Japan begins coastal whale slaughter

Japan's Small Type Coastal Whaling (STCW) hunt for small whales and dolphins began recently. Images of the Baird's beaked whales being butchered, as school children look on in the port of Wada, east of Tokyo have appeared on websites and in newspapers around the world.

The kill forms part of a larger hunt operated by four coastal towns, targeting 62 Baird's beaked whales, 19 risso's dolphins and 69 pilot whales. Since 2002, the whaling companies involved have also been commissioned by Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research for their vessels to participate in a coastal component of Japan’s ‘scientific’ North Pacific hunt for minke whales. Japan annually asks the IWC to award these communities a quota of minke whales, a decision that would effectively overturn the 21 year old moratorium on commercial whaling. At the recent IWC meeting in Alaska, Japan’s efforts were rejected again and it withdrew the proposal.

WDCS is extremely concerned about the impacts of these unregulated hunts on coastal whale and dolphin populations, which may be extremely vulnerable to chemical and noise pollution, ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement.

Japan also operates the largest unsustainable and unregulated commercial slaughter of dolphins in the world, killing tens of thousands of Dall’s porpoises and other species annually. These hunts are not regulated by the International Whaling Commission and the dolphin drive hunts which also take place annually supply additional meat to local supermarkets and some live dolphins for captivity.

Japan also continues to kill great whales and sell the meat from its hunts despite the ban on commercial whaling by exploiting a legal loophole which allows whaling for so-called scientific research.

Currently, Japan allocates its whalers annual research quotas of 1225 whales including 10 sperm, 100 sei, 50 Bryde’s and 220 minke whales in the North Pacific (60 of which are killed by so-called ‘Small Type Coastal Whalers’) and up to 935 minkes and 10 fin whales in Antarctica. A hunt of 50 humpback whales plus an increase from 10 to 50 fin whales is scheduled to begin late in 2007 in the Southern Ocean.

Source: AP / WDCS