Japan has announced that it will once again send its whaling fleet into the Southern Ocean. On Tuesday Dec. 1, 2015, four vessels—including the massive whale processing ship Nisshin Maru—left port in Shimonoseki, Japan for the waters south of Australia.
“We do not accept in any way, shape, or form the concept of killing whales for so-called ‘scientific research,’” said Australian environment minister Greg Hunt, in a statement released on Nov. 28, 2015.
Australia has been a major player in the Japan whaling controversy, as many of the whales in the Southern Ocean retreat to northern Australian waters in the winter. Some of the killing also takes plays in Australian territorial waters.
Commercial whaling was banned in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In 2014, after a landmark lawsuit, the International Court of Justice ordered the cessation of Japanese whaling.
However, whaling activity continues. Japan’s research program will resume its killing of minke whales near Antarctica in January 2016, with the aim of capturing 330 minke whale specimens, with the long-term goal of acquiring 4000 whales over the next 12 years.
Japan has been using a loophole in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) which allows for the killing of whales strictly for research purposes. Japanese scientists claim the lethal capture method is the only way to accurately assess the age of whale populations in the Southern Ocean. The whaling fleet paints the word “Research” in massive letters on all sides of their ships. Ships also feature signs hung on their sterns reading “Legal research under the ICRW.”
In April 2015, the IWC said that the Japanese government has yet to properly demonstrate the need to kill whales to achieve their research goals. Activist claims verified through independent investigation have shown that whale meat often ends up on store shelves in Japan.
Official government policy in Japan even states that the end goal of the research is to have commercial whaling resume.
“The solution is that we have to agree to disagree,” said Japan’s IWC commissioner Joji Morishita in a press conference on Dec. 7, 2015.
According to anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd, this is far from the solution. Before a court injunction ceased their activities, Sea Shepherd patrolled the Southern Ocean and engaged in direct action campaigns to interfere with Japanese research, including boarding whaling ships using a small fleet of Zodiak rafts.
“For years, Sea Shepherd took direct action against the whalers on the seas, saving one whale at a time from the Japanese harpoons,” said Sea Shepherd Founder Captain Paul Watson, in a Dec. 1, 2015 news release. “But if we are to bring the illegal slaughter to an end once and for all, we cannot simply defeat the Japanese whalers on the water; we need to defeat them in the courts.”
33 countries have threatened legal action against Japan, but these threats have been ineffective in the past and have often led to little legal follow-through.