Skip to content
All news
  • All news
  • About whales & dolphins
  • Corporates
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Green Whale
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Scottish Dolphin Centre
  • Stop whaling
  • Stranding
  • Whale watching
Vaquita. Photo Thomas Jefferson

Scientific Committee gives first ever official species extinction warning

Photo: Thomas Jefferson We have welcomed the urgent call by experts to protect the vaquita...
blue whale

Whale fossil from Peru may have been heavier than blue whale

Scientists examining the bones of a 39 million-year-old ancient whale have concluded that it may...
Humpback whale © Christopher Swann

Humpback whales breach in synchronisation

Humpback whales are renowned for their incredible acrobatic displays, but a family in the USA...
Long-finned pilot whale

Unusual activity witnessed before pilot whale stranding

Just days after a pod of long-finned pilot whales stranded on an island in the...

EU asks Japan to cancel whale hunt programme in Antarctica

A strongly worded letter from the EU Member States has requested that Japan immediately halts it´s research whaling programme in the Southern Ocean as there was no scientific justification for the slaughter.

The scientific value of Japan’s “new” scientific whaling programme NEWREP-A, that has seen 333 minke whales killed in the 2015/16 season, had been called into question by the IWC scientific committee and heavily criticised by the IUCN. In 2014, the International Court of Justice’s ruling, had forced Japan to stop it´s previous JARPAII programme. The court came to the conclusion that this whaling was not scientific but merely commercial whale slaughter for profit.

The letter, issued by the Netherlands on behalf of EU States that are party to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, is also very critical of Japan’s decision to start its new ‘research’ hunts (NEWREP-NP) in the North Pacific in 2017 before the International Whaling Commission (the organisation that regulates whaling) will have had time to adequately review and assess the plans and their scientific value. 

Agreement had been made at the last IWC meeting, in 2016, that new proposals for so called “Special permit” research programmes would need to be reviewed by the IWC’s own scientific committee and the Commission itself first.

The letter from the EU States goes on to highlight concern over Japan’s new plans to kill even more Sei whales in the North Pacific, a move which places Japan in direct contravention of CITES – Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora – an international treaty drawn up in 1973 to protect wildlife from exploitation. Japanese whalers plan to increase the number of whales it would kill by 122 compared to previous levels, 72 more minke whales and 50 more Sei whales. 

The letter concludes by underlining the fact that Japan has yet to prove to the IWC scientific committee that slaughtering whales for research is justified, and strongly urges that these hunts do not go ahead in 2017.