Japan will dispatch a whaling fleet to the Antarctic on Tuesday after a one year suspension, the government said, defying international criticism and a UN legal ruling that the "research" expedition is a commercial hunt in disguise.
"The research ships will depart for new whale research in the Antarctic on December 1, 2015," the Fisheries Agency said Monday in a statement on its website.
Tokyo has for years come under intense global pressure to stop hunts that opponents decry as inhumane but that Japan says are an inherent part of its traditional culture.
The United Nations' top legal body judged last year that Japan's so-called scientific whaling activity in the Southern Ocean was a disguise for commercial hunts.
It's for scientific research. Tasty, tasty research.
Related Stories
Japan says it's time to allow sustainable whaling
Few conservation issues generate as emotional a response as whaling. Are we now about to see countries killing whales for profit again? Commercial whaling has been effectively banned for more than 30 years, after some whales were driven almost to extinction. But the International Whaling Committee (IWC) is currently meeting in Brazil and next week will give its verdict on a proposal from Japan to end the ban.
[...] IWC members agreed to a moratorium on hunting in 1986, to allow whale stocks to recover. Pro-whaling nations expected the moratorium to be temporary, until consensus could be reached on sustainable catch quotas. Instead, it became a quasi-permanent ban, to the delight of conservationists but the dismay of whaling nations like Japan, Norway and Iceland who argue that whaling is part of their culture and should continue in a sustainable way.
But by using an exception in the ban that allows for whaling for scientific purposes, Japan has caught between about 200 and 1,200 whales every year. since, including young and pregnant animals.
[...] Hideki Moronuki, Japan's senior fisheries negotiator and commissioner for the IWC, told the BBC that Japan wants the IWC to get back to its original purpose - both conserving whales but also "the sustainable use of whales". [...] Japan, the current chair of the IWC, is suggesting a package of measures, including setting up a Sustainable Whaling Committee and setting sustainable catch limits "for abundant whale stocks/species". As an incentive to anti-whaling nations, the proposals would also make it easier to establish new whale sanctuaries.
Previously: Japan to Resume Whaling, Fleet Sails to Antarctic Tuesday
122 Pregnant Minke Whales Killed in Japan's Last Hunting Season
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:25AM
Sink the ship. Since they refuse to listen to the world community, and continue to attempt to extinct animals that belong to the world for their culinary desires? Make them fair game, tell every ship on the planet that Japanese whaling ships can be hunted with ZERO penalty.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:38AM
That's a proportional response to lawful whaling.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @09:33PM
It isn't lawful. That is the point. They are defying a lawful order they signed treaties to be bound by.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:47AM
So are Green"Peace" looking around to hire a submarine plus a few torpedoes? Seems their idea of little boats didn't work out too well in the past. Catamarans and dinghys vs a whaling ship? Are any Ruskies still in the ex Soviet hardware for hire business?
My tongue has run out of cheek to be in... :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:31AM
Even the butt cheek? Pervert.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 01 2015, @09:52AM
I'd say their little boats have worked remarkably well in the past. They've hindered whaling operations and saved whale lives.
Furthermore, the fact that we are even having this conversation is due in large part to the fact that Greenpeace's efforts have put whaling into the public consciousness and onto the international agenda.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by niceholejohnson on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:13PM
whale lives
Who cares? Nobody, that's who.
Whales are insignificant, much like you.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:36PM
Cute. You get the dignity of a response because at least you aren't trolling under AC.
If nobody cares, why is it being reported by every major news organisation in world?
Or is it that when you say "nobody" you actually mean "not me", because in your sad little head you are the only person in the world who matters?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:52PM
You are the sad moron supporting greenpeace jihaddis. You and your buddies at greeenpeace and peta deserve to rot at the bottom of ocean.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday December 01 2015, @11:45PM
That's all fine and dandy to say until a giant O'Neill cylinder piloted by space whales deploys a giant soccer ball-looking radome and wrecks your day!
(Score: 4, Funny) by bryan on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:40PM
Personally, I'd recommend using a Klingon Bird of Prey [wikia.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:04PM
Sea Shepherd has been doing the work. Greenpeace has refused to help Sea Shepherd in the past -- GP is mostly a marketing and fundraising group. Sea Shepherd is the one who goes out and tries to put a stop to things.
(Score: 1) by cngn on Tuesday December 01 2015, @09:15PM
Yep Sea Shepherd has been going it alone when it comes to action, I've been a long time supporter here in Australia. I send them atleast a 100AUD a month I'm going to double that now.
The time for talking to the whalers has ended years ago, it started out as a lie, scientific research my ass, now it's like the city that launches these boats thinks they are a law unto themselves.
Enough is enough
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:06PM
But Sea Shepard simply cannot stop the whaling, all they can do is slow it down. Considering how close to extinction these creatures are and how with each loss we creep ever closer to a point where there simply is not enough genetic diversity to sustain the species? The only rational choice is to sink the ships, otherwise future generations simply will never get to enjoy these creatures and our entire ecosystem could be irrevocably harmed.
Not to put too crude a point on it but the Japanese have proven time and time again they give ZERO fucks about international law or the risk of making creatures extinct (just look at how their restaurants responded to the news of the Blue Marlin being endangered by putting a large bounty for every Marlin brought in, almost like they get a perverse joy from eating one of the last of a species) and since there are millions of Japanese but only a few thousand or less when it comes to some of these whales species? We can afford to lose the Japanese on these ships a hell of a lot more than we can afford to lose the whales, so sink the ships.
Finally its a hell of a lot more economical to sink them than to try to merely harass them in the hopes of stopping them, after all you can strap a torpedo to damned near anything and as they have proven in the past Japanese whalers give zero fucks about ramming ships that get in their way. We tried talking, we tried being reasonable, they have made it clear they will not follow rule of law so what do we do when you have a criminal that will not follow the law? We use force, deadly force if necessary, to make them comply...sink the ship.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:25AM
Yes, Bomb Syria! Bomb Japan! Bomb Turkey!
Bomb bomb bomb, it always works well!
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:02PM
> Bomb bomb bomb, it always works well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00y3gV0dJow [youtube.com]
Yes, that's Dr House.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @11:28AM
but the we would be just as bad, or worse, than muslims
breaking the moral event horizon there, friend
how about we just impound the ships and fine them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:36PM
Fuck you and your green peace terrorists.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:25AM
An inherent part of its culture as stipulated by General Douglas MacArthur, the Scourge of the Pacific. Corncob pipe, feather boa dressing gown, he promised to return to the Phillipines, after he abandoned it to imperial Japanese forces. Maybe it was subtle revenge, suggesting that post-war Japan, suffering an extreme shortage of protein, start hunting whales. Did he know that this would cause Japan to be almost as much of an international pariah as they were when they invaded Manchuria? And the Japanese are too proud to admit that they were had. Well, at least they are not Norwegians.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:37AM
Only Greenpeace and ecoterrorists care about this.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:49AM
Yeah expect no. I'm a hunter, i don't care for greenpiece much, but the japs hunting whales is not acceptable, same goes for norwegians. Japs lie about it, so that in it self makes it not acceptable. I'd just send war ships to make sure their whaling ships do nothing, if i could.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by moondrake on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:01PM
I find this answer interesting. I think, if you are a hunter, you have very little logical reasons to disagree with whale hunting on the scales currently practiced by several countries. There is a lot of misinformation spread about this, but the Japanese whaling fleet has clear quota and rules about what and how many whales are caught. I do not want to claim that the guidelines are never violated (but this is the same for game hunting), but in general the program seems sensible to me as far as I was able to find out.
Now whether or not you feel like animals in general, or whales specifically, should be hunted at all is a different question. And although it is not nice to lie about the purpose of catching whales, it does not answer the question whether whaling itself is acceptable (Its sort of half a lie at that, since they do actually use some data for research, though not always, and quite possibly its not the primary reason for catching whales, but this is hard to prove). If you find it not acceptable to hunt whales for food (I do not, even though I have no problem with eating it, and in fact did), this still not automatically makes it OK for you to prevent other people from doing that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:13PM
I'm a hunter as well, and you know, it's just not the same. When deer and elk grace the endangered charts, then we can talk. If whales existed in such number they'd over compete for food thanks to their natural predators having been eradicated, you'd have made a great point.
If they want to eat whales, great. Whatever, if the quota doesn't hurt the sustainability of the species. Let's just not pretend science has anything to do with it.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Wednesday December 02 2015, @11:07AM
There are however whales and whales. Reading the wikipedia entries on whale hunting, there are charts of what species or populations are endangered and in what areas. In fact, the pro-whaling lobby argues that in some areas, there are simply too many whales compared to the amount of food available (in the case of whales one may perhaps even argue, though I do not know if this is valid, that hunting non-endangered species frees up food resources for the more endangered whales). The quota that for example Norway uses are revised yearly based on estimates of the population sizes and they are not allowed to hunt endangered species, or threatened populations. I still fail to see why it is so different from hunting other animals (assuming that the hunting is done responsibly).
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:08AM
Um, you do realize that the invasion of Manchuko was denounced by the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, and Japan just walked out. Kind of the end of the League of Nations, and the beginning of WWII. I mean, later, when Germany under the 3rd Reich, claimed the right to hunt whales in Poland, everyone realized the League was doomed, since it had no power to sanction any member state. And much later, when George W. the Bush said, "Thar she blows" about Iraq, well, what could anyone do? I mean, a nation state ruled in the same fashion as a Quaker Whaler out of New Bedford, with a captain named Ahab? Oh, I fear that this is only a case of an Asian nation coming on the scene much too late, after the novel has already been written. There will be no Japanese Ahab, no Japanese Starbuck, except for those Starbucks that are actually in Japan, and no Japanese "Modubi Diku", except, of course, when the international community does put pressure on Japan, as a civilized nation, to drop the pretense of research, and end the whale hunts entirely.
So, my dear AC, yes, more than Greenpeace and Sea Shepard (see! you can use their name! nothing bad will happen) care about this. And they will be heard. You, since you are Anonymous, must be too busy tracking down KKK members to see this, which is forgiveable. But make no mistake, whaling, like chattel slavery and natto, will vanish from the face of the earth! Mark my works. Or somebody else's words! Mark any words that open your mind to fact that Greenpeace is correct. I know it's hard. But, it gets better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:14PM
Wasn't the League of Nations the nemesis of the Black Justice League?
Or am I thinking of the Legion of Doom? . . .
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:45PM
History: destroyed by video games and comic books. As if the re-write of Dante wasn't bad enough, or the gay fascist version of the Persian Wars.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:50AM
I'm a carnivore, and I don't have any problems with killing and eating animals for food. However, I do object to harvesting wildlife. With seven billion of us, that's just the wrong way to go about it - there is too much danger of driving species extinct, of destroying food chains that we barely understand. Did you know that whale poo is a major source of nutrients for some types of plankton?
If we want grain, we farm it. If we want beef, we raise cattle. If we want fish, we (ought to) have fisheries. If Japan wants to eat whales, they need a big aquarium. Let the wildlife be wild.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Fledermaus on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:18AM
What do you kill if you don't kill wildlife? Or do you mean that someone else kills the animal, which you have never seen, and packs it nicely in a box that you pick up from a store? ;)
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:49AM
Pretty sure he means someone else guarantees there will be a plentiful supply of said animals, and their species is assured a continued existence.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gnuman on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:31AM
What do you kill if you don't kill wildlife?
Read up on difference between wildlife and livestock.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:32AM
If Japan wants to eat whales, they need a big aquarium.
As various posters posted a couple years ago, Japanese don't even particularly want to eat whales. It's nothing special. The problem with whales is that it takes way too long - about ten years - to grow a new whale; but it takes less than an hour to kill one. Perhaps back in the age of Moby Dick it was a fair fight between a few men in a boat and a huge animal. It is not so today.
I personally have no objection to eating wildlife... but only as long as it is done carefully, to not harm the population. Hunters know the basics of the lifecycle of a population. Sometimes it is necessary to kill some to save the rest. Say, an area can feed 100 deer from first snow in October to first grass in April. But there are 200 deer. How many deer will survive? Not even one - they will all die from hunger approximately in February. Killing 100 deer before the winter would have saved the herd. The nature controls the populations in exactly this way - it does not care that so many animals die. Humans can do better.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:01PM
I say limit our meat consumption to chickens. We still have millions of years of payback left in that. Dinosaur bastards.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by morgauxo on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:02PM
How barbaric!
While I agree that endangered species (including whales) should not be hunted I think you have it totally backwards.
There are plenty of species that can be hunted wild without any danger of extinction. Here in the US we have laws about that, game hunting is allowed at specific times and limited so that populations never drop too low.
I think hunting meat is far more humane than farming it. Hunted animals get to live their natural lives as they please. They eat their natural foods. They live in their natural homes. They mate naturally. They live their lives free until the day they are eaten by a predator (human), just like could have occured with some other natural predator.
Farmed animals live in an overcrowded pen where they have to be stuffed with antibiotics just not to get sick from exposure to too many other animals. They are fed unatural foods to fatten them up. They do not get to make their own kinds of nest, just some dirty straw to lay in. Unless selected for forced mating they are usually in a uni-sex environment, no families. With many species they are disfigured, for example chickens get their beaks cut off. This is their lives until they die.
Of course one can buy food that is certified to have been raised in more human farms. Such food will always be more expensive because the supply is lower. Such farms cannot produce the same volume of food. No matter how much you encourage people to buy from them you will never feed 7-billion people that way. If all the inhumane farms were converted you would just have a lot of poor people starving while the rich pay more for their food.
I can respect a vegan's opinion even though I am not one. I can understand not wanting to hurt other animals. I can respect a hunter, even though it has been a few years since I have hunted. Predation is natural and we are naturally predators. I can even understand farming, 7-billion people are too many to get our food just wandering through the woods. But... somehow thinking that hunting is more objectionable than farming?!?! That's just F'd up dude!
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:09AM
Unfortunately, the corporations continually get the government to redefine what it means to raise animals humanely. It's now humane to raise chickens in conditions so crowded that you need to cut off their beaks. And look into exactly what the term "cage free" means.
That said, one shouldn't over emote on the "natural state" of animal life. Farmed animals are normally slaughtered in a much more humane manner than are wild animals, whether the slaughterer is a human or another animal. Hobbs once described human life "in the state of nature" (whatever he meant by that) as "nasty, brutish, and short'. This is a fair description of the life of a wild animal. (Perhaps there are exceptions. Banacles might be an exception, e.g.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:31PM
Have you ever just sat in the woods and watched wild animals in the woods, going about their business? Short may be a correct description of their lives however I wouldn't say nasty and brutish applies unless you only chose to look at their dying moments.
Animals aren't slaughtered all that humanely either. It used to be common for them to just get shot in the head. Unfortunately animal rights activists protetested that method too much. Now they get electrocuted. In a chaotic, dirty environment electrocution is not always reliable. On the clock workers don't always have the time to make the distinction between dead and just stunned. Often animals get butchered alive!
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:00AM
Yes, I have. Some of them seem to do quite well, but I doubt that a human observer gets an accurate picture. (OTOH, Hobbs clearly overstated his case.)
OTOH, some animals escape being killed by a predator (including, but not limited to, humans) and suffer permanent injury that is untreated and unrecovered. Animals are the original Stoics (as well as the original Dyonesians). Were I choosing, I'd probably choose to be a wild animal, but with actual humane treatment there are valid arguments on both sides. Unfortunately, that doesn't describe most agricultural practices. And especially not the "factory farms".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:29AM
I'm not sure how it worked out, but the Japanese have tried to farm whales:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jan/14/highereducation.research [theguardian.com]
A company in the USA has been breeding killer whales, but has been ordered to stop doing so in California:
https://www.reefs.com/blog/2015/10/09/sea-world-california-banned-from-breeding-whales/ [reefs.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VanessaE on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:24AM
"To hunt a species to extinction is not logical."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:24AM
Whoever said the human race was logical?
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday December 01 2015, @11:03PM
Gracie is pregnant.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:29AM
Nuke the whales! [wikia.com]
Stop plate tectonics! [wimble.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:51AM
Nuke the whales!
Almost correct.
"Nuke the gay baby whales" to which is often added "for Jesus". Not being a Christian, I fail to see what the "for Jesus" adds to the sentiment. But as someone explained to me way back before the actual end of the cold war, once people start saying silly things like this, the actual probability of an actual nuclear exchange between the super-powers has gone way down. And of course, here we are today, not nuking whales! Except Japan is unintentionally nuking whales, and all other marine life, with outflow from the Fukushima plants. Irony, doth thou know no Godzilla?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:12AM
"Nuke the gay baby whales" to which is often added "for Jesus".
I never heard that, but I didn't grow up around those sort of folks, and not being a christian myself, I also don't know what Jesus has to do with anything.
Although my brother does like to compare himself to the mythical figure by (correctly) claiming to be a "loud-mouthed Jewish carpenter." And if Jesus was anything like my brother, I feel sorry for the folks he hung out with.
As an atheist myself, I find that sort of stuff amusing, though. In all fairness, I did find Jesus Christ, Superstar to be quite entertaining.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:01AM
> I did find Jesus Christ, Superstar to be quite entertaining.
In that case, I suspect you will be more than quite entertained by this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO1pq8uT1xA [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:01AM
"nuke a gay whale for jesus" .... "I fail to see what jesus adds..."
The point is that so many adherents of the other religion of peace, are into nuking things and other war, gay bashing, against any sort of environmental protection, and do it all in the name jesus. It's an obvious dig at right wing conservative evangelicals.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:05PM
"Nuke Gay Whales for Jesus" is one of my favorite bumper stickers, right after "Too Bad Ignorance Isn't Painful" and just ahead of "Gun Control Mean Hitting Your Target."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Whoever on Tuesday December 01 2015, @07:32AM
Japanese people don't really like eating whale meat that much. This is just some kind of imperialist BS -- telling the rest of the world not to meddle in Japanese affairs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @10:00AM
I think we should all tell them to quit drinking green tea. Reverse psychology!
(Score: 2) by snufu on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:17AM
For example, grilled, baked, or sashimi?
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:11PM
Tasty, tasty scientific research.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 01 2015, @12:23PM
It's one thing I never figured out in Japan. I only saw it a couple times after hundreds of enkai (formal parties). They'd set out a small tray with little morsels with toothpicks in them. It was not a staple or anything like that. The best I could figure was that it was a sort of vanity dish, kind of like basashi, which is raw sliced horsemeat. I never tried the whale out of principle, but the basashi was completely pointless.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:45AM
There are 3 nations that actively and commercially kill wales.
1. Norway
2. Iceland
3. Japan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling#Modern_whaling_.28since_about_1986.29 [wikipedia.org]
Iceland has steeply accelerated its commercial whaling, and Norway's quotas are still higher than Japan's. Japan's whaling program seems to be stubbornly stuck in the "it's not commercial" denial. Japan is also a major market for whale meat from Iceland and Norway.
Maybe economic sanctions are way to go. Human race is literally destroying the oceans, and we can't even leave whales be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:00PM
Iceland, Norway, and Japan:
A snippet from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, showing the alien ship coming to destroy us since there aren't any whales left.
Given that this was brought up in a movie *30* years ago, there is no excuse for us to even need to debate it today.
If they want fucking whale to consume, start growing it in whale farms, not slaughtering what is left of it on the open sea.