JAPAN CONTINUES TO MOCK SCIENCE - WHALING FLEET WILL SET OUT ON THIRD HUNT WITHIN A YEAR

10 May 2001

Shiogama, Japan - Ignoring the wishes of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the international body which regulates whaling, the Fisheries Agency of Japan over the next few days will send a whaling fleet into the North Pacific to take a self allocated quota of 160 sperm, Bryde's and minke whales. This is the second expanded "scientific" hunt in the North Pacific since the IWC met in July, 2000. In a bid to avoid media attention, the fleet will set out from Shimonoseki, Innoshima, and Shiogama.

The IWC does not endorse the hunt and has strongly urged Japan to call it off.

"This hunt has nothing to do with science, it is about making money," said John Frizell of the Greenpeace International Whales Campaign, noting that last summer's hunt concentrated on Bryde’s whales, the species with the highest commercial value. "When they return, the Fisheries Agency of Japan will tell us that they have discovered that whales eat fish. We already know that. Whales have been eating fish for tens of millions of years."

The Fisheries Agency has defended "research" whaling as essential to finding out how whales affect the world's fishery resources. But it is already well known that the problems of declining fish stocks are caused by over fishing.

"Last summer they ‘discovered’ that sperm whales eat squid," said Frizell. "But this has been known for at least a century. And they neglected to mention that the squid that these whales eat live so deep and swim so fast that humans can't catch them.

"This whaling fleet returned from its annual catch in the Antarctic less than a month ago. This voyage in the North Pacific will be the third Japanese whaling expedition conducted against the wishes of the IWC in the last 12 months. Greenpeace calls on the government of Japan to stop defying the IWC and to cancel plans for this catch."

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Motoji Nagasawa, in Japan ++81 3 5351 5412
John Frizell, in the UK, ++441273 476 839