Im not sure whether to laugh or cry. Today Japan officially announced it is going to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission, IWC and commence commercial whaling. Read Paul Watson s post below and the news paper article attached to get more info and perspective. In Japans statement they say they will not hunt and kill any whales in the Antarctic oceans. I celebrate that the harpoons will no longer explode in these majestic creatures in the southern oceans and the southern ocean whale sanctuary may become a reality. Yet Japan can be a deceiving renegade nation as we saw when the International Court of Justice, ICJ, ruled that japans whaling was illegal and they had to stop. We celebrated thinking no more whales would be killed in the Antarctic. In responce to the ICJ ruling Japan just said they would not recognize the highest court on Earth and went to the antarctic anyway and continued to kill whales. They may decide that the whales around Japan are too contaminated with radioactive waste from fukushima that they soon return to the antarctic to continue murdering whales. So as I take a deep breath and recognize the efforts of everyone and especially the brave Sea Shepherd souls who risked their lives working to protect the whales I hold and trust that this truce with the whales in the southern oceans is solid and will hold for all time. I also hold and trust that this is the dieing gasp of a whaling culture that is so out of touch with the rest of humanity they will eventualy be forced, possibly even by their own people, to stop killing whales and dolphins in the northern hemisphere and around Japanese economic waters as well. We have done our work getting them out of international waters. Now its up to the Japanese people to hold there head high rather than being shamed as a nation and stand up to the arrogant shameful atrocities of the old guard fisheries industry and government and stop this barbaric practice for all time.
SEA SHEPHERD STATEMENT ON JAPAN’S DECISION TO COMMERCIALLY SLAUGHTER WHALES
SEA SHEPHERD WELCOMES THE END OF WHALING IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN
Since 2002, Sea Shepherd has opposed Japanese whaling operations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary with expeditions to Antarctic waters first in 2002 followed by continuous campaigns from 2005 until 2017.
During this period over 6,000 whales were saved from the harpoons of Japanese commercial whalers posing as research whalers by Sea Shepherd interventions.
In 2017, the Japanese government began to invest millions of dollars in security efforts to prevent Sea Shepherd from engaging their fleets. These security measures included military grade real time surveillance.
Although this prevented Sea Shepherd from returning to the Southern Ocean in 2018, it also placed Japan in a position of expending huge resources on continuous security.
In other words, the cost of preventing Sea Shepherd intervention became very expensive.
This and the verdict of the International Court of Justice that exposed Japanese research as fraudulent, coupled with worldwide condemnation of their Southern Ocean activities has in the opinion of Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd led to this decision to declare they will openly undertake commercial whaling activities.
The scheme to pose as researchers will now be dropped and that means there can be absolutely no justification for hunting whales in an internationally established whale sanctuary. This will be the last year of Japanese whaling activities in the Southern Ocean.
Sea Shepherd’s objective of ending the slaughter of whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary has been realized. This is a victory for the campaign to make the Southern Ocean a whaling free zone.
If Japan decides to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) it will allow the IWC to pass the motion to establish the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary thus effectively ending whaling in the Southern Hemisphere.
Japan will now join Norway and Iceland as rogue outlaw whaling nations in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic.
The Whale Wars in the Southern Ocean will soon be over. The focus now must be the Northern Hemisphere.
Sea Shepherd welcomes this announcement by Japan and views it as a positive development.
Captain Paul Watson issued a statement saying, “We are delighted to see the end of whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. We are delighted that we will soon have a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary and we look forward to continuing to oppose the three remaining pirate whaling nations of Norway, Japan and Iceland. Whaling as a ‘legal’ industry has ended. All that remains is to mop up the pirates.”