Japan stands firm over whaling

Despite the ban on commercial whaling hunts, Japan continues to hunt marine mammals on a large scale and in addition whales are under increased pressure from marine pollution, regular fishing and climate change.

Japan has been pressing for years to end the 1986 ban on commercial whaling.

Most of the 80 IWC participating countries agreed to the ban, given the threats to whales.

Japan, however, found a loophole in the ban and annually takes up 1000 whale hunts for scientific purposes, as such there seems to be a growing willingness to compromise.

Whale meat is served in Japanese schools as a ‘traditional’ dish, although there is some disagreement about how traditional the eating of whale meat is in Japan, as it was at its height after WW2 when American occupying forces pushed the eating of whale as a way to alleviate large scale food shortages.

Moreover, 19 non-governmental organizations, including the Environment Foundation, WWF and Greenpeace, and the EU member states are pushing for a total end to whale hunting.

Denmark has this year on behalf of Greenland requested, in addition to dwarf whales, Finn whales and Greenland whales and humpback whales.

Greenland representatives argued that the need for whale meat has increased due to a growing population.

The Greenpeace delegation pointed out that the main threat to the whales is not the hunt at all.

Each year 300,000 whales and dolphins drown in regular fishing nets.

All of this is not new, one hundred years ago British and American whaling fleets all but made the South Atlantic whale populations extinct. The argument over the practice has continued relentlessly ever since

On Sunday, the representatives of the participating countries in Santiago met behind closed doors and have basically agreed to a working group on the future of whale hunting.

But the group will not even table a report until the next annual IWC meeting in 2009.

A business newspaper in Japan recently commissioned a survey of how many Japanese people were actually interested in eating whale meat.

Their findings seem contradictory, with most Japanese people wanting to consume whale meat, while at the same time less than 25% claimed to actually enjoy eating it.

This may be the crux of a ‘national pride’ issue over a real ‘need’ to continue to catch whales for human consumption