He said Australia’s leading global experts had examined Japan’s new so-called scientific research programme this year and found it was also a guise for killing whales, and a breach of worldwide law. Opponents of Japan’s Antarctic hunt say it’s a cover for commercial whaling, since the surplus is sold.
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Whaling commercially was banned in 1986, but whaling for scientific research is not. According to their own proposal, Japanese fisheries scientists are specifically targeting juvenile and adult females to determine their age of sexual maturity.
Japan’s whaling fleet recently returned from its most recent Antarctic expedition with a haul of more than 300 minke whales, including some pregnant females.
Part of this research is to prove that the whales are abundant enough to hunt commercially.
“Once again false promises from the Australian and New Zealand governments have resulted in whales being killed illegally in the Australian Whale Sanctuary”, said Sea Shepherd Australia Managing Director, Jeff Hansen.
The government has spent large amounts of tax money to sustain the whaling operations.
Its whaling practices though have always been a subject of criticism and its latest decision to conduct another whaling expedition is a defiance of the International Court of Justice ruling that declared the Antarctic whaling illegal.
A handout image by Sea Shepherd Australia made available on January 7, 2013 shows three dead, protected Minke Whales on the deck of the Japanese Ship, Nisshin Maru in the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, January 5, 2013.
Of these, 103 were males and 230 were females, with 90 per cent of the mature females pregnant.
Japan’s Fisheries Agency announced today that the Japanese whaling fleet had achieved its goals of capturing or killing the 333 minke whales that it announced its intentions to hunt when the fleet set sail back in December of 2015.
Eating whale is part of Japan’s culture and the country has long claimed that most species of whale are not endangered.
“Attaching GPS devices helps us study minke whales’ migration routes by tracking them for several days”, agency official Hiroyuki Morita told AFP.
The Australian government said Japan’s decision to resume whaling is “deeply disappointing” and has even considered taking legal action or sending a customs patrol vessel to the Southern Ocean to intercept the fleet.
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Australia claims it began talks with the highest levels of authority within the Japanese government, but Japan seems prepared to go ahead with its plan to kill more of the creatures in the future, despite the outcry from other countries.
