Japan will keep whaling despite new IWC ruling

Japan plans to resume killing whales in spite of an International Whaling Commission vote to restrict ‘scientific whaling’.

A four-day meeting of the whale conservation body in Slovenia ended yesterday with a 35 to 20 vote, with five abstentions, to restrict the issuing of scientific whaling permits, an IWC outcomes document says. 

Representatives from Japan subsequently announced a new whaling programme will proceed, starting this summer and without the Commission's approval, according to a Science Media Centre press release. 

In March this year the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan’s whaling breached scientific whaling rules. 

University of Auckland Coastal and Marine Science graduate school director Rochelle Constantine is disappointed but not surprised by Japan’s defiance.

The Japanese Government chose to reinterpret the court findings, Dr Constantine says in a media release. 

"Japanese whale scientists have yet to provide any compelling evidence that we need to kill whales to answer questions about, amongst other things, whale stock structure, diet, age, reproductive biology and role in ecosystem functioning,” she adds.

Victoria University law school senior lecturer Joanna Mossop says although the court found Japan’s whaling programme was illegal, there was nothing in the ruling to prevent Japan from revising its programme to bring it within the law.

“Although Japan indicated that it would halt its Southern Ocean whaling programme for a year to respond to the Court's criticisms, it made it clear that it was still committed to whaling under the scientific permit exception in the future,” Ms Mossop says.

The IWC resolution is not binding and Japan has stated it doesn’t agree with its conditions, she says.

Further resolutions were adopted on aboriginal subsistence whaling, highly migratory cetacean species, and civil society participation and transparency at the IWC.