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Japanese are at it again

© Matt Villano

Japan has decided to lift a ban on hunting bottlenose whales in the Sea of Japan and will allow ships to kill as many as eight there this year, an official from the forestry and fisheries ministry said this week.

Japan had limited hunting of bottlenose whales to the Pacific Ocean, off the country's eastern coast, but will now allow ships to pursue whales in waters off the western coast of Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido. According to the Associated Press, ships will be allowed to hunt the marine mammals there until the end of June. The report quoted a ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Japanese whalers have not hunted bottlenose whales in the Sea of Japan since 1972.

The bottlenose whale falls outside the jurisdiction of the International Whaling Commission, but Japan voluntarily limited its catch to 54 animals from four areas off the Pacific coast last year. According to published reports in Tokyo, Japan will continue to limit the catch in the Pacific to 54 animals.

While this most recent announcement was news to most Japanese, the decision was not. The official quoted in Associated Press articles said the Japanese government had made the decision to expand whaling to the Sea of Japan earlier this year.

Commercial whaling on the high seas has been banned since 1986. But a small fleet of Japanese ships continues to kill whales along the nation's coasts, and hundreds of whales are hunted at sea each year in what the government calls a research program. The program has been criticized because professional whales sell meat from whales killed for research.

Japan says bottlenose whales are plentiful in coastal waters in both the Pacific and Sea of Japan. Anti-whaling groups argue that it is difficult to make reliable counts of the animals and that they should not be hunted because they are intelligent.

So far, however, that hasn't deterred the Japanese. Earlier this week, two whaling ships left port in the city of Hakodate, 681kilometers northeast of Tokyo, for Sea of Japan waters. Their mission? According to the same Japanese official, the hunt is part of research to determine whether Sea of Japan waters are capable of sustaining whaling.