Commercial Whaling On The Horizon

The Age

Friday June 1, 2007

Andrew Darby, Anchorage, Alaska

JAPAN is modernising its whaling fleet ahead of this summer's Antarctic hunt in what is seen as evidence of its quest to resume full-scale commercial whaling.

A new harpoon-equipped chaser boat is being built to replace the last of the 1980s-style chasers still in service, a spokesman for Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research told The Age.

Also under consideration is a new factory ship to replace the ageing and accident-prone Nisshin Maru, sources at the International Whaling Commission meeting said.

The chaser is the third of the Yushin Maru series of fast ships to be built in the past six years.

Costing a reported $A16 million, it would add substantially to the whaling power at Japan's disposal. The nation is trying to increase the Antarctic kill by moving into larger species, taking 50 fin whales and 50 humpbacks in addition to the 935 minke whales on its list for the past two years.

Plans for a new factory ship became more pressing after the Nisshin Maru, a 22-year-old converted factory fishing trawler, caught fire for a second time in Antarctica last February, killing one crewman.

Japan's delegation leader to the IWC, Joji Morishita, declined to comment on the cause, but the ship was repaired and is now whaling in the North Pacific.

A recent report in Suisan Keizai, the Japanese fisheries newspaper, said a new factory ship was under discussion because the Nisshin Maru's capacity was not great enough to meet new research demands.

The head of oceans campaigns for Greenpeace International, Shane Rattenbury, said: "This is a large-scale investment of capital, which takes 20 or 30 years to pay off. This also points to the future of the IWC, and the kinds of deals Japan is talking about."

Australia's Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said it was likely the ship-building would be underwritten by Japanese government subsidy.

"This is the absurdity," Mr Turnbull said. "You've got a heavily subsidised whale-killing industry resisting efforts to stop it, when these whales can generate an entirely self-sustaining whale-watching industry."

Inside the IWC last night, Japan dropped its demand for a coastal whaling quota in an apparent attempt to gain support for other proposals.

But as talks continued over plans to hunt humpbacks, the new Japanese resolution seeking recognition of coastal whalers' needs was rejected by Mr Turnbull as an attempt to promote a future commercial catch.

As New Zealand's Conservation Minister Chris Carter tried to negotiate a solution, he met the mayor of Yokohama, Hiroshi Nakada, who is seeking to host the IWC meeting in 2009.

FOCUS

? Northern Exposure NEWS 13

© 2007 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home