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Japan seems determined to keep on hunting whales, despite an international outcry.

Wearing a toy whale hat, whale tie and a whale-print shirt, the CEO of one of Japan’s biggest whale hunting fleets, Hideki Tokoro, recently launched their newest “floating slaughterhouse”, the Kangei Maru.

“We are proud of catching whales and are very proud of this ship which will allow us to begin offshore mothership-style whaling this year,” Tokoro told reporters as he escorted them around the 112-metre, 9,300-ton vessel that set sail last Saturday for an eight-month tour of the country’s northern waters.

According to the company, the Kangei Maru is faster and larger than its predecessor. It also has modern drones that can reportedly fly 100 kilometres at a time, which would enable crews of smaller boats to find and kill whales more swiftly.

However, proponents claim that the ship’s advanced capabilities, such as its capacity to sail for up to 60 days and its 13,000-kilometer cruise range, indicate that Japan is focusing on whales that are found well outside of its northern waters.

“Japan has never given up on its whaling ambitions,” veteran anti-whaling activist Paul Watson told CNN.

“The only purpose of a vessel like that is so it can travel long distances to the Southern Ocean to hunt whales, (and) what the whalers are doing right now is really just a test run. They are testing out the new ship in their waters.”

The Kangei Maru boasts a slipway large enough to haul 25-metre whales from the sea that leads to an indoor flensing deck the size of two basketball courts. There, workers will strip away the blubber before cutting up the whale flesh on enormous cutting boards, before vacuum-packing and storing the meat in 40 industrial freezers, ready for sale.

“Whales are at the top of the food chain. They compete with humans by eating marine creatures that should be feeding other fish,” Tokoro said on the tour.

“We need to cull whales to keep the balance of the ecosystem – it’s our job and mission to protect oceans for the future.”

Tokoro told reporters, “We aim for perfection, but some of them may suffer. In such cases, we will use a rifle to finish the job.”

Besides objecting to the slaughter of one of the ocean’s most majestic creatures, marine conservation groups and scientists have highlighted the important role which whales play in helping to tackle the climate crisis through sequestering and storing planet-heating carbon emissions.

But marine ecologist Ari Friedlaender, calls bullsh*t on pro-whaling arguments that commercial hunts could be “sustainable.”

“Whales are not just consumers in ocean eco-systems – they recycle a ton of nutrients into the environment which helps stimulate plant-life growth.”

“Humans have a very long history of killing whales and have not done a good job of being able to sustainably harvest animals,” he said. “There is no way to sustainably harvest a wild animal like that.”

Commercial whaling was banned in 1986 under a moratorium by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) after whale populations were almost driven to extinction by humans. Japan is one of three countries – along with Norway and Iceland – that continues to hunt whales, with officials arguing that the industry is an important part of its culture and history – and also provides food security.

Japan’s fisheries ministry estimates that between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of whale meat are consumed annually in the country, compared to average annual totals of more than 230,000 tons during the 1960s.

Scientists, however, expressed concern about the risks of consuming whale meat, with studies pointing to high levels of mercury found in whale and dolphin meat, which could prove dangerous to consumers – especially pregnant women and young children.

For decades, Japan has justified whaling under the guise of “scientific research.” In 2018, it tried one last time to persuade the IWC to allow it to resume commercial whaling – and failed. So, it withdrew from the body and resumed commercial whaling months later, in defiance of international criticism.

“Within its waters, it has the absolute authority to control the management of living resources – and that includes whales.”

Under Japanese law, three species of whale are permitted to be hunted in its territorial waters and exclusive economic zones – endangered sei whales, threatened minke whales, and Bryde’s whales, with endangered fin whales set to be added to kill lists.

However, marine conservation groups like The World Cetacean Alliance (WCA) said that whale watching in Japan was “a far more successful industry” than harvesting whale meat.

“Commercial whaling in the 21st century is unjustifiable,” it said. “The whaling industry in Japan recognizes that it is a challenge to increase whale meat consumption and there is currently no market.”

“So why keep slaughtering these wonderful and intelligent animals?”

But Tokoro rules out whale watching. “We will not switch to whale watching but eating whale meat while watching whales might be quite a nice touch.”

This guy puts the dick in Moby Dick.

[source:cnn]