OUTRAGE OVER WHALING ... #2 <cont>

The sudden departure has raised hopes Japan may be moving to end its widely opposed, 23-year-old "scientific research" program, which has killed about 10,000 Antarctic whales

Australia rejects 'special treatment' for Japanese whalers
Andrew Darby, Hobart
July 13, 2011 - 11:43AM/the AGE


An activist aboard high-speed trimaran Gojira readies a slingshot towards Japanese whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru during an encounter in Southern Ocean, Antarctica in February this year. Photo: Sea Shepherd, Simon Ager

(Australian) Environment Minister Tony Burke has bluntly rejected a Japanese demand at the International Whaling commission for greater action against anti-whaling protests in the Antarctic.

Mr Burke told the annual IWC meeting last night that, while Australia wanted full compliance with the laws of safety at sea, Japan was asking for its whalers to be treated as a special case.

"We cannot be in a situation where we are providing a higher level of support for a whaling vessel than we would provide to any other vessel," Mr Burke said. "That is effectively what is being asked."

He told the meeting in the English Channel Island of Jersey that a presentation on the conflict given by Japan was wrong to describe the whaling ships as legitimate research vessels.

"Those particular views are views Australia cannot hold," he said.

The Japanese whaling fleet retreated from the Antarctic last February under pressure from Sea Shepherd activists, for the first time since it began its controversial scientific whaling program.

In the presentation, Japanese commissioner Kenji Kagawa said the conservationists tried to entangle whaling ships propellers with ropes and threw projectiles on to their ships' decks.

Both Australia and the Netherlands came under attack for providing ship registration and port facilities to Sea Shepherd ships. But Mr Burke said the issue of safety at sea should instead go before the International Maritime Organisation.

A long-time Australian observer of IWC meetings, Mick McIntyre of the group Whales Alive, said the Japanese appeared to have stepped up demands for action against Sea Shepherd compared with previous years.

"The Japanese presentation was full of threats that, unless those issue is resolved, Japan's role at the IWC is being questioned," Mr McIntyre told Fairfax Media from Jersey.

"They also say they have arrest warrants out for five Sea Shepherd members."

Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson, who is also in Jersey, said none of the group had ever been notified of any outstanding arrest warrants by Japan.

"They know how to get in touch with me but I have not heard a thing about this," Mr Watson said.

Are we in the west being hypocritical about Japan's whaling?
Philip Hoare
Guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 July 2011 10.00 BST

At next week's meeting of the International Whaling Commission, we should look as much at our own actions as Japan's


A sperm whale in the Azores. Photograph: Philip Hoare

Next week's open meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has a particular relevance, since it is to be held on British soil. In Jersey, delegates will debate what has become increasingly vitriolic in recent years. This year's annual conference is sure to be contentious, after last year's debacle over Japanese whaling and compromise put forward by the US and New Zealand, and which nearly ended in the collapse of the talks and threatened the future of the IWC itself.

This year, things are even more extreme: the Japanese whaling fleet had to pull out of the 2011 season due to the direct action of Sea Shepherd in the Southern Ocean in February. New concerns over the cost of renewing Japan's ageing fleet put the future of its operation in doubt. But that was before the earthquake and tsunami.

Now, everything is up in the air: will Japan demand international sympathy and support for its hated whaling industry, and even increased quotas? Or will it see the tsunami's destruction of at least one of its coastal whaling centres as a way to bow out gracefully from an embarrassing international impasse? Even more controversial, it has been accused of using its overseas aid budget to "buy" the votes of non-whaling nations. With that budget drastically cut by the demands at home, will it be unable to influence this week's meeting?

There are already rumours of a new deal being done between the US, New Zealand and Japan – to the fury of NGOs such as the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (whose 1.5 million-strong petition was influential in the failure of last year's proposed compromise). Next week, protesters as disparate as Women for Whales and Surfers for Cetaceans promise a bumpy ride for any delegates arguing for the continuance of commercial whaling – not only from Japan, but Norway, Iceland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, many aboriginal hunts and even new would-be whaling nations such as South Korea.

Meanwhile, the Japanese accuse the anti-whaling lobby of the US in particular of double standards, since they allow the Inuit to hunt bowhead whales in the Arctic – whales which may live to up to 200 years, and are a threatened species. The Japanese, the Norweigians and Icelanders all argue that they are hunting minke whales whose numbers are increasing. Indeed, the Japanese call these baleen whales "the cockroaches of the sea". Misinformation and intrigue, as ever, surround our interpretation of cetaceans, and what they may, or may not, mean to us.

I'm writing from the Azores, having spent the week observing whales in their natural habitat. These deep waters are a sanctuary to cetaceans – up to 30 species, nearly one third of the known number of species – far from Japanese harpoons. Yet these, too, are under threat, more insidiously, from pollution and climate change; from military sonar and seismic surveys; from the sheer noise we make in the ocean.

But they also suffer from our mere observance, from our expressed love for them as a collective species. Many argue that this multimillion-dollar industry is as much a threat to the whales' wellbeing as the Japanese whale hunt, with too many boats chasing too few whales. I saw this happening earlier this year, off Sri Lanka, where the ending of the war with the Tamil Tigers has suddenly opened up swaths of the Indian Ocean to tourists coming to see its resident blue whales – a booming industry that is almost entirely unregulated there.

What you observe, you also destroy. When it comes to whales, emotions always run high. We in the west have invested much in the conservation and protection of these astounding creatures – the largest, loudest, longest-lived animals on Earth. Unable to speak for themselves, we appoint ourselves their ambassadors. Yet next week's crucial meeting in Jersey will once again raise the question: are we hypocritical in our attitude towards Japan's cultural adherent to whaling, when our own actions, or inactions, do so much to damage the whales' world?

13 July 2011 Last updated at 19:20 GMT

Whaling body passes reforms on 'cash for votes'
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News, Jersey

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has approved measures designed to prevent past "cash for votes" scandals from happening again.

Countries will have to pay membership fees by bank transfer from government accounts, enabling traceability.

Previously, delegates have been able to turn up and pay in cash. ...<cont>

It's one of the arguments that the Japanese commercial whaling interests are using at the IWC, High Seas.

Archeological evidence in the form of whale remains discovered in burial mounds suggests that whales have been consumed in Japan since the Jōmon Period. [14,000 BC[1][2] to 300 BCE] Without the means to engage in active whaling, consumption primarily stemmed from stranded whales.[10] Surviving Ainu folklore reveals a long history of whaling[10] and a spiritual association with whales.[11] The earliest records of hand thrown harpoons date only back to the 12th century


Organized whaling
Organized open-boat shore whaling began in the 1570s; and continued into the early 20th century.[13] Techniques were dramatically developed in the 17th century in Taiji, Wakayama. Wada Chubei Yorimoto established a fishery by organizing the group hunting system in 1606. Whalers would spot whales from stations along the shore and launch boats to catch them with harpoons and lances. His grandson, Wada Kakuemon Yoriharu, later known as Taiji Kakuemon Yoriharu, invented the whaling net technique called Amitori-shiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Japan

Maybe there are some aboriginal tribes in JApan that have had a whaling history

The fact that they sell a quarter of their catch does not deny that thye exist almost exclusivley on whale and seal meat since prehistory. Changing their diet , to shich theyve become genetically linked, is not an argument that I would support.

There are degrees here. If the Aborigibnal Japanese can show some tie to whaling (credibly), then Id have to change my support for some moderate amount of whaling to serve these people.

Im just not going to accept a crafted Wiki article as a major credible source when it is internally inconsistent.

.... Despite the moratorium on commercial whaling, some indigenous peoples are allowed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to hunt a limited number of whales to meet long-standing cultural and nutritional subsistence needs. These include the Inuit of Greenland.

WDCS, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, does not oppose legitimate so-called "aboriginal subsistence whaling" (ASW) -- as long as it is humane, sustainable, well managed and based on documented human need for local subsistence use only.

However, an investigation in Greenland conducted in May 2010 revealed that Greenland’s whaling activities do not fulfil all these criteria:

-- Whale products are sold in large quantities in city supermarkets, at very high prices, as well as to 4-star hotel restaurants, which serve "whale steak" as fancy dinners to tourists.

-- Investigators even documented that commercial retail companies commission whale hunters to bring them whales when their stocks are low. This is done with full government knowledge and approval. ....