Greenpeace on trial for fighting unjustified whale slaughter

Greenpeace Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, is in Japan and has been interviewed recently by the Sydney Morning Herald

"I think that this is not only about whaling, it is about actually going to the heart of the quality of democracy, human rights, freedom of assembly, association and expression," Dr Naidoo says.

Japanese Whaling Research Mutilate rare Baird's Beacked whale carcass

Japanese Whaling Research Mutilate rare Baird's Beacked whale carcass.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has just released video footage from a whale hunt that occurred late last month.

Baird's beaked whales are rare, but are exempt from whaling bans since they are still classified as small cetaceans. Around 60 Baird's a year are hunted commercially in northern Japan and sold in Japanese supermarkets. However, tests have revealed extremely high levels of mercury in the meat, which could pose a serious health risk.

EIA campaigner Clare Perry says the Japanese government should act to stop the consumption of contaminated whale and dolphin products. "The cumulative effects of this toxin could be devastating," she says.

Save the Whale: Stop the Japanese 'Slaughter-driven Research"

The International Whaling Commission has backed an ambitious Australian plan for non-lethal whale research (Image: John W. Warden / Rex Features)

The International Whaling Commission(IWC) may be shifting towards a more conservation-oriented role after this week backing an ambitious Australian plan for non-lethal whale research.

"It's part of a move by the IWC from being a whalers' club to being a whale conservation body," says Patrick Ramage, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). "There's a bit of a sea change going on at the commission."

Presented by Australian environment minister Peter Garrett, the AU$1.5-million ($1.2 million) plan aims to demonstrate the value of non-lethal methods for tracking and researching whales. It contrasts with Japan's controversial "research" programme, which has been described as a front for commercial whaling.

Japan Whale Killings are not Research

IN 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling to allow stocks to replenish. However, this ongoing ban allows member nations to grant themselves special permits to kill whales for scientific research, with the proviso that the whale meat is utilised following data collection.

Only Japan holds a special permit. Its current research programme, which started in 2000 and is run by the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), proposes to kill more than 1000 whales a year in the Antarctic and the western north Pacific. The stated objectives are to determine the population structure and feeding habits of several whale species, including endangered fin and sei whales, in order to "manage" stocks.

Japan has already been widely criticised for its whaling, which is generally seen as a thinly disguised hunting operation. But with the 2009 IWC meeting looming, it is worth rehearsing the arguments against scientific whaling.

Although Japan's early results produced useful information, recent advances in non-lethal techniques such as biopsies mean that data can now be obtained without killing whales. Similarly, it is no longer necessary to kill whales to work out what they have been eating, as this can be determined from DNA in samples of faeces.

The scientific impact of the research is also limited. Relatively little research is published in international peer-reviewed journals, compared with research programmes on other marine mammals such as dolphins. According to the ICR, scientific whaling has produced 152 publications in peer-reviewed journals since 1994. However, just 58 of these papers were published in international journals. The rest were IWC reports or articles published in domestic journals, largely in Japanese. Most of the findings are not circulated among the wider scientific community, and the failure to subject papers to impartial review renders the value of much of this literature questionable.

Whether the results from scientific whaling are useful for stock management has also been questioned. The Scientific Committee of the IWC has explicitly stated that the results generated by the Japanese Whale Research Program in the Antarctic (JARPA) "were not required for management". Independent research shows that the data may overestimate whale abundance by up to 80 per cent (Marine Ecology Progress Series, vol 242, p 295).