 10,500 mostly minke and Brydes whales under a research permit issued by the International Whaling Commission — and its catch is growing.
This year’s target of up to 1,035 whales is more than double the number the country hunted a decade ago.
Enraged anti-whaling activists have pledged to chase Japan’s whalers to the Antarctic.
“The Japanese government’s scientific whaling program is a sham,” said Karli Thomas, expedition leader aboard the Greenpeace boat Esperanza, waiting outside Japanese territorial waters to confront the fleet.
“Whaling has no place in Antarctica — it’s a place of peace and science, and this is not science,” she said.
Japan’s plans to resume hunts of the famed humpback have also raised furore among some other Asia-Pacific country in what could turn into a diplomatic row.
In Australia, newspapers regularly run stories with headlines like “Help stop murder on the high seas.” Politicians there have promised tackle whaling through diplomacy.
An Australian opposition Labour Party executive, Robert McClelland, said last week that military aircraft will monitor Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean if the party wins elections next week.
Scientists say humpback whales are intelligent creatures that communicate through lengthy ‘songs’. Although they grow up to 15 meters long and weigh as much as 40 tons, they are acrobatic, often throwing themselves out of the water, swimming on their backs with both flippers in the air, or slapping the water with their tails.
Humpbacks — which feed, mate and give birth near shore — fell prey to early whalers, who depleted the global population to just 1,200 by some estimates before the 1963 ban.
Since then, only Greenland and the Caribbean nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have been allowed to catch humpbacks under an IWC aboriginal subsistence program. Each caught one humpback last year, according to the commission.
The American Cetacean Society now estimates the humpback population has recovered to about 30,000-40,000 — still about a third of the number before modern whaling. The species is listed as ‘vulnerable’ by the World Conservation Union.
“Humpback whales in our research area are rapidly recovering,” said the Fisheries Agency’s whaling chief, Hideki Moronuki. “Taking 50 humpbacks from a population of tens of thousands will have no significant impact whatsoever.”
Killing whales lets marine biologists study their internal organs for clues to reproductive and eating habits, Japanese officials say.
Japan researches what it can without killing the animals, with half of its annual whaling budget of about $9 million spent on non-lethal forms of research, Moronuki said.
Still, meat from Japan’s scientific catch is sold commercially, triggering criticism that Japan’s research is a pretext for keeping its whaling industry alive.
Ken Findlay, a whale biologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said that while the humpback catch was small, Japan could inadvertently target pods from vulnerable breeding grounds. Humpbacks from as far away as waters off Africa migrate to the South Pacific in winter.
Some criticise Japan’s hunting methods were unnecessarily cruel. The ships use explosives to target whales and sometimes chase wounded animals for hours, Findlay said.
“I don’t think firing a harpoon at a whale and then dragging it next to the ship is ethical,” Findlay said. “You question the necessity of that. It’s not research.”—AP
