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Japan Announces Withdrawal From International Whaling Commission, To Resume Commercial Whaling (straitstimes.com)
Japan is withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and will resume commercial whaling next year, a government spokesman said on Wednesday, in a move expected to spark international criticism. From a report: "We have decided to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission in order to resume commercial whaling in July next year," top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters. "Commercial whaling to be resumed from July next year will be limited to Japan's territorial waters and exclusive economic zones. We will not hunt in the Antarctic waters or in the southern hemisphere," Mr Suga added.
The announcement had been widely expected and comes after Japan failed in a bid earlier this year to convince the IWC to allow it to resume commercial whaling. Tokyo has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the body and has been regularly criticised for catching hundreds of whales a year for "scientific research" despite being a signatory to a moratorium on hunting the animals. Mr Suga said Japan would officially inform the IWC of its decision by the end of the year, which will mean the withdrawal comes into effect by June 30. Leaving the IWC means Japanese whalers will be able to resume the hunting in Japanese coastal waters of minke and other whales currently protected by the commission. But Japan will not be able to continue the so-called scientific research hunts in the Antarctic that has been exceptionally allowed as an IWC member under the Antarctic Treaty.
The announcement had been widely expected and comes after Japan failed in a bid earlier this year to convince the IWC to allow it to resume commercial whaling. Tokyo has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the body and has been regularly criticised for catching hundreds of whales a year for "scientific research" despite being a signatory to a moratorium on hunting the animals. Mr Suga said Japan would officially inform the IWC of its decision by the end of the year, which will mean the withdrawal comes into effect by June 30. Leaving the IWC means Japanese whalers will be able to resume the hunting in Japanese coastal waters of minke and other whales currently protected by the commission. But Japan will not be able to continue the so-called scientific research hunts in the Antarctic that has been exceptionally allowed as an IWC member under the Antarctic Treaty.
As long as it is only in Japanese territory their choice but how long they take to put the whale down should be taken into account, a cruel extended death should be banned and any method should require pretty much instant death for the whale. Not that I would eat whale or promote it's killing but prevention of cruelty to animals laws should apply.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Whalehunters do give money to Japanese politicians. Lots of money.
Japanese politics is all about money.
If this has a negative impact on the 2020 Olympics, then whaling will be banned just as quickly.
Ah yes "research" whales that just happen to end up in the fish markets.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Whales shouldnÃ(TM)t be hunted for food at all. They are nearly extinct.
"Whales" comprise around 90 different species, some of which are endangered and some which are quite numerous.
Among the species which are classified by IUCN as Least Concern (i.e. not qualifying for a near threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered status) are Bowhead Whales, Southern Right Whales, Common Minke Whales, Humpback Whales, Grey Whales, and various dolphins.
The Minke whale, which is currently the most common catch for whalers, is quite abundant, with over 180,000 in the North Atlantic alone.
Even in Japan there isn't much of a market for it, it is not something people enjoy eating and was traditionally only eaten as a source of food when there was not much else. There have been stories about how even much of their "scientific" whaling meat gets wasted as it isn't popular.
doesn't work that way in Japan sadly. The government will support the industry to keep it going so they don't lose face.
It is not strange at all. After WWII, occupied West Germany was plundered by the former Allies for a while, but with the start of the Cold War, the focus shifted from revenge to opposing the Soviet Union and the emerging Communist bloc. By the end of the 40s, the anti-Nazi policies were scrapped, the criminal past of the NSDAP members and the Nazi government officials was forgotten and forgiven, they were given prominent roles in the German "recovery", and a lot of money was poured into the German economy in the form of foreign aid.
Nothing like that happened in Japan until after the Korean war. The Japanese were basically left to starve for a whole decade by the US. When the occupation power was petitioned for help (which is their responsibility according to international law), the administration of McArthur suggested that Japan should hunt whale meat for satisfying protein deficiency. This is how the modern whaling came about.
Japan has kept them open losing money for 30 years now in the guise of scientific whaling. Various Industries all over the world are funded by governments while making a loss with no real prospect of ever turning a profit.
They really don't. For a while Whale meat was essential for them to survive. But it is not particularly pleasant and not liked much even in Japan. The Japanese public in general are against whaling and don't like Whale meat. Their is a small aging (but influential population) that does want to keep it and more importantly don't like being told they can't have it.
What is the difference between hunting whales and all the other animals we eat (besides tastiness level but that's opinion based)?
Whales are the only animal they eat that can't be farmed. Hunting and gathering is sustainable only for small human populations, which is why a large percentage of the fish we eat are being farmed today, over the dead bodies of environmental romantics.
The whale population has revived since the nineteenth century age of whaling, but resuming hunts would make whales as threatened as bison were until we started farming them.
Japan hates it. Schools won't touch it, neither will the poor. Oligarchs and politicians do, which is why their behaviour is strange. Mercury poisoning.
Whale meat is massively subsidized but ends up dumped or sold to Norway at a loss.
The subsidies are all that keep the industry profitable. Nobody sane wants the stuff.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Blue Whale numbers haven't risen significantly since whaling stopped and many species are on the Red List.
Most species that aren't are turning out to be multiple species, due to isolation. Right Whales are an example of that. By recategorizing according to genetics, sevwral whale species went from ok to critically endangered.
We still know nothing about the Lone Voice, the lonliest whale on the planet, other than he's the last of his kind.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Southerm Right Whales turned out to be two distinct species, a few years back. The list has not been updated to reflect that, yet, but the two species have about half the numbers in each.
It makes a huge difference.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Because a rat isn't intelligent. Some whales have neocortex mass:body mass ratios about 1.5x that of humans.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Their actual plan is to get us down to only 2 humpback whales, in the hopes of attracting starships from the future. They can then capture one and harvest the technology.
The part that was cut out of the script was that after finding out what what had happened, Space Whales invaded earth to harvest Japanese people for research purposes.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There are a whole bunch of species of whale that are neither particularly smart nor anywhere near endangered, like the common minke whale. Anyone who isn't a vegetarian has no business pretending there's a moral issue here.
And the general IWC moratorium, now over three decades old, is in blatant defiance of the purpose stated in the convention that established the IWC -- to make the whaling industry orderly, in order to increase whale stocks, so that more whales can be hunted. A general ban on commercial whaling isn't what the Japanese signed up for, and it's ludicrous to claim they should be bound to keep going along with the abuse of a treaty that's been perverted against its explicit text.
There's this widespread mistaken belief that radiation is not normal, and is only created by nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. Radiation is completely normal and is everywhere around you.
The highest radiation dose most people receive in a year actually comes from their own bodies. There's a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of potassium, and our nervous system needs potassium to function. Likewise, foods high in potassium can give you an elevated radiation dose. The radiation sensors at our border checkpoints designed to detect terrorists trying to smuggle in a dirty bomb are forever being triggered by cat litter, tiles, and foods high in potassium like bananas, nuts, etc..
After that comes rocks - mainly granite, but also things like beach sand. They have trace amounts of natural uranium which is radioactive. Having granite countertops in your kitchen substantially increases your annual radiation dose. The radon which can build up in your basement if you live in the mountains comes from rocks. Radon is one of the byproducts of uranium's natural decay chain.
After that is cosmic rays from space. Living at higher altitudes increases your exposure to this radiation source, since there's less atmosphere above you to absorb it. A transcontinental flight exposes you to about as much additional radiation as a medical x-ray. All the people who fled Japan after Fukushima by flying home unwittingly subjected themselves to more radiation during the flight than they would have received from Fukushima if they had just stayed in Japan.
Anyhow, uranium is water soluble. As a result, seawater has a much higher concentration of natural radionuclides than you normally encounter on land. So if you're that paranoid about radiation, you shouldn't swim in the ocean (you shouldn't even go to the beach, where the sand and sun will irradiate you). The increase in radioactivity from pre- to post-Fukushima is tiny compared to natural levels. The reason we know it's coming from Fukushima is not because the water has suddenly become radioactive. It's because the radioactivity is coming from certain isotopes which have short half-lives so have long since disappeared as a natural radiation source. Fukushima was the only recent event which created a bunch of those short-lived isotopes, so we know that if we detect radiation from those isotopes, that they must have come from Fukushima.