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James Massola and Andrew Darby
Japan (click here) will respect an International Court of Justice order to end its annual Antarctic whale hunt despite "deep disappointment" with the landmark decision, it said on Monday.
The Court decided in favour of Australia, ruling that Japan's whale hunt in the Southern Ocean was not scientific and it should cease the program "with immediate effect".
"As a state that respects the rule of law ... and as a responsible member of the global community, Japan will abide by the decision of the court," Japan's chief negotiator Koji Tsuruoka said outside the United Nations' top court in The Hague...
Japan was lying and had been lying to the IWC for a long time. They masked their whale hunt as research and everyone knew it had nothing to do with research. Either a major nation in this world respects the international community and it's rule of law or it doesn't. If it doesn't there needs to be consequences. This order ends Japan's program. A program, I might add, that was started by the USA with Japan after WWII to begin to establish it's economy.
Post by Cathy Britt
Community Contributor for QUEST Northwest
Jul 19, 2011
SEATTLE, Wash.—Nothing excites whale researchers and whale fanatics more (click here) than seeing a new calf born into the pod. However, researchers have learned that calf survival rates are incredibly low, especially for the orca’s first born. The mother’s young calf often dies because of something the mother passes on to her offspring—PCBs....
First it was the Blue Whales, then the Fin Whales, then the Humpback and then the Minkes. It never stopped. Then when all the major baleen species were hunted to near extinction they turned to the Orcas. That was about five years ago and then the number of young started to drop because the Orcas were being hunted at the same time they were succumbing to PCBs.
That was another thing. Japan never cared that whale meat carried dangerous chemicals within it. The price was high, the delicacy rare and that is all that mattered. They justified the toxins within the meat as LOW and tolerable. The entire venture by Japan was ill fated from the beginning. When the USA encouraged the whaling industry with Japan they never bothered to perform surveys of them until the IWC in 1946.
The idea behind any research was to find why their numbers were dwindling. After the community learned all it could possibly know about whales of all species, the reason for their losses were obvious. Never was scientific investigation ever suppose to add to their endangered status, but, relieve it. Japan claiming whaling ships were research ships were counter to everything the scientific community believed about the ethnics involved. It was obvious here was no research conducted on those ships.
In the picture above are innumerable Orcas. A scientific investigation needs that many dead Orcas? I think not.
If the whales survive and flourish, if the seals continue to live and give birth, and if I can contribute to ensuring their future prosperity, I will be forever happy."
- Paul Watson
