According to Channel News Asia, Japan has resumed whale-hunting after their departure from the IWC (International Whaling Commission) in December 2018.
On the morning of the 1st of July 2019, five small ships departed from the harbour of Kushiro, Japan, to start Japan’s first commercial whale hunt after a ban of three decades.
Sachiko Sakai, a 66-year-old taxi driver in Kushiro (a port city in the northern part of the Hokkaido main island) said that, “If we had more whale available, we’d eat it more”. Miss Sakai also said, “It’s a part of Japan’s food culture. The world opposes killing whales, but you can say the same thing about many of the animals bred on land and killed for food”.
Source: The Guardian
The five ships aforementioned will be joined by vessels from the Shimonoseki port in the Yamaguchi Prefecture. They will be spending the summer hunting for minke, Baird’s beaked whales and sei whales.
After a ban was imposed in 1986, Japan began whaling for “scientific research” a year after. Critics said that the “research” is actually commercial whaling in disguise, as the whale meat was later on found on store shelves and in restaurants.
According to Evening Standard, The Fishery Agency of Japan has set a strict catch quota for commercial whaling, and this year it amounts to 227 whales which includes 52 minkes, 150 Baird’s beaked whales and 25 sei whales. The hunting will be done exclusively from within Japan’s own economic waters. Out of the 3 species’ named, only the sei whale is classified as endangered but their numbers are increasing.
Patrick Ramage, director of marine conservation at the International Fund for Animal Welfare told AFP “What we are seeing is the beginning of the end of Japanese whaling. Japan is quitting high-seas whaling… not yet a full stop, but that is a huge step towards the end of killing whales for their meat and other products,”. He also added that he does not believe that coastal whaling will survive because of a decrease in subsidies and consumer demand.
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