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Japan says to spare humpback whales again
2008-11-13
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan will again spare humpback whales from its annual Antarctic hunt in the face of strong protests by Australia and environmentalists, an official said Thursday. Japan last season planned to hunt humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s, enraging Australia where slow progression along the coast and intricate songs have turned the whales into a major tourist attraction But Japan at the last minute suspended its plan to harpoon 50 humpbacks under an agreement brokered by the US chief of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). "We will refrain from catching humpbacks this season again," said Hideaki Okada, an official at Japan's Fisheries Agency. "We've been suspending the humpback catch because the IWC chair had requested us to do so to serve efforts to normalise talks at the IWC," he said. A special envoy has been leading efforts to temper the tone at the IWC, whose meetings had turned into bitter showdowns between whaling supporters and opponents. Japan aims to kill some 1,000 whales a year using a loophole in a 1986 global whaling moratorium that allows "lethal research" on the ocean giants. Japan, calling whaling part of its culture, makes no secret the meat ends up on dinner tables. Only Norway and Iceland defy the whaling moratorium entirely. Last season, Japan caught 551 whales in the northwest Pacific and Antarctic oceans, just over half its target, due to harassment by Sea Shepherd ecological activists who hurled stink bombs and hopped onto the whaling ship. Okada said Japan was maintaining the target of catching around 1,000 whales in the expedition due to set sail for the Antarctic later this month. He denied a report Thursday in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper which said that Japan was cutting its whaling target by one-quarter. Sea Shepherd militants have vowed again to physically stop the Japanese whalers, with captain Paul Watson saying Thursday that Hollywood mermaid Daryl Hannah will be joining the anti-whaling campaign at the end of the month. But the more moderate environmental group Greenpeace has said it will not chase the whalers this year, instead focusing on clearing two activists facing prison in Japan related to an investigation into whaling.
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