Norway, Japan, and Iceland Accelerate War on Whales

Last spring, the International Whaling Commission(IWC) and the scientific community berated Norway for touting inflated, scientifically unsound estimates of minke whale populations. Norway responded by admitting that its counts were inaccurate, but refused to cease whaling. This summer, Norwegian whalers learned the shortcomings of their "kill now, count later" approach. Even after extending their illegal commercial hunt by four days, whalers fell 20 kills short of their self-mandated 232-minke quota. Norway plans to continue the minke hunt despite growing condemnation from the international community and the mounting economic toll of a global consumer boycott of Norwegian products.

In November, Japan launched a "research" whale hunt in the newly created Antarctic Whale Sanctuary, through which it plans to take 400 minke whales, an increase of 100 whales over last year's quota. Takanori Ohashi of Japan's Fisheries Agency contends that expanding research requires the higher kill quota. This hunt has long been recognized by the environmental community and the majority of IWC members as primarily a commercial hunt masquerading as science. The carcasses from this whale hunt are distributed to wholesalers and restaurants after scientific analysis. Japan remains the world's largest consumer of whale meat, supplied in part by black market trade in minke, humpback, and fin whales.

Iceland's fisheries minister Thorsteinn Palsson will soon propose that the Icelandic parliament authorize a minke whale hunt. Palsson will act on a 1994 government commission's recommendation that minke whales be hunted on the basis of economic and ecological necessity. Many Icelandic scientists claim that an overabundance of minke whales, not continued overfishing by humans, is exacerbating the problem of diminishing North Atlantic fish stocks and that fewer minke would benefit the highly endangered blue whale by decreasing direct food competition.

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Ocean Alert -Winter/Spring 1996.

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