There are an estimated 1.5m minke whales left worldwide. This species makes up most of Japan’s annual catch
In 1927 the Illustrated London News printed an article with a remarkable headline—not least because it seemed to militate against what was at the time one of Britain’s great expanding industries. “Antarctic Whales In Peril of Extermination,” it read. The author John Bryant, a ship’s doctor, noted: “Probably no industry has lost so much of its personal romance, yet retained so much of its fascination, as whaling. Gone are the supermen who did battle with Leviathan from an open boat, and cracked jests whilst plunging the lance time and time again into the fleeing monster in attempts to find its ‘life,’ at the uttermost peril of their own and the lives of their boat’s crew.”
In a subsequent issue Robert Donald, a newspaper editor and politician, criticised the Discovery Committee, the government body that assisted British whaling. Donald argued that “the policy which the authorities have adopted may lead to the extermination of whales in the Antarctic as in the North Polar Seas.” Almost a century later, and the same controversy is still being played out in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean.
But the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on 11th March has complicated matters. Now a great unknown hangs over the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in July, in Jersey. How will disaster affect Japan’s argument that it should be allowed to continue whaling?
Whales have been hunted commercially since the 17th century, mainly for meat and oil. Amid concerns that some species were being pursued to extinction, the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. But whaling could continue for scientific purposes—allowing the Japanese to circumvent the ban. Indigenous groups, who hunt whales for subsistence, were also permitted to carry on. Meanwhile, Norway and Iceland lodged objections to the ban and continued commercial whaling. More than 33,000 whales have died as a direct result of hunting since the start of the ban, mostly killed by those three countries. One result is a bad-tempered standoff between whaling countries and the anti-whaling lobby, whose most extreme expression is Sea Shepherd, a piratical organisation captained by a modern anti-Ahab, Paul Watson.
In February, the Japanese fisheries minister announced that Sea Shepherd’s actions, which include boarding whaling ships, forced the curtailment of the 2010-11 season on safety grounds. As a result, many fewer whales were caught. Sea Shepherd put Japan’s catch at 30, compared to the country’s fleet’s self-declared quota of 900. Campaigners quickly claimed a victory in the making. The summer edition of Whale & Dolphin, house magazine of the international and well-respected Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), ran a front-page headline that echoed the one from Illustrated London News: “The end of the line: Could whaling finally be tailing off?”
The problem facing the anti-whaling nations of the IWC, led by the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, is how to control Japanese whaling in international waters. The 2010 meeting in Morocco was the most dramatic yet, and insiders predicted the imminent breakdown of the IWC. The trigger was a proposal, promoted by the US and New Zealand, to allow Japan generous quotas to catch whales in its coastal waters in return for a gradual reduction in its self-imposed quota of whales caught in the South Pacific and Southern Ocean. This potential compromise, eventually voted down, met with furore from campaigners such as the WDCS, and as well as public opinion in Australia, incensed by Japan’s activities in a declared whale sanctuary neighbouring its waters. There was also a well-timed Sunday Times exposé of Japan’s alleged attempts to bribe smaller nation states in the IWC to vote on its side.
This year’s meeting may be even stormier. There are rumours that the US, New Zealand and Japan are brokering a new agreement. America is in a sensitive position. Its anti-whaling position is undermined by its indigenous people: the Alaskan Inuit fiercely defend their right to hunt bowhead whales. As the Japanese point out, these slow-moving and incredibly long-lived animals (research indicates that bowheads live on average 230 years and perhaps 300 years or more) are truly endangered, as opposed to minke whales, which make up the bulk of Japan, Norway’s and Iceland’s annual catch and number an estimated 1.5m worldwide. Caught between local obligations and a desire to satisfy a wider anti-whaling constituency, the US is keen to strike a deal with Japan, to the outrage of diehard environmentalists.
Into this turbulent mix come the after effects of Japan’s disaster. A March New York Times article reported that the town of Ayukawahama, one of the four communities in Japan that carry out coastal whaling, was devastated by the tsunami. The wave, the article notes, succeeded, “where years of boycott, protests and high-seas chases by western environmentalists had failed—in knocking out a pillar of the nation’s whaling industry.”
This may sound like a terrible gift to the anti-whaling lobby; that out of appalling disaster, some good might emerge. But there’s another response to consider. Will the destruction of these whaling facilities hinder the fight against the practice? Will Japan claim the moral high ground, arguing that its battered people need new quotas and deserve special sympathy?
A further complication is that the Japanese whaling fleet urgently needs updating. Even before the tsunami struck, the industry was in dire straits, facing falling sales and reduced compensation from the government. Richard Black, the BBC’s environment correspondent, notes that refurbishment of Japan’s whaling flagship, Nisshin Maru, will cost millions of dollars. What is more, new regulations ban vessels that use heavy oil from Antarctic waters. This would necessitate the conversion of the ship to diesel, another great expense.
Will the Japanese gamble on being allowed to continue whaling in the Southern Ocean? Australia is taking Japan to the International Court of Justice, arguing that its whaling is commercial rather than scientific; although Japan’s catch is sent to scientific institutes, the whale meat often ends up in food markets. But Australia’s move is a high-risk strategy. If the country loses the case, Japan may claim its operations to be legitimised, and other would-be whaling nations, such as South Korea, might begin their own hunts. Already Greenland has announced its intention to hunt humpbacks, a species beloved of whale watchers in the US.
Historically, the ironies are rich. Japan was reduced to near-starvation after the second world war, and the occupying powers encouraged the Japanese to convert their decommissioned navy into a whaling fleet to help feed its people. Japanese whaling fleets had already been tutored by the British and the Norwegians in the 1930s. Looking further back, one might wonder how different the situation might be if America’s own whaling fleet hadn’t ceased operations at the end of the 19th century. During that time whale oil, which was burned in lamps and used as a lubricant, was being replaced by mineral oil.
Japan’s determination to pursue whaling is as much as a cultural assertion as an economic benefit. As a nation defined by its harvest from the sea, it fears that, if it gives way on whaling, what would be next? In Jersey, these warring parties will face one another once again in a struggle that seems doomed to repeat itself—but it might just be different this year.
In 1927 the Illustrated London News printed an article with a remarkable headline—not least because it seemed to militate against what was at the time one of Britain’s great expanding industries. “Antarctic Whales In Peril of Extermination,” it read. The author John Bryant, a ship’s doctor, noted: “Probably no industry has lost so much of its personal romance, yet retained so much of its fascination, as whaling. Gone are the supermen who did battle with Leviathan from an open boat, and cracked jests whilst plunging the lance time and time again into the fleeing monster in attempts to find its ‘life,’ at the uttermost peril of their own and the lives of their boat’s crew.”
In a subsequent issue Robert Donald, a newspaper editor and politician, criticised the Discovery Committee, the government body that assisted British whaling. Donald argued that “the policy which the authorities have adopted may lead to the extermination of whales in the Antarctic as in the North Polar Seas.” Almost a century later, and the same controversy is still being played out in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean.
But the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on 11th March has complicated matters. Now a great unknown hangs over the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in July, in Jersey. How will disaster affect Japan’s argument that it should be allowed to continue whaling?
Whales have been hunted commercially since the 17th century, mainly for meat and oil. Amid concerns that some species were being pursued to extinction, the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. But whaling could continue for scientific purposes—allowing the Japanese to circumvent the ban. Indigenous groups, who hunt whales for subsistence, were also permitted to carry on. Meanwhile, Norway and Iceland lodged objections to the ban and continued commercial whaling. More than 33,000 whales have died as a direct result of hunting since the start of the ban, mostly killed by those three countries. One result is a bad-tempered standoff between whaling countries and the anti-whaling lobby, whose most extreme expression is Sea Shepherd, a piratical organisation captained by a modern anti-Ahab, Paul Watson.
In February, the Japanese fisheries minister announced that Sea Shepherd’s actions, which include boarding whaling ships, forced the curtailment of the 2010-11 season on safety grounds. As a result, many fewer whales were caught. Sea Shepherd put Japan’s catch at 30, compared to the country’s fleet’s self-declared quota of 900. Campaigners quickly claimed a victory in the making. The summer edition of Whale & Dolphin, house magazine of the international and well-respected Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), ran a front-page headline that echoed the one from Illustrated London News: “The end of the line: Could whaling finally be tailing off?”
The problem facing the anti-whaling nations of the IWC, led by the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, is how to control Japanese whaling in international waters. The 2010 meeting in Morocco was the most dramatic yet, and insiders predicted the imminent breakdown of the IWC. The trigger was a proposal, promoted by the US and New Zealand, to allow Japan generous quotas to catch whales in its coastal waters in return for a gradual reduction in its self-imposed quota of whales caught in the South Pacific and Southern Ocean. This potential compromise, eventually voted down, met with furore from campaigners such as the WDCS, and as well as public opinion in Australia, incensed by Japan’s activities in a declared whale sanctuary neighbouring its waters. There was also a well-timed Sunday Times exposé of Japan’s alleged attempts to bribe smaller nation states in the IWC to vote on its side.
This year’s meeting may be even stormier. There are rumours that the US, New Zealand and Japan are brokering a new agreement. America is in a sensitive position. Its anti-whaling position is undermined by its indigenous people: the Alaskan Inuit fiercely defend their right to hunt bowhead whales. As the Japanese point out, these slow-moving and incredibly long-lived animals (research indicates that bowheads live on average 230 years and perhaps 300 years or more) are truly endangered, as opposed to minke whales, which make up the bulk of Japan, Norway’s and Iceland’s annual catch and number an estimated 1.5m worldwide. Caught between local obligations and a desire to satisfy a wider anti-whaling constituency, the US is keen to strike a deal with Japan, to the outrage of diehard environmentalists.
Into this turbulent mix come the after effects of Japan’s disaster. A March New York Times article reported that the town of Ayukawahama, one of the four communities in Japan that carry out coastal whaling, was devastated by the tsunami. The wave, the article notes, succeeded, “where years of boycott, protests and high-seas chases by western environmentalists had failed—in knocking out a pillar of the nation’s whaling industry.”
This may sound like a terrible gift to the anti-whaling lobby; that out of appalling disaster, some good might emerge. But there’s another response to consider. Will the destruction of these whaling facilities hinder the fight against the practice? Will Japan claim the moral high ground, arguing that its battered people need new quotas and deserve special sympathy?
A further complication is that the Japanese whaling fleet urgently needs updating. Even before the tsunami struck, the industry was in dire straits, facing falling sales and reduced compensation from the government. Richard Black, the BBC’s environment correspondent, notes that refurbishment of Japan’s whaling flagship, Nisshin Maru, will cost millions of dollars. What is more, new regulations ban vessels that use heavy oil from Antarctic waters. This would necessitate the conversion of the ship to diesel, another great expense.
Will the Japanese gamble on being allowed to continue whaling in the Southern Ocean? Australia is taking Japan to the International Court of Justice, arguing that its whaling is commercial rather than scientific; although Japan’s catch is sent to scientific institutes, the whale meat often ends up in food markets. But Australia’s move is a high-risk strategy. If the country loses the case, Japan may claim its operations to be legitimised, and other would-be whaling nations, such as South Korea, might begin their own hunts. Already Greenland has announced its intention to hunt humpbacks, a species beloved of whale watchers in the US.
Historically, the ironies are rich. Japan was reduced to near-starvation after the second world war, and the occupying powers encouraged the Japanese to convert their decommissioned navy into a whaling fleet to help feed its people. Japanese whaling fleets had already been tutored by the British and the Norwegians in the 1930s. Looking further back, one might wonder how different the situation might be if America’s own whaling fleet hadn’t ceased operations at the end of the 19th century. During that time whale oil, which was burned in lamps and used as a lubricant, was being replaced by mineral oil.
Japan’s determination to pursue whaling is as much as a cultural assertion as an economic benefit. As a nation defined by its harvest from the sea, it fears that, if it gives way on whaling, what would be next? In Jersey, these warring parties will face one another once again in a struggle that seems doomed to repeat itself—but it might just be different this year.
