19 March 2008 - Tokyo,
Japan — Japanese whalers have announced
that they are struggling to harpoon their
quota this year. As the season draws to
a close, they have caught less than half
the 985 whales they targeted.
By keeping the whaling
fleet's factory ship on the run in January
our non-violent protests were vital in frustrating
the Japanese Fisheries Agency's plans, as
the whalers tried to avoid public scrutiny
by not killing whales in our presence.
Without the support
of millions of people like you we could
not have sent our ship, the Esperanza, to
the Southern Ocean, or generated enough
controversy to cause Japan to call off their
humpback hunt before it had even started.
There are only has a
couple of weeks left in the hunting season,
and by their own admission the owners of
the whaling ships will not be off-loading
anything like the planned 1,000 whales worth
of boxed and frozen whale meat.
However, whale meat
from the start of the hunt is due to arrive
back in Japan in the next few days - destined
to sit in warehouse stockpiles as potential
whale meat buyers in Japan are themselves
becoming a vanishing species.
Back in January, as
well as shutting down the whale operations
for longer than ever before, we peacefully
disrupted the refueling of the Japanese
whaling fleet by the tanker Oriental Bluebird.
Following the refueling, huge amounts of
whale meat were transferred to the Oriental
Bluebird for transit back to Japan.
The Oriental Bluebird
doesn't have a permit as part of Japan's
research whaling fleet, and is flagged as
a Panamanian vessel. Both Panama and Japan
have signed the international Convention
on the Trade in Endangered Species (CITES),
which prohibits commercial trade in species
named on its Appendix 1 list.
The minke whale is an
Appendix 1 species, and while Japan has
filed for an exception to the regulations,
Panama has not. The meat now steaming towards
Japan all boxed up and ready for sale has,
according to law, been exported to Panamanian
territory -- and the Greenpeace ship Esperanza
has photos to document that. Any offloading
of the whale meat in Japan could constitute
a violation of the CITES convention.
Even if the whale meat
is offloaded, we'll be ashore to voice the
opposition of whale defenders around the
world. Greenpeace Japan has been urging
supermarkets and restaurants not to offer
whale meat. Three of the top five supermarkets
chains have responding positively. 'Watami',
a famous pub chain, with over 600 restaurants
all over Japan, has also confirmed that
whale is off the menu.
Fewer and fewer people
in Japan are eating whale meat, leading
to declining demand and an unsold stockpile
of nearly 4,000 tonnes of whale meat. In
a desperate attempt by the bureaucrats of
the Japanese Fisheries Agency to reverse
the trend and create artificial support
for their unpopular product, the whale meat
has been subsidised, pushed into school
lunches and even used as dog food. A company
charged with marketing the meat has for
two years running failed to turn a profit,
and the whalers this year had to reorganise
payment of an interest-free government loan,
as they've been unable to meet their sales
targets.
Commercial whaling has
no future -- whether it's disguised as scientific
research or not. In Norway, the number one
buyer of whale meat announced that they're
getting out of the whale meat business.
In Iceland, the Minister of Fisheries announced
last year that no quota was being set because
there was no market for the whale meat.
With steady pressure,
we can ensure that whaling is consigned
to the history books forever, and that in
future whales are shot by the cameras of
whale watchers, rather than the harpoons
of so-called researchers.
