A Whale of a Truce?

President Barack Obama will meet the new Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, on November 12-13 -- about the same time the Japanese whaling fleet is due to depart for Antarctica's Southern Ocean on its annual hunt to kill roughly 1,000 whales. 

While there is much for the two world leaders to discuss, my colleagues are pushing for an open and frank discussion on how to end commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean once and for all. They think this is an issue which these two world leaders could agree needs to be resolved.

Each year, Japan sends a fleet of ships, including a huge processing factory, to the waters around Antarctica, an area declared a whale sanctuary by the international community in 1994.  Japan is the only country that still sends a whaling fleet to distant waters. These vessels kill hundreds of whales each year under a loophole in the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling by claiming that their activities are scientific research.

But most marine scientists, including members of the International Whaling Commission's own scientific committee, believe the research results from Japan’s program could be achieved without killing whales and that the research gathered is irrelevant to the commission's goals.

For example, Japanese scientists have highlighted their studies of the waxy build-up in whale ears (the wax has rings, much like a tree trunk), which can determine the age of the whales.  The IWC, however does not consider the age structure of whale populations as important information for its work —and the age of whales can now be determined using non-lethal means. The whales killed in Japan’s hunt are processed and the meat -- termed a mere by-product -- is distributed for sale in Japanese markets.

The entire whaling operation is paid for by Japanese taxpayers even though most know nothing about the program .This effort costs the country’s taxpayers millions of dollars. Low consumer demand for the meat has resulted in the industry needing large subsidies to stay afloat.  After 22 years of funding, the stockpile of unsold frozen whale meat had risen to 4,000 metric tons by the end of 2008, according to the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture.

Prime Minister Hatoyama has promised to change many practices from the past 50 years of rule by his political opposition. In a recent speech, he promised to “thoroughly eliminate the wasteful use of taxpayers' money.”

Perhaps President Obama could persuade the Prime Minister that the country’s outdated and expensive whaling operation could be one of the first practices to cut. The U.S. President should commit to work with the Japanese government to make this happen.

For more information on whale conservation, visit www.PewEnvironment.org