November 29, 2014 — Claiming purely “scientific” motives, Japan’s political leaders are cynically planning to resume whale hunting in the Southern Ocean, despite the International Court of Justice finding that the Japanese government regularly violated its obligations under the international ban against commercial whaling off Antarctica.
The government suspended this year’s hunt after the March ruling, in which the court noted that about 3,600 minke whales were caught since 2005 to be sold as commercial food, with little if any new research produced about the slain creatures.
Trying to claim adherence to the treaty, the government announced Nov. 18 that it would resume the hunt next year with “famous scientists from home and abroad,” but reduce the kill to 333 minke whales, about a third the number from recent hunts. Humpback and fin whales would no longer be killed.
The plan is a variation on the same evasion of treaty obligations, just as Japan’s insistence on “science” as its prime motive rings hollow in a field where experts say nonlethal research already suffices.