14 DAY TRIAL // Japan is considered one of the nations with the highest technology and assumes one of the highest life standards. That's why it's a shame that Japan is still defying the international ban of commercial whaling, which could lead to the extinction of 5 out of 13 great whale species.
The abundance of whale meat delivered by a program aimed for the scientific research is really interesting, as Japan actually defines its annual whale hunt. In every city you may find at least one restaurant which serves whale meat. It's a quite unique research...
In the Japanese view, whales are a just another wild natural resource, a sea food just like the fish or the lobsters. Or just a game. Modern urban Japanese tuck into whale meat, looking at it as something cultural. In this case, in Europe it was something cultural to burn witches at the stake. Culture can change, adapting to the present.
It is not exactly Japan the nation which drove some species towards extinction but rather the Americans and the Europeans, especially the British and Norwegians. But the Japanese can still be blamed for having brought to extinction some marine species from their waters, some even before the contact with the Europeans, like the Steller's sea cow.
And by no means does anything justify the task of the Japanese to finish off the planet's last whales. In fact, it was a conjuncture: if the Japanese had had the European advanced technique earlier in their history, should they have been involved in the early whale massacre?
Another issue is the harpooning. The harpoons have an explosive charge into their tips, which detonates inside the whale.
"Usually the first harpoon did not kill the animal - that would need a second firing, perhaps a third.", explained Akira Okiyoshi, a harpooner who spent 30 seasons hunting in Antarctic waters.
This is a noble way of dying for one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet.
What's the difference between this and halal abattoirs where cows are killed by draining out their blood, or fish impaled on steel hooks in the open ocean, or deer caught in snares waiting only for the relief of a huntsman's bullet?
And to make things worse, over 50 % of the whales killed by the Japanese fleet in the Antarctic last summer were pregnant, the Humane Society International (HSI) has announced.
"Of the 505 Antarctic minke whales killed, 262 of them were pregnant females, while one of the three giant fin whales killed was also pregnant." said the group.
The data is offered by a review of Japanese reports from their 2006-07 whale hunting campaign in Antarctic and were released ahead of the resumption of a Federal Court case the organization is taking against Japanese whaling company Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd.
"These are gruesome statistics that the Japanese government dresses up as science", said HSI spokeswoman Nicola Beynon. "The full hearing will be to determine whether Japanese whalers are in breach of Australian law when they hunt whales in the Australian Whale Sanctuary in Antarctica and whether the court will issue an injunction for the hunt to be stopped. HSI will ask for the final hearing to be held as soon as possible before the hunt starts up again this summer. It has been three years since HSI launched the case and many hurdles have been overcome to get to this point." said Benyon.
"It horrifies Australians to know that pregnant humpback whales breeding in the warm waters off Australia this winter will be targeted by the Japanese hunters in Antarctic waters this Christmas."