New legal move to prevent Japan from whale hunting in Antarctic

Australian campaigners to bring court case in a bid to prevent whaling season from going ahead

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Wednesday 28 October 2015 04.45 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 28 October 201504.46 GMT

Environmental campaigners in Australia have mounted a fresh attempt to prevent Japan from killing hundreds of whales in the Antarctic this winter, as officials in Tokyo indicated they would ignore an international ban on the country’s “scientific” expeditions imposed last year.

The Australian branch of Humane Society International claims that Kyodo Senpaku, the Japanese firm that conducts the controversial hunts, is in contempt of court after ignoring a 2008 federal court injunction not to slaughter the animals in a whale sanctuary declared by the Australian government.

Japan, which does not recognise the sanctuary, has not sent a whaling fleet to the region since March last year when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered an immediate halt to the hunts after concluding that they were not, as Japan had claimed, conducted for scientific research.

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Japan set to wade into diplomatic row by bypassing ban on whaling

Japan is expected to spark a fresh round of diplomatic tension after revealing plans to bypass a UN ban on the slaughter of whales in the Antarctic with a new, scaled-down "scientific" programme that limits its catch to minke whales.

Japan was forced to end its hunt in the Antarctic in March after the international court of justice (ICJ) in the Hague challenged Tokyo's contention that its annual pursuit of hundreds of whales in the area was necessary to conduct scientific research.

The country's whaling fleet has sought to catch around 900 minke whales, and a much smaller number of fin and humpback whales, every winter after the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling in 1986.

The IWC's moratorium allowed meat from the hunts to be sold on the open market in Japan, where consumption of whale meat – once a rare source of protein, in the years after the second world war – has plummeted in recent decades. Environmental campaigners claim the "scientific" programme is a cover for commercial whaling.

Having said they would abide by the UN court's ruling in March, Japanese officials are poised to submit a revised programme to the IWC's scientific committee in November.

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Norway whalers take first whales of hunting season

Norway has set a quota of 1,286 Minke whales for this year's season, though its whaling fleet is expected to have trouble meeting it.

OSLO — Norwegian whale hunters have harpooned the first three whales of the year, nearly a month after the controversial hunting season began, the country's Fishermen's Sales Organization said on May 2.

 

"Three whales were taken off Bear Island on Sunday (April 29)," Per Rolandsen, of the sales organization's division in Norway's Arctic Lofoten archipelago, told AFP.

 

Norway's whale hunting season started on April 1 and is set to last until August 31, but Rolandsen explained that weather conditions had been poor and the vessels had been tied up until now with other fishing activities.

 

"The whale hunt is very weather dependent (but) we expect now that the hunting conditions will improve," he said.

 

Norway and Iceland are, with Japan, the only countries to defy the 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling, claiming Minke whale stocks are large enough to merit limited hunts.

 

Japan uses a loophole that allows killing the animals for "lethal research," but a large portion of the meat also makes it to commercial markets.

 

Norway has set a quota of 1,286 Minke whales for this year's season — the same as last year — even though the country's dwindling whaling fleet is having trouble filling the quota.