14 DAY TRIAL // This year's March 31 was a good day for conservation efforts. Thus, it was on this date that the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled that Japan's whaling program in the Southern Ocean was illegal and ordered the country to put an end to it.
At first, Japan promised that it would abide by the International Court of Justice's verdict, and would pull the plug on its whaling program in the Antarctic. However, just days later, it had a change of heart, and said that it would continue hunting marine mammals in these waters.
Recent news on the topic says that, unfortunately, the country was dead serious when it announced that it would try to resuscitate whaling activities in the Southern Ocean. Thus, Mongabay informs that Japan is to present plans for a new supposed research program in this part of the world later this year.
“We will carry out extensive studies in cooperation with ministries concerned to submit a new research programme by this autumn to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), reflecting the criteria laid out in the verdict,” Hayashi Yoshimasa, minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, said in a recent statement.
As previously reported, what caused the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands to rule against Japan's whaling program in the Antarctic was the fact that the country was killing too many marine mammals for its story that it was conducting mere research activities to have any credibility.
More so given the fact that, quite often, the meat taken from whales butchered in the Southern Ocean ended up on people's plates. In light of these facts, the United Nations court has sided with conservationists who have long argued that Japan is in fact carrying out commercial whaling activities and trying to pass them as research.
The country dismisses these accusations and maintains that it is only killing whales to keep tabs on their population and to determine whether or not there are enough such marine mammals swimming in the Antarctic for commercial harvests to once again be carried out.
By the looks of it, the new research program that Japan wishes to present the International Whaling Commission with later this year boils down to asking for permission to kill 100 coastal minke whales instead of 120, and 110 total offshore marine mammals instead of 160. What's more, the country says that it no longer wants to kill minke whales in the deep ocean.
Japan expects that, by scaling back its whaling program in the Southern Ocean, it will manage to twist the International Whaling Commission's and the International Court of Justice's arm into allowing it to once again go hunting whales in the Antarctic.
As was to be expected, conservationists have not taken lightly to the news that Japan wishes to resume whaling in said part of the world. In a statement, Junichi Sato with Greenpeace said, “This announcement is a huge disappointment and flies in the face of the UN’s International Court of Justice ruling last month. The continued commercial hunting of whales, supposedly for research purposes will surely be challenged legally, especially when endangered species are still being targeted.”