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Japan whale hunting: Commercial whaling to restart in July

JacksinPA

JacksinPA

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46682976

Japan says it is to restart commercial whaling in July in a move that is likely to draw international criticism.

It said it would withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the body tasked with whale conservation.
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Eating whale flesh is said to be part of Japanese cultural tradition. After all, they are a maritime nation.
 
JacksinPA said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46682976

Japan says it is to restart commercial whaling in July in a move that is likely to draw international criticism.

It said it would withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the body tasked with whale conservation.
============================================
Eating whale flesh is said to be part of Japanese cultural tradition. After all, they are a maritime nation.
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Japan has been killing whales in the guise of "research" for years.
 
JacksinPA said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46682976

Japan says it is to restart commercial whaling in July in a move that is likely to draw international criticism.

It said it would withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the body tasked with whale conservation.
============================================
Eating whale flesh is said to be part of Japanese cultural tradition. After all, they are a maritime nation.
Click to expand...


What happens to the cultural tradition when there are no whales left?
 
Well its going to give Greenpeace something to do.
 
If it make y'all feel any better, every fish or whale the Japanese eat are probably full of radiation.
 
WCH said:
If it make y'all feel any better, every fish or whale the Japanese eat are probably full of radiation.
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Yeah, dont forget that giant lizard that rises out of the sea and smashes their cities every now and then... ;)
 
i argued in the other whaling thread that privateers should sink the whaling ships and arrest the crews. i will edit that view to support crushing sanctions on Japan for whaling instead. we can cure them of their "cultural" whaling scourge by hitting them in their wallets. perhaps they can come up with something else for the rich to eat.
 
JacksinPA said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46682976

Japan says it is to restart commercial whaling in July in a move that is likely to draw international criticism.

It said it would withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the body tasked with whale conservation.
============================================
Eating whale flesh is said to be part of Japanese cultural tradition. After all, they are a maritime nation.
Click to expand...


Whale is not very popular - most is sold to the government, which also subsidizes the whaling fleet, and stockpiled. Only a handful of coastal communities traditionally ate whale and dolphin, and people in big cities are surprised to hear about the latter. Most Japanese had never heard of the dolphin-hunting village of Taiji in until the documentary The Cove.

Moreover the mercury levels of sea animals at the top of the food chain may be higher than is safe, but these are among the few foods the govt does not insist on testing for some reason. Whaling employs less than 2,000 full-time workers in a nation of 125 million.

The only time when whale was 'popular' was when the govt pushed it on people in the lean years after WWII as a source of protein in school lunches. it' considered a delicacy in old-boy clubs and gangster hangouts, but probably wouldn't be as expensive if the govt did buy up most of it.

So here is a govt defying the world community, under the guise of 'culture' as well as possibly endangering the environment and species, to prop up a dying and unprofitable industry that the Japanese market has rejected. Mostly for nationalist populism but probably because a lot of former ministry people end up with golden parachutes falling into industry management positions.

Nothing to see here folks. Just the ghost of the imperial navy limping around the south pacific, hounded and largely thwarted by a handful of peaceniks in motor boats.
 
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Years ago I worked for a big French chemical company. We had annual sales meetings in different locations in France, which was very neat.

At one such meeting, a joke was circulating that 'there is nothing wrong with the Japanese that a few more atomic bombs wouldn't have fixed.' The sales rep from Japan didn't think that was funny.
 
Patrick Ramage, a veteran watcher of IWC negotiations, called the announcement an "elegantly Japanese solution" that looks on the surface like defiance but will likely mean a much smaller hunt.

"What this provides is a face-saving way out of high seas whaling. And it is difficult to see that as anything other than good news for whales and the commission established to manage and conserve them," Ramage, programme director for marine conservation at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told AFP news agency.
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It's a good development actually. Japan will only hunt whales in its territorial waters within 12 nautical miles from the country, which Iceland and some other Scandinavian countries like Norway do as well on a small scale. Iceland left the IWC in 1992 to resume commercial whale whaling in the North Sea and many of us see it as Iceland's sovereign right. The Japanese whaling fleets will not hunt Antarctic whales, which angered Australia and New Zealand in the past because it was an intrusion into their sovereign territorial waters.

 
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ThirdTerm said:
It's a good development actually.
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If that changes it from threatened whales to endangered whales, not an improvement. I'm surprised we never get species, populations or status in these articles.
 
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