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Home* Antarctic News → Japan wants to con­ti­nue wha­ling in Ant­ar­c­ti­ca

Japan wants to con­ti­nue wha­ling in Ant­ar­c­ti­ca

They can’t just let it be: Japan’s con­ser­va­ti­ve prime minis­ter Shin­zo Abe has declared to plead for a con­ti­nua­tion of Japa­ne­se wha­ling. In ear­ly 2014, the hig­hest UN court had declared Japa­ne­se wha­ling in its cur­rent form for ille­gal, as it is declared as sci­en­ti­fic wha­ling, but is far from mee­ting any requi­re­ments to qua­li­fy as such. The ver­dict has, howe­ver, left the pos­si­bi­li­ty open to orga­ni­ze a new wha­ling pro­gram­me that could meet the requi­re­ments, which include a stron­ger focus on non-lethal methods and rele­vant publi­ca­ti­ons.

Abe is quo­ted say­ing that he wants to streng­then sci­en­ti­fic rese­arch on wha­le popu­la­ti­ons and thus achie­ve new com­mer­cial wha­ling – remar­kab­le how “sci­en­ti­fic” and com­mer­cial wha­ling are con­nec­ted in the per­spec­ti­ve of the Japa­ne­se govern­ment. Abe also expres­sed it is sad that eating wha­le meat is not inter­na­tio­nal­ly reco­gni­zed as part of Japa­ne­se cul­tu­re. This part of Japa­ne­se cul­tu­re does, howe­ver, enjoy only limi­t­ed popu­la­ri­ty even in Japan: demand for wha­le meat is lower than sup­p­ly, despi­te com­mer­cial and even govern­men­tal pro­mo­ti­on.

Min­ke wha­le in the Ant­ar­c­tic Pen­in­su­la. In 2005, Japan kil­led about 3500 Min­ke wha­les for “sci­en­ti­fic pur­po­ses”.

Minke whale, Antarctic peninsula

Source: Spie­gel online

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last modification: 2014-06-10 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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