Whaling ship: A whale dies after being harpooned

Japan's 'research' whaling fleet set sail to the Antarctic on 13/11/04 to kill more whales in the name of 'science'. 2004 will be the 18th year of Japanese whale hunting, thinly disguised as 'scientific research'. In that time over 6,000 Antarctic Minke whales have been killed.

It has been claimed that the research is for the International Whaling Committee (IWC) but the IWC has said they do not need the data and has repeatedly asked that the programme be stopped. The waters surrounding the Antarctic were made into a whale sanctuary in 1994.

All the meat caught from Minke whales will be sold on the open market in Japan, yet the market for whale meat in Japan is dying. Only last week supermarket giant Tesco decided to remove whale meat from its Japanese stores 'due to lack of customer demand'.

The government of Japan has sanctioned whaling in defiance of an international convention for almost two decades now. The whaling fleet's departure will be the last of an 18 year programme. However, government officials have already announced that they intend to renew the hunt next year, without waiting for a scientific review of the current programme.

"The Japanese government should stop calling for the resumption of commercial whaling and should stop calling this expedition 'research'," said Willie Mackenzie Greenpeace Oceans campaigner. "The data the Japanese government is collecting is not requested by the IWC. If they truly want to conduct research they can do so without killing thousands of whales".

Mackenzie continued: "World-wide, whales face a huge range of threats to their survival because of humanity; pollution, climate change and entanglement in nets. Commercial hunting under the guise of science is the one threat to whale populations that we can end immediately."

Surveys over the last decade have found less than half the number of Antarctic Minke whales estimated in previous studies The IWC has withdrawn its population estimate for the species and is trying to develop a new one.

A legitimate scientific study published last week (1) found that krill has declined by 80 percent since the 1970s in some waters within the Antarctic whale sanctuary threatening the food supply of whales as well as seals and penguins.

Further information
For more information please contact Greenpeace Press Office on 020 7865 8255.

NOTES: (1) Long-term decline in krill stock and increase in salps within the Southern Ocean: Atkinson, Siegel, Pakhomov & Rothery - "Nature" 4th Nov 2004.

Japanese whalers carve up a minke

Conservation groups welcome Tesco PLC's announcement that it has decided to stop selling all cetacean (whale, dolphin and porpoise) products in its Japanese supermarkets. The decision follows a joint campaign by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), WDCS (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society) and Greenpeace.

As part of an ongoing campaign to make leading supermarket multinationals aware of the issues related to the hunting of cetaceans by Japan, the conservation groups met with Tesco representatives on two occasions during May and October 2004. The groups called upon the UK's leading retailer to immediately withdraw all whale meat products that were being sold in at least 45 of their supermarkets stores in the Tokyo area.

Tesco was made aware that the Japanese government sanctions the killing of more than 800 whales in the North Pacific and Antarctic, under the guise of 'scientific research', and in direct contravention of the expressed will of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and its ban on commercial whaling. More than 20,000 small whales, dolphins and porpoises are also killed in Japan's coastal waters. A significant percentage of cetacean products on sale in Japan have been shown to be highly polluted, posing a potential health threat to consumers.

The groups demonstrated that there was an increasing concern amongst Japanese consumers, and that falling prices and growing stockpiles of whale meat indicated a significant decrease in domestic demand for the products. The groups pressed Tesco to consider this wealth of evidence and cease selling whale meat.

Tesco took its decision to stop selling whale products shortly after the second meeting, and indicated that it had immediately stopped purchasing whale meat. According to Tesco they took the decision "due to a lack of customer demand".

Clare Perry, EIA Cetacean Campaigns Manager, said: "We are delighted that Tesco has taken the right decision, to stop selling whale products in their Japanese stores. Any involvement in this destructive trade is a tacit support of the Japanese government's refusal to abide by the moratorium on commercial whaling."

Willie MacKenzie, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner, said: "This is an important decision, illustrating clearly that the market for the products of whaling in Japan is dying. This can only have a positive effect on whale conservation. We are certain that the vast majority of Tesco customers will applaud this action."

WDCS Chief Executive, Chris Stroud, said: "Tesco has a responsibility to its customers, in the UK and in Japan. The sale of potentially contaminated whale products is a human health threat, and for this reason alone, Tesco is right to stop selling any such products."

Japan's so-called 'scientific' whaling fleet will set sale for the Antarctic in November to hunt protected minke whales in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. Tesco's decision will help to reduce the market for these protected species within Japan, ultimately building pressure on Japan to abide by the worldwide ban on commercial whaling. The groups believe Tesco's decision is a clear indication that this hunt is unnecessary and that decreasing demand for whale products in the Japanese market makes a mockery of Japan's ongoing commercial whaling.

For more information, please contact:

EIA Press Office, Ashley Misplon Tel: 020 7354 7984 / 07931 500752
Greenpeace UK Press Office Tel: 020 7865 8255
GP Oceans Campaigner, Willie MacKenzie Tel: 020 7865 8253
WDCS UK Press Office, Georgina Davies Tel: 01249 449 509 / 07787 516 635

Video and still images of whale and dolphin hunting and whale meat samples purchased at Tesco-owned stores in Japan are available on request from EIA.

Notes to Editor:

• The Environmental Investigation Agency is an independent, international campaigning organisation committed to protecting endangered species and the natural world.
  
• Greenpeace is an international organisation that campaigns for the protection of the environment.
  
• WDCS, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, is dedicated to the conservation and welfare of all whales, dolphins and porpoises.
  
• Tesco acquired C Two-Network, a Japanese supermarket chain, in July 2003. C Two is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesco Holdings BC and a Tesco Group member. In August 2004, C Two-Network completed the purchase of Fre'c, adding a further 27 stores to Tesco's Japanese business.
  
• C Two-Network operates 78 stores based around the Tokyo metropolitan area of Japan, trading under the brand names Tsurukame, Tsurukame-Land, Foodlet Tsurukame, and Kamechuru.
  
• EIA investigations revealed that C Two-Network sold canned cetaceans products in 32 of its 78 stores and fresh cetaceans products in 10 stores. Eleven of the 27 Fre'c stores were selling canned cetacean products and seven were selling fresh cetacean products when an EIA researcher contacted the stores earlier this year.
  
• The Government of Japan also allows up to 22,000 dolphins, porpoises and small whales to be caught each year around the Japanese coast in unregulated and unsustainable hunts.
  
• Around one-third of the products labelled as 'whale' on sale in Japan are likely to be dolphin, porpoise or small whales hunted in coastal waters.
  
• More than 1500 people have signed an online petition calling on Tesco to stop the sale of whale, dolphin and porpoise products in its Japanese stores. See www.ethical-business.com

Blue whale

In spite of nearly four decades of protection Antarctic blue whales show little sign of recovery, according to the latest science from the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The worrying new findings were released on the first day of the annual International Whaling Commission conference in Shimonoseki, Japan, where the worldwide ban on commercial whaling is hanging in the balance.

According to the IWC Scientific Committee report, despite intensive surveys of the Antarctic only 75 blue whales have been sighted in the past 20 years. As the largest of the great whales, blue whales were the most profitable species for Antarctic whalers to catch and consequently their population of about 250,000 was reduced to around 1,000 within 60 years.

The report comes as fears grow that Japan's vote buying offensive - where overseas aid is offered to countries in exchange for them joining the IWC and voting in line with Japan - may succeed in ending the global moratorium on whaling. (1)

Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner Richard Page at the IWC said,
"Blue whales have been protected for nearly four decades but they still haven't recovered from being the targets of commercial whalers. Japan wants a return to high seas whaling with factory ships, and if the global community doesn't stop them we'll see again the sort of whaling that devastated whale populations like the blue all over the globe."

The report also estimates Southern Hemisphere minke populations in all Antarctic areas surveyed are less than half previously estimated. Most of the Antarctic has now been surveyed for the third time, although the whole survey will not be completed until 2004. On average, the minke population in all the areas surveyed was 46% of the estimate from the previous survey.

IWC scientists have not agreed on an explanation for this drastic reduction but one possibility is climate change, which is known to be having an increasing impact on the Antarctic ecosystem.

Although this decline was found in the areas in which the Fisheries Agency of Japan (FAJ) conducts its "scientific research" whaling it was never reported by the "scientific" whalers. In fact after their Southern Ocean expedition this year they reported seeing large numbers of minkes.

The report also contains new surveys submitted to the IWC by Norway showing there are not as many North Atlantic minkes as previously thought and an increased level of uncertainty about the population estimate. This should decrease the number of whales Norway takes in the future. But when it was revealed their catch was predominantly female in 2000, Norway simply changed the way it calculated its catch limits (by lowering the tuning level for the Revised Management Procedure agreed to by the IWC) in order to keep catching the same number of whales.

"Given this history, Norway will just bend the rules again to catch as many whales as it can," said Page. "The number of whales caught by Norway is driven by the whaling industry, not by sound science and the need to protect whales."

The report also reveals:
After the release of the Kondo/Kasuya report, which documented systematic and organised falsification of catch statistics by Japanese coastal whalers, the IWC Scientific Committee has set up a working group to investigate the nature and quality of past data. Japan has refused to provide scientists for this group and says the previous official catch statistics are correct.

Total reported bycatch (whales caught in fishing nets) for 2001 in Japan was three times the average figure for the previous five years. This follows the introduction of new regulations in Japan which allows fishermen to sell whales caught in fishing nets.

"All the scientific evidence from the IWC points to the need to adopt a truly precautionary approach and to stop Japanese "scientific" whaling and Norwegian commercial whaling," Page said.

Notes for editors:
1. In 1999 the Japanese vote buying offensive was stepped up with Guinea joining the IWC in 2000 and Morocco and Panama joining in 2001. All three consistently voted in line with Japan. In the last week Benin, Gabon, Palau and Mongolia have joined and are expected to vote in favour of a resumption of commercial whaling. These votes added to those of the pro-whaling countries may provide the Government of Japan with a simple majority, although this will not be clear until votes are actually taken within the meeting. A three-quarters majority is necessary to overturn the moratorium but a simple majority is enough for the Government of Japan to make changes in the IWC's rules that will accelerate the downwards slide, towards a resumption of commercial whaling.

Further information:
Contact:
Greenpeace UK press office on 020 7865 8255

Southern oceans Japanese whaling hunt

The British leader of an international team in the Antarctic has demanded that Jack Straw 'gets serious about Japan's efforts to secure a return to full-scale commercial whaling' after the Foreign Secretary failed to publicly condemn attempts by the Japanese government's use of development aid to buy votes in support of commercial whaling.

The attack comes as a new report is published revealing that the Japanese government has spent tens of millions of US dollars buying up the votes of small nation states in the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

Kieran Mulvaney is the head of a team aboard the Greenpeace vessel MV Arctic Sunrise. He was speaking today from Melbourne after the vessel docked following a two month expedition to take non-violent direct action against the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic. He is deeply concerned by his own government's silence over the Japanese government's vote buying policy.

The government of New Zealand has publicly condemned Japan's manipulation of the IWC, but Jack Straw has pointedly failed to speak out against vote buying. Mr Straw met Japanese foreign minister Makiko Tanaka last week, while foreign office minister Denis MacShane has announced a new 'Green Alliance' between Japan and the UK, yet there is no indication that the UK will condemn the Japanese government's dollar diplomacy.

Today Mulvaney said: "These days more than ever we hear our politicians talking about the sanctity of international law, and yet when a major nation like Japan brazenly admits to engaging in bribery to subvert an international treaty, we don't even hear a squeak of public disapproval. Now we've discovered the sums they're willing to spend to secure a return to full-scale whaling, it's time Jack Straw spoke up for the law and against Japanese vote buying."

Last year Maseyuku Komatsu, a senior official from the Fisheries Agency of Japan, admitted to Australian broadcaster ABC that his government secures votes in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) with promises of Overseas Development Aid. Now the new research, published today, reveals the staggering sums passing hands in the campaign to overturn the ban on commercial whaling.

According to the new report, the Japanese government has spent more than $320m trying to overturn the whaling ban. It spent $47m last year alone, buying up the votes of six countries. The donations are described by the Fisheries Agency of Japan as 'fisheries aid grants,' but the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda has admitted that the money is in return for voting with Japan on whaling issues. Recent fisheries aid grants from Japan to Caribbean countries total in excess of $124m, while subsidies for research whaling amount to $113m. The figures were calculated following an appraisal of official Overseas Development Aid figures and publications from Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research.

The report, published by Greenpeace, reveals that more than $24m has gone to Antigua and Barbuda and Guinea alone. On top of international bribes, the Japanese government has hired international lobbyists and the services of the UK PR firm Lehmann Communications, as well as paying for high profile advertising campaigns.

Mulvaney added: "For weeks now I've watched as the whaling fleet fires explosive harpoons into a protected species, despite the ban. Now Japan is buying a return to full blown commercial whaling and Straw won't comment. It's time he spoke out. His silence so far has been deafening."

The International Whaling Commission - the global body responsible for the management of whaling - meets this year in Japan amid fears that the Japanese government's vote buying policy has amassed enough support to begin the process of overturning the ban on whaling.

Notes to editors:

1. Full breakdown of figures and full report available on request.
2. Kieran Mulvaney can be interviewed aboard the MV Arctic Sunrise.
3. Six Caribbean countries with little interest in the whaling issue vote with Tokyo on virtually every motion. Each has received millions of dollars in Japanese aid.
4. This May the IWC will meet in Shiminoseki - the home port of the Japanese whaling fleet.

Further information:
Greenpeace UK press office on 020 7865 8255