Wellington NZ, Sept 22, AP - Fishing industry leaders from major fishing countries, including New Zealand, have agreed to back a Japanese proposal to resume commercial hunting and harvest of the Minke WHALE next year. The agreement comes after a meeting of the International Coalition of Fisheries Associations at Nelson over the past four days. The Coalition's decision to support Japan comes despite an International Moratorium which bans all commercial whaling under the auspices of the International Whaling Commission.
The Coalition represents fishers who catch 40 percent of the worldwide annual fish harvest, estimated at 100-million tonnes. New Zealand Fishing Industry Association president Vaughan Wilkinson said today there is a sustainable (harvesting) base in smaller WHALE species like the Minke, and this is acknowledged by the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission, the body which controls world whaling. The Minke population can certainly sustain a certain level of harvest, Wilkinson said. He claimed environmental lobbyists have hijacked the (whaling) convention which aimed to preserve and manage WHALE populations -- not to stop utilisation of whales world-wide. It was not a convention for preservation of whales and prohibition of their harvest, he said.
The result of the hijack was to ignore the rights of Japan and Norway to harvest whales in their own waters or international waters. Mr Wilkinson said the International Whaling Commission has continued to refuse Japan the right to indigenous traditional native whaling around Japan. The Commission should return to its primary task of how to conserve and manage WHALE stocks rather than prohibition and conservation by this hijack of the convention. Mr Wilkinson warned such actions put at risk the willingness of nations in future to enter into international agreements, and will work to the detriment of marine populations. He confirmed Japan Fisheries Association president Hiroya Sano would ask for the right to resume commercial whaling when the IWC meets next May in Aberdeen, Scotland. Sano claimed there are a certain number of Minke whales which can be taken without endangering any stocks of whales at all.
According to the provisions of the International Whaling Convention, if it's possible to take Minke whales without endangering any Minke WHALE stocks...Contracting governments should be allowed to reconvene the commercial whaling. The world's largest Minke WHALE populations live in the Southern Ocean WHALE Sanctuary, established by international agreement, below 40 degrees South. It is a vast marine sanctuary, set up to provide whales with a protected breeding and living area in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters.
Major confrontations between Japanese whalers and environmentalists have taken place in this region in the past, prior to the moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan and Norway have continued so-called scientific whaling in the area, taking up to three hundred Minke whales a year, despite International anger at their actions.