Japan's war on whales isn't over – the Australian government must keep fighting

Australia’s global leadership on whale conservation will be tested as Japanese hunters move to a different hemisphere

Darren Kindleysides

Mon 1 Apr 2019 18.00 BST

Japan’s whaling fleet arrived back at the port of Shimonoseki on the weekend with a barbaric tally of 333 dead whales that are no longer swimming freely in the Southern Ocean.

If the work of the Japanese whalers is anything like last year, more than 100 pregnant females and 50 or so juveniles will have been killed. But from now on, things are different.

Japan’s announcement on Boxing Day last year that it would be leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) means those whalers will likely never return to the Southern Ocean. Now they will only hunt whales in their own waters.

For the first time in more than 100 years, the Southern Ocean’s whales are free from the impending threat of a nation intent on hunting them.

Norway set up an Antarctic whaling station in 1904 and Japanese whalers have been heading south every summer since before the second world war, joining dozens of factory ships from Britain and the United States. The only temporary reprieve whales have had was because of the second world war.

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Japan killed 50 whales in Antarctic protected area, data shows

The disclosure of the cull, conducted under a legal loophole, comes as Japan seeks to further weaken a global ban on commercial hunts

Damian CarringtonEnvironment editor

Tue 4 Sep 2018 00.01 BSTLast modified on Tue 4 Sep 2018 00.36 BST

Japanese whalers have killed more than 50 minke whales in an Antarctic marine protection area this year, WWF has revealed.

The disclosure comes on the opening day of the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting in Brazil, which Japan is chairing as it seeks to restart commercial whaling. Killing whales for profit was banned in 1986, but nations including Norway and Iceland have granted themselves exemptions.

Japan allows itself to hunt whales under a “scientific” programme which still sees the meat go on sale. The 2018 hunt led to 333 minke whales being killed in the Southern Ocean, including 122 pregnant females.

Now analysis of an IWC scientific committee paper by WWF shows that three Japanese ships killed dozens of minke whales in part of the Ross Sea marine protection area (MPA) in January and February 2018. All fishing is restricted in that section of the MPA in order to protect marine life, including blue, humpback, minke and killer whales, emperor penguins and Weddell seals.

However, the 24-nation body that agreed the MPA – the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources – does not control whaling in the region. The International Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that Japan should cancel all existing “scientific whaling” permits in the Southern Ocean but Japan simply issued itself a new permit for the killing of hundreds of Antarctic minke whales each year until 2027.

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UPDATE: Whale killing: DNA shows Iceland whale was rare hybrid

By Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent

20 July 2018

Genetic material from a large whale killed off the coast of Iceland has confirmed the creature was a rare hybrid.

Campaigners had been concerned that the slaughtered animal was a protected blue whale, the largest species on the planet.

Now DNA has shown it to be the offspring of a blue and a fin whale, as the whaling company had claimed.

Researchers say these hybrids are rare and trading their meat is illegal.

Photographic evidence from anti-whaling groups had shown a large animal being butchered in Iceland early in July - based on these images, some experts concluded that it was a juvenile male blue, a species that hasn't been deliberately killed since 1978.

Now tests carried out at Iceland's Marine Research Institute have confirmed that it was the offspring of a female blue whale and a male fin whale.

Why does the species matter?

The key reason for interest in the species was to determine whether this killing was legal or not under Icelandic law.

Weighing as much as 200 tonnes and stretching up to 30 metres, blue whales were hunted to the brink by commercial whalers from many countries including the UK from the 1940s to the 1960s when they became a protected stock under the International Whaling Commission.

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Whale killing: Iceland accused of slaughtering rare whale

By Matt McGrathEnvironment correspondent

12 July 2018

Whalers in Iceland have killed what appears to be a blue whale, one of the largest creatures left on the planet.

Photographic evidence from campaigners opposed to whaling show a large animal being butchered for export.

Several experts have concluded from these pictures that it's a juvenile male blue, a species that hasn't been deliberately killed since 1978.

The whaling company involved say they are confident that the animal is a hybrid between a blue and fin whale.

DNA testing will be needed to confirm the whale's true identity.

The key reason for interest in the species is to determine whether this killing is legal or not under Icelandic law.

Weighing as much as 200 tonnes and stretching up to 30 metres, blue whales were hunted to the brink by commercial whalers from many countries including the UK from the 1940s to the 1960s when they became a protected stock under the International Whaling Commission. That means that all countries, including Iceland agreed not to kill the creatures.

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Large-scale whaling in north Scandinavia may date back to 6th century

Date:  June 13, 2018

Source:  Uppsala University

The intensive whaling that has pushed many species to the brink of extinction today may be several centuries older than previously assumed. This view is held by archaeologists from Uppsala and York whose findings are presented in the European Journal of Archaeology.

Museum collections in Sweden contain thousands of Iron Age board-game pieces. New studies of the raw material composing them show that most were made of whalebone from the mid-6th century CE. They were produced in large volumes and standardised forms. The researchers therefore believe that a regular supply of whalebone was needed. Since the producers would hardly have found the carcasses of beached whales a reliable source, the gaming pieces are interpreted as evidence for whaling.

Apart from an osteological survey, species origin has been determined for a small number of game pieces, using ZooMS (short for Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometer). The method shows that all the pieces analysed were derived from the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), a massive whale weighing 50-80 tonnes. It got the name because it was the right whale to hunt: it swam slowly, close to shore, and contained so much blubber as to float after being killed.

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Iceland sets target of 191 kills as country resumes whaling

Authorities grant whalers a quota to hunt the endangered fin whale this summer after a two-year pause

Daniel Boffey in Brussels

Wed 18 Apr 2018 12.05 BSTLast modified on Wed 18 Apr 2018 15.07 BST

Icelandic fishermen will resume their hunt for the endangered fin whale this year after a two-year pause and have set a target of 191 kills for the season.

An apparent loosening of Japanese regulations on Icelandic exports had made the resumption of the hunting commercially viable again, the country’s only fin whaling company, Hvalur, announced.

The firm also has plans to collaborate with researchers from the University of Iceland to develop medicinal products made of whale blubber and bones, aimed at combating iron deficiency.

Sigursteinn Masson, at the Icelandic branch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), said: “I’m very disappointed. This decision is not based on real market needs and is not in line with public opinion polls on whaling, which doesn’t belong in modern times.”

Iceland and Norway are the only countries in the world to authorise whaling in defiance of the 1986 International Whaling Commission’s moratorium.

Iceland resumed whaling in 2006 on economic grounds and has defied threats of US sanctions to continue to do so. The US did not invite Iceland, one of the largest fishing nations in the north Atlantic, to the Our Ocean conference in 2014.

Japan hunts whales, but claims it does so for scientific research purposes, although a large share of the whale meat ends up being consumed.

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Whaling's 'uncomfortable' scientific legacy

Jonathan Amos Science correspondent

25 June 2017

It's a curious thing to see a group of early whale foetuses up close - to see beings so small that have the potential to become so big. 

But what really strikes you, especially in those initial developmental stages, is how familiar the forms look. How like an early human foetus, they appear. 

"This is something you see time and time again in vertebrates, not just with mammals," says Richard Sabin, the Natural History Museum's top whale expert. 

"You see these similarities in the early developmental stages and it's really not until you're halfway through the gestation - which for a humpback whale is around 11 months - that you start to see the things that make that foetus characteristically the species that it is." 

Richard has a remarkable sequence of seven humpback foetuses that he's going to put on display for the NHM's major summer exhibition on cetaceans. 

They go from what is essentially just a ball of cells that's perhaps only a few weeks old, all the way through to a specimen that appears to be a perfect humpback in miniature. 

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Lessons from whale population collapse could help future species at risk

Date: June 22, 2017

Source: University of Zurich

The research, carried out by scientists at the University of Zurich and University of Tasmania, used detailed records collected during the commercial whaling of the 20th century and collated by the International Whaling Committee (IWC) -- to look at the effects of overharvesting on whale populations, and used this historic data to help develop methods which can be applied to species of current conservation concern.

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