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Reporting by the environmental newsgroups has heated up lately with stories about the Japanese government's announcement to start killing endangered fin and humpback whales in Antarctic waters. The Australians are the ones to watch here. Their prime minister seems nearly resolved to openly confront Japan on the issue. If it happens, it will spread some genuine hope to force Japan to stop expanding its criminal whaling habit. The killing of whales occurs primarily in Antarctica, and Australia considers the continent to be a protectorate, giving it the right to govern other countries' activities there. Perhaps more important, the same whales that Japan plans to kill, spend half their year in sheltered Australian waters. The multi-million dollar Australian whale-watching industry would suffer the most.

Here's two versions of what is going on. The first is an editorial from an Australian newspaper; the second from the Japan Times.

The Courier Mail

The Federal Government should take Japan to the International Court of Justice to forcibly prevent it hunting humpback whales, Labor said today. Japan is believed to have killed more than 400 whales, ostensibly for scientific research, in the Antarctic since a sanctuary was declared to protect the mammals. Japan is also expected to go to a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in June, asking to extend its scientific whaling program toinclude humpback whales.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd today said if Japan could not be stopped through diplomacy then the Federal Government should take it to the International Court of Justice. Japan was not whaling for scientific purposes and that put it in breach of the International Whaling Convention, established to conserve whale stocks, he said. "It's time for Australia to take Japan to the International Court of Justice and to bring to account this entire abuse of the international whaling convention by Japan," Mr Rudd told Channel 7's Sunrise. "It's not being done for scientific purposes, it is being done for commercial purposes and it's time the global spotlight was put on it."
© Queensland Newspapers

Japan Times

Served as burgers and marinated with sweet and sour sauce, whale meat has returned to Japanese school lunches 20 years after it went off the menu amid global anti-whaling campaigns, officials said. Nearly 85 percent of public elementary and junior high schools in Wakayama, Japan's western whaling heartland, have begun whale meat lunches with school officials receiving positive responses from children. "Children say it is really tasty," said Wakayama education official Tetsuji Sawada. "The purpose of having whale meat lunch is to let our children know Japanese whaling tradition and whale food culture," he said, adding 57,900 children were enjoying the lunch in the prefecture, 450 kilometers west of Tokyo.

International whaling was banned in 1982 with environmentalists arguing that whale populations were declining and that the hunt was cruel. Whale, a traditional part of the Japanese diet, went off nearly all school menus. Since 1987 Japan has used a loophole in the global moratorium and killed smaller mink whales for what it calls research. The estimated 2,000 tons of meat from each year's cull ends up in supermarkets and restaurants across Japan.

But Sawada said such whale meat was too expensive for school lunch and the Wakayama educational office lobbied for months with Japan's Fisheries Agency to lower meat prices. "There was demand for whale meat but we simply could not afford it for school lunches. Before, the price of 100 grams (three 1/2 ounces) whale meat cost about 500 yen (four dollars), but now it costs about 125 yen, equivalent to that of chicken and pork," he said. "Thanks to the help from the government, we were able to offer whale meat for our children," Sawada said.

Japan argues that research shows that whale populations are thriving and provides data showing whales are consuming valuable fish stocks -- points disputed by environmentalists. Japan says the global ban is disrespectful of its culture. Tokyo reportedly plans to tell an international meeting that begins May 30 in South Korea that it will start killing two larger species of whale considered endangered by the World Conservation Union

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