Scientific whaling
Although it is critical that the management of whale populations is based upon sound scientific research, this has frequently not been the case. During the peak of 20th century commercial whaling, most if not all the whaling nations often ignored credible scientific information - or used questionable research - when deciding on the number of whales that could be killed.
This irresponsible approach led to excessive catches and the collapse of many whale stocks.
For the government of Japan today, not much has changed. Japan avoids the moratorium on whaling by hunting whales in both the Antarctic and the North Pacific, claiming that these whales must be killed to answer critical management questions. Yet the science being practised by Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research - established in 1987 when the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling threatened to end Japan's Antarctic whaling programme - is increasingly being recognised as poor quality, misleading or simply spurious.
In many cases, Japan routinely ignores credible scientific data that do not support its whaling policies, or conducts the whaling in the absence of critical management information. In short, Japan is still using the scientific practices of 1946, when the Convention on Whaling was drafted, while the rest of the scientific world has moved into the 21st Century.
Imagine if in other areas of our lives, if science had not progressed since the 1940s:
- We would not have portable computers in our homes. Instead, the only computers in the world would belong to the military, and would be large and ungainly, weighing many tonnes.
- We would not have modern air-travel options; only small jet planes capable of traveling short distances at a time. For instance, on a US Bell XP-59 (the first American jet plane, built in 1942), it would take over 9 hours to fly from London to New York, and the plane would have to stop at least 8 times.
- Making long-distance phone calls would be terribly difficult and very expensive. Making international calls would be impossible.
Nothing but an eye-wash
Overall, the scientific research conducted by Japan is nothing more than a plan designed to keep the whaling fleet in business, and the need to use whales as the scapegoat for over-fishing by humans.
Until the Government of Japan starts conducting objective science, and stops ignoring the findings of other researchers, it will have no credibility in its campaign to resume commercial whaling.