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14 December 2001
Greenpeace speaks to whalers in Southern
ocean
 After
a week of bad weather the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise finally
caught up with whalers in the Southern ocean. In the early hours
of this morning a Japanese Greenpeace campaigner on board the MV
Arctic Sunrise spoke directly to the crew of the factory ship, Nisshin
Maru.
Yuko Hirono, speaking from an inflatable boat, radioed to request
the whaling fleet to stop whaling and inform them that Greenpeace
would be taking non-violent action to prevent it. For the first
time ever the whalers seemed to be listening as the message was
relayed through the Nisshin Maru's intercom in Japanese to all the
crew.
 "When
even the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has urged the Japanese
Government to end this catch, there is no justification whatever
for the whaling to continue," said Hirono. "Greenpeace
will continue its campaign until whaling has been stopped."
In just five months, the next meeting of the IWC will be held in
the whaling fleet's own home port of Shimonoseki. For the last few
years the Japanese Fisheries Agency has been running a high profile
campaign to swing the balance of votes within the IWC and bring
back full scale commercial whaling. This year it could well achieve
a majority in the vote putting the future of the worlds whales at
risk.
 The
Japanese government claims they are taking Minke whales in the Antarctic
for scientific research. But of the 2000 metric tonnes of meat,
roughly provided by the 440 whales the whalers intend to catch this
year, only a few kilograms are claimed to be used for science, the
earplugs, the sex organs, and the stomachs.
"This take of whales is based purely on profit and is intended
as the forerunner of a much larger hunt," said Hirono. The
meat will bring a wholesale return of at least 3.5 billion yen (US$28
million).
"It's wrong to think that because we have a temporary ban
on commercial whaling the whales are saved, they're not. Unless
the governments of the world act to stop them Japan will overturn
the ban and full-scale whaling will begin again," said Hirono.
|
whales | whaling | environmental impacts | solutions | greenpeace & the whales
In
recent years Japan has actively and openly corrupted the IWC
by using Overseas Development Aid (ODA) to buy the votes of
some existing members and to recruit new members in support
of a resumption of commercial whaling. Although some countries
have challenged Japan and Norway's attempts to resume commercial
whaling, the reality is that Japan is buying a return to commercial
whaling.
