Chile calls for Japan to suspend whale hunt

(Nov. 22, 2007) Chile’s Ministry for Foreign Relations responded Wednesday to Japan’s decision to increase it whale hunting activity (ST, Nov. 21) by calling on Japan “to suspend this activity indefinitely.”

The Ministry said the resumption of hunting activites “contravenes the spirit of the 1986 moratorium on commercial hunting of the species,” thus adding its voice to mounting international criticism against
Japan’s largest ever whale hunt. British authorities said they were considering high-level diplomatic action to protest the hunt, saying they had “serious reservations as to its ‘scientific value.’”

Cristián Gabriel Gutiérrez Rojas, an economist at NGO Oceana Chile, told the Santiago Times that the Japanese were “sending a very bad signal to the world” and “by breaking the agreement, they have caused an international problem.”

Government officials in United States said the same research targets professed by the Japanese could be achieved without killing the large mammals. According to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, “While recognizing Japan’s legal rights, under the International Whaling Convention (IWC), to conduct this hunt, we note that non-lethal research techniques are available to provide almost all relevant data on whale populations.”

The Japanese intend to kill 1,035 whales for scientific purposes, including 50 fin whales, 50 humpback whales and 935 minke whales. Although the IWC agreed a moratorium on whale hunting in 1986, Japan has
continued to hunt hundreds of whales every year since as a “research project,” hunting down 10,500 of the large mammals under this pretext since 1987.

However, this season’s catch will be more than twice their usual quota and for the first time since a global ban in the mid 1960s it will also include humpback whales, a species considered vulnerable to extinction,
with just 40,000 humpbacks remaining on the planet.

Two environmental groups - Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace, - launched ships to monitor and hinder the hunt. Despite reports to the contrary, Sea Shepherd says it has no intention of ramming the whaling fleet vessels.

“We have never rammed a Japanese whaler, we have never said we will ram a Japanese whaler and we have never implied that we will ram a Japanese whaler,” said Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson. “The terrorists are the Japanese whalers. They are targeting highly endangered whales in a whale sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium on commercial whaling.”

(Ed. Note: Please see today’s feature story for related information on this topic.) SOURCES: BBC NEWS, SEA SHEPHERD By Rupert Rowling (editor@santiagotimes.cl)
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