"Japan's whaling fleet has set sail for Antarctic waters where it will make its biggest catch in 20 years. The boats will aim to catch nearly 1,000 whales over the coming months. A global moratorium on commercial whaling has been in place since the 1980s, but Japan describes its programme as "scientific." The hunting is condemned by most conservation groups on the grounds that it is inhumane, unnecessary and may harm fragile wildlife populations. The fleet sailed on Tuesday from Shimonoseki port for the first year of a "research" programme called JARPA-2. It envisages catching up to 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales during the southern hemisphere summer to "...monitor the Antarctic ecosystem, model competition among whale species... elucidate temporal and spatial changes in stock structure and improve the management procedure for the Antarctic minke whale stocks."
JARPA-2 replaces the JARPA-1 programme which took 440 Antarctic minkes each season. In two years' time JARPA-2 will expand to include humpbacks, the favoured species for whale watchers. Critics say this is commercial whaling in disguise, with meat obtained from the hunts sold for food in restaurants and schools. Scientific objectives can be met through non-lethal methods, they say.
"Japan's announcement that it intends to kill more than twice as many minke whales and hunt two new species over the coming years provoked international outrage earlier this year," commented Philippa Brakes, a scientist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
"The Japanese whalers know that the eyes of the world are upon them with an intensity that they have not experienced since the moratorium," she told the BBC News website."
- Richard Black, BBC News.
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