When Japan's so-called 'scientific' whaling program was launched in the Antarctic in 1987, Japan's domestic press reported that the program was intended to keep the whaling industry alive until a way could be found to reverse the moratorium on commercial whaling. Each year since then the IWC has criticised the program, pointing out that the information produced is not necessary for the management of whales, and called on Japan to stop and every year Japan has gone ahead with the program which it has named JARPA (Japan's Research Program in the Antarctic).

The whaling is managed by the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) which was set up in 1987 as a non profit foundation with a ten million US dollar donation from the whaling industry and is sustained by a grant of about 9 million US dollars a year from the government of Japan and by the sales of whale meat. In 1994 Japan started a second 'research' program in the North Pacific and in 1995 it increased the number of minke whales killed in the Antarctic from 330 to 440 a year.

So-called 'scientific' whaling in the Antarctic is supposed to provide data for management of whale populations, studying things like the age distribution of the population. The only use for such data is in setting quotas for a commercial industry. And TWO years after JARPA began, the IWC ADOPTED a modern management regime which does not use this type of data. At a workshop of IWC scientists, convened to review the program after it had run for 8 years, the group agreed unanimously (including the Japanese scientists) that the data from JARPA were 'not required for management'

In any case, in 1994 the IWC designated the entire Southern Ocean as a whale sanctuary where the killing of whales for commercial purposes was prohibited, regardless of the state of the populations. So even if Japan's program could produce data useful for management, these data would not be needed.

Clearly Japan's 'scientific' whaling does not produce needed which is needed or even useful. The only important product from JARPA is whale meat and in this area JARPA is indeed a success. Every year the factory ship arrives back from the Antarctic with nearly 2,000 tonnes of whale meat on board and this meat is fed into the commercial distribution system. Although the balance sheet of the ICR shows no profit, the wholesalers and distributors of the meat are under no such constraints. In 1997 ICR officials announced that the year's catch from the Antarctic, 1,995 tonnes, would be sold for 3.5 billion yen (33 million US dollars at current rates) and that retail prices would be three times as high. So an additional income of over 60 million US dollars was generated in the distribution network.