Japan Ordered to End Whaling as Hunt Is Not Science, Court Rules

Japan was ordered to suspend its whaling program because the hunt can not be justified for scientific research purposes, in a court ruling that marks the biggest boost to efforts to protect the marine mammals since a 1986 global moratorium on commercial harvests.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague said Japan’s open-ended program that allows for the killing of about 1,000 whales a year in the Southern Ocean must cease. Japan should not restart whaling unless it can prove the hunt is for scientific purposes and can’t be done by non-lethal means, it said in delivering the ruling today. In its suit against Japan, Australia said the research was a “ruse” to skirt the prohibition against commercial killing.

The court said in the ruling that Japan’s current research program, known as JARPA II, “can broadly be characterized as scientific research, though the evidence does not establish that the program’s design and implementation are reasonable in relation to achieving its stated objectives. The Court concludes that the special permits granted by Japan for the killing, taking and treating of whales in connection with JARPA II are not for purposes of scientific research.”

Meat Market

Japan has been the most active of the traditional whaling nations to use the scientific research provision of the international treaty on whaling to continue killing the animals and keeping alive a market for their meat. Japan has taken more than 13,000 whales since the start of the moratorium, saying its research can only be conducted by lethal means.

Unlike Norway and Iceland, which have continued with commercial whaling, Japan has worked within the moratorium’s framework, which permits whaling for reasons of scientific research. The government has previously said it would respect the decision of the court in the case.

“It was no coincidence that Japan only started to issue special permits authorizing large-scale so-called ‘scientific whaling’ immediately after the moratorium on whaling for commercial purposes came into effect,” Australia said in its complaint. The permits “were but a ruse to enable the continuation of whaling by Japan.”

Japan killed almost 95 percent of the 14,410 whales hunted for research since the moratorium, the country said in its suit. In the 34 years prior to the moratorium taking effect, a total of 2,100 whales were killed for research, it said.

‘Legitimate Right’

“The research take of whales is not a violation or an abuse of a loophole in the international convention,” Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a post on its website before the decision. “Quite the contrary, this is a legitimate right of the contracting party” under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.

In January, U.S. Ambassador to China Caroline Kennedy criticized the killing of bottlenose dolphins by Japan in an annual hunt off the coastal town of Taiji. “Deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive-hunt dolphin killing,” Kennedy said in a post on Twitter on Jan. 18, referring to the method by which the animals are herded into a cove before being killed.

Factory Ships

With the advent of modern whaling techniques, such as explosive-tipped harpoons and factory ships, whaling nations were still killing tens of thousands of the animals a year in the mid-20th century, pushing many species near extinction. Despite the moratorium, some species have struggled to recover. Unlike fish that can lay hundreds of eggs, whales are mammals that tend to birth a single calf every two to four years, with gestation periods lasting as long as 18 months.

Growing public awareness of the killing of whales helped fuel the modern environmental movement, with groups such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the Sea Shepard Conservation Society gaining international recognition. The campaign to “Save the Whales” led to calls for a ban on whaling that gave rise to the passage of the moratorium by a majority of the nations of the International Whaling Commission in 1982 that was implemented four years later.

Subsidizing Hunt

Conservation groups say that Japan has championed scientific whaling as a way to keep its industry alive and maintain a culture of eating whale meat until such time as it can work with other nations to weaken or overturn the moratorium. Greenpeace estimates the Japanese government spends about 6 billion yen ($58 million) annually on its whale hunt, recovering about 5 billion yen from the sale of meat. Falling demand in Japan has left the government with stockpiles of frozen meat, while still spending about $10 million a year above what it recovers to subsidize the hunt.

Japan says it “strongly supports” the international protection of endangered whale species such as the blue whale, while criticizing the moratorium for also covering more abundant species that may not have been threatened, such as the minke whales it hunts in waters near Antarctica.