I know the class attended the whaling museum this past Saturday and I am sure it was very interesting. I have never been but perhaps I can visit the museum this summer. To go along with the whaling trip, I found an article that talks about how the hunt for whales needs to come to an end. In the article I found online, the United Nations is agreeing with Australia that Japan is simply running a program that hunts whales for commercial use. Japan has been lying and proclaiming that their program is solely designed for scientific research…..
Article 8 of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling states that research whaling is legal and the selling of their meat is also legal after the research has been conducted. However, Japan was not following these regulations because they were killing too many whales. The number of whales Japan decided to use as samples was “not driven by scientific considerations”. Since 1987, research shows that Japan has been killing around 400 minke whales each year! Do they really need 400 whales per year for research? I don’t think so…something sounds fishy about that. It does not stop here. These numbers have drastically risen up until 2005. That year, Japan caught 853 whales and 679 whales in 2008. Anyone can see that the whaling industry is a serious problem and that Japan is making it more of a sport/money operating system rather than conducting beneficial research.
However in 2012, it was reported that Japan only caught 103 whales for their “scientific research”. Still, this number seems to be high. When Japan was asked about this problem, what a surprise… Japanese officials declined to comment on the United Nation’s ruling to stop Japan’s annual Antarctic whale hunt. They still insist that “Japan’s whaling is purely for the purposes of obtaining scientific data, so that whale resources can be sustainably maintained.” The high number of whales killed does not help Japan defend their case. How can they say that catching 853 whales is necessary for scientific research? Whaling is a profit driven industry, just like any other industry in my opinion. Reading the article made me see a problem that was ongoing for many years. This problem was mostly overlooked as well. It is good to see Australia is concerned for the ocean’s inhabitants. Maybe this is a step toward a total abolishment of hunting for whales.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/31/national/world-court-orders-japan-to-halt-whaling/#.Uzq5RaXlduZ
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/31/world/asia/japan-whale-hunt/ (Newest updates with a short video)
This was a great post. It speaks a lot about the Japanese whaling industry. I did not know that the Japanese had laws and were overstepping them; I thought simply that they had no law to prevent whaling. Also, I must say that when you said there was something “fishy” about the amount of whales they were harvesting, I chuckled because of the pun. Whether you intended it or not, I got a good laugh out of it! Anyway, 400 whales a year for research does seem rather steep…