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Dolphins captured for captivity in Taiji. Image: Hans Peter Roth

Loved and killed – whales and dolphins in Japan

Protests and criticism from outside Japan in response to the slaughter of whales and dolphins...
Irrawaddy dolphin

Helping fishers protect dolphins in Sarawak, Borneo

Fishing nets are bad news for dolphins and porpoises, so we're working with local fishers...
Dolphin watching from Chanonry Point, Scotland. Image: WDC/Charlie Phillips

Discovering inner peace – whale and dolphin watching and mental wellbeing

Guest blog If you've ever seen whales or dolphins in the wild, you'll know that...
Whale tail

An ocean of hope

In a monumental, jaw-dropping demonstration of global community, the nations of the world made history...
The infamous killing cove at Taiji, Japan

Why the Taiji dolphin hunt can never be justified

Supporters of the dolphin slaughter in Japan argue that killing a few hundred dolphins every...
Image: Peter Linforth

Tracking whales from space will help us save them

Satellite technology holds one of the keys to 21st century whale conservation, so we're exploring...
Fishers' involvement is crucial. Image: WDC/JTF

When porpoises and people overlap

We're funding a project in Hong Kong that's working with fishing communities to help save...

Mindful conservation – why we need a new respect for nature

'We should look at whales and dolphins as the indigenous people of the seas -...
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Port River dolphins

New report reveals 100,000 dolphins and small whales hunted every year

When you hear the words ‘dolphin hunts’ it’s likely that you think of Japan or...

Minke whale hunts stop in Iceland

Iceland’s commercial hunt of minke whales has ended for this year. The common minke whale is the...

Australian Government to block Japanese whaling proposal

Japanese Government officials have reportedly confirmed that they will propose the resumption of commercial whaling...

Did Icelandic whalers really kill a blue whale?

*Warning - this blog contains an image that you may find upsetting* They say a...

Icelandic whalers breach international law and kill iconic, protected whale by mistake

Icelandic whalers out hunting fin whales for the first time in three years appear to...

Pregnant whales once again a target for Japanese whalers

Figures from Japan's whaling expedition to Antarctica during the 2017/18 austral summer have revealed that...

Doubts remain after Icelandic Marine Institute claims slaughtered whale was a hybrid not a blue

Experts remain sceptical of initial test results issued by the Icelandic Marine Institute, which indicate...

Japan set to resume commercial whaling

Reports from Japan suggest that the government they will formally propose plans to resume commercial...

End the whale hunts! Icelandic fin whaler isolated as public mood shifts

Here’s a sight I hoped never again to witness. A boat being scrubbed and repainted...

Norway increases whaling quota despite declining demand

Norway's government has announced an increase in the number of minke whales that can be...

Norway's whaling season begins

April 1st saw the start of the whaling season in Norway. Despite a widely-accepted international moratorium...

SOS alert for whales off Norway!

I have to admit to bitter disappointment when I arrived in Tromsø, northern Norway, a...

Whaling: an inconvenient truth – the hunters are not only killing whales, they are killing us too.

As we hope for an end to the coronavirus crisis, we should reflect on another existential threat – the climate change - a threat which is advancing even as we isolate ourselves at home to protect one another.

One has to hope that the selfish approach of some governments to the pandemic will come to be regarded as a tragedy of almost criminal proportions, and that we’ll recognise that international cooperation is the only way we can hope to meet such global threats. However, even before coronavirus trapped us in our homes, some leaders were shamelessly casting aspersions on international efforts to protect humanity and the planet from the worst excesses of the climate emergency.

That’s why Japan and Norway’s arrogance in licencing whaling in the time of corona should be seen for what it is, a form of climate-criminality; not just in the slaughter of sentient beings, but in the two fingers they are putting up to the world in terms of the climate damage they are continuing to inflict.

whale in antarctica Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

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Japan’s media is as guilty as its government in spinning stories about the ‘resumption of commercial whaling’  from Ayukawa in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. What appears to be a story of ‘poor’ whalers resuming hunts after ‘decades of whaling austerity’ hides the truth that these are the same whalers that have benefited from huge government subsidies to hunt whales commercially under the pretence of ‘scientific whaling’. These aren’t starving whalers finally making good, but the very people who have been milking taxpayers’ support for decades whilst turning their noses up at the international community. But even with this support and the marketing spin the whalers have tried to create, the Japan Times reports that Eiji Mori, president of Kyodo Senpaku Co. (the company licenced to carry out offshore whaling in Japan), states that they need to increase kill-quotas and the number of species hunted in order to keep going. Contrary to his welcoming of the hunts, he went on to acknowledge that the market for whale meat is declining saying that ‘if the new generation doesn’t eat whale meat, it becomes a question of who will?’

whalingship web

It’s doubly arrogant of Norway’s government because it funds its whaling operation with subsidies built on the back of its oil and gas industry. Having got rich through sales of ‘black gold’, the Norwegian government is now working against global efforts to overcome the damage its oil has caused by killing creatures who are actually part of the climate crisis solution.

The irony is that Norwegian whaling could have ended in 1982 with the adoption of the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling.  Sadly, the then US Vice-President, and now climate campaigner, Al Gore, sold out the whales, giving support for the resumption of commercial whaling to placate his long-time friend Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland,  as well as allegedly securing an arms deal with the Norwegian Airforce. Brundtland, who oversaw the production of the 1987 landmark report, ‘Our Common Future’ had said ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ The tragedy is that it’s now clear that Brundtland’s and Gore’s support for commercial whaling was, and is still, damaging our shared future.

We now know that whales are an essential part of the nature-based solutions we desperately need to mitigate the climate emergency. For example, when a whale dies, the carcass sinks to the ocean floor in what’s called a ‘whale fall’. Each year, many tonnes of carbon are locked away in ‘whale falls’ on the seabed and stored there for thousands of years. Whales are also crucial in moving nutrients around the ocean leading to the growth of the oxygen-producing phytoplankton that are essential to the massive carbon capture potential of the ocean.

Minke whale

I did a quick calculation on how much Japan’s and Norway’s governments owe us in terms of the climate mitigation they have robbed us of. Say we start by taking the number of whales they killed between the whaling moratorium and 2018 (some 36,615 whales that we know of) and then estimate that these same whales could have lived on average another ten years; we can then assess the average amount of carbon those whales could have locked away, as well as the extra carbon-capturing phytoplankton they could have helped produce. At a price of $25 per ton for the carbon, we’d be looking at over $415 million owed by Japan and $260 million by Norway.

Maybe we should send them the bill?

There are many reasons to protect whales from the whalers’ harpoons and guns, including the whales’ intrinsic right to life and the ethical necessity of preventing unnecessary pain and suffering. Now we also know that we need to protect whales for the benefit of all life on Earth.

Environment ministers from 30 countries, known as the ‘Petersburg Climate Dialogue’ are meeting on the 27th and 28th April in an online conference in a bid to make progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This is an opportunity for climate change mitigation to be woven into the Covid-19 economic crisis recovery plans, based on a ‘green’ economic recovery plan utilising nature-based solutions.

WDC is calling on all countries concerned about the climate crisis to call out the arrogance of the whalers.  They are killing some of the most remarkable creatures on our shared planet, and, in doing so, robbing us and future generations of a global public good.  All this for the sake of a perverted sense of nationalist and individual pride.

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