(Still) Big in Japan
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The only outside observer was Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and some of his 44 volunteer crew members. Aboard the Farley Mowat, the Greenpeace co-founder Watson and his more aggressive activists hoped to damage the Japanese whaling ships so extensively that the whalers would be forced to stop their hunt. But with a ship 5 knots slower then the others, they were unsuccessful and were left behind the day of the ramming incident.
The confrontations came to a head about a week later, off the Mawson coast in the Australian Antarctic Territory, when a harpooner fired a shot over Greenpeace’s inflatable boat. The harpoon hit a whale, and as the animal descended beneath the surface the rope (which had fallen across the inflatable) knocked activist Texas Joe Constantine off balance and into the zero-degree water. Moronuki denied that the whalers caused the accident. “We have video,” he said. “And if you look at the videos provided by Greenpeace, you can find modification on their video.” He said that in an earlier video Constantine grabbed hold of the rope and then let himself fall into the water. Moronuki said Greenpeace later edited that out.
“It’s the most hardcore thing that Greenpeace does,” Rattenbury said of his work disrupting whale hunts. “It’s an emotional roller coaster down here. There’s a complete spectrum of emotions and experiences, from the most beautiful scenery you will ever see, the icebergs and the Antarctic coastline, to the horror and brutality of watching whales harpooned."
ICR has plans for 17 more years of whaling “with the purpose of paving the way to achieve sustainable use of whale resources,” including endangered humpbacks. They have plans to kill 50 humpbacks over the next two years, even though there may only be about 10,000 left. “What we are trying to do is to sustain utilization of whale resources based upon scientific evidence,” i.e. to know enough about how whales eat, grow and reproduce, so they can use the data to justify whaling.
ICR scientists claim that their research—since 1987 they’ve recorded killing 6,795 minke whales—has led to a number of discoveries that prove whaling can be sustainable. They claim they found two distinct species of minke whale, where there was thought to be only one. Their populations are abundant and healthy. Blubber and muscle tissues of Antarctic whales are the least contaminated with PCBs and DDT in the world. Whaling is even necessary now, they claim, because whales’ large appetites are depleting the ocean of fish, a staple human resource.
But ICR’s research has been backed by only a small minority of IWC committee scientists. Most say that ICR scientists’ conclusions are tenuous. “To say that you can exploit whales commercially and have it be sustainable is a complete oxymoron,” said marine mammal scientist Naomi Rose, who is also an IWC subcommittee member for the U.S. “Fish have the ability to reproduce at a much higher rate than whales, and even their numbers are crashing.”
