Japan on Wednesday welcomed Iceland's decision to resume commercial whale hunting as the two countries have long protested the International Whaling Commission moratorium on the activity. A Fisheries Agency official said Reykjavik's decision constitutes "a step aimed at ensuring sustainable use" of marine resources, a goal Japan has said it shares.
Tokyo plans to convene an international meeting next February to discuss how to "normalize" the IWC as a whale stock management body, officials said. Japan hopes to buttress its stance, claiming its scientific findings indicate lifting the moratorium would lead to no depletion in whale populations. Currently, Japan and Iceland hunt minke whales for what they call "scientific research," exploiting what opponents call a loophole in the IWC charter.
Giappone, 2 esecuzioni il Venerdì Santo
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Il governo giapponese ha confermato questa mattina l’esecuzione di due
condannati a morte da tempo nelle carceri nazionali. Lo rende noto
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Besides Japan's scientific findings, the IWC's Scientific Committee unanimously recommended a management procedure to the IWC which they agreed would in theory prevent the over-depletion of whales were commercial whaling to resume.
For example, Judith Zeh, former chair of the IWC Scientfic Committee told ABC a few years ago that "it's certainly true that if commercial whaling were resumed under the revised management procedure, it could be managed safely".
The issue today is thus more about whether whaling operations can be effectively regulated to ensure that they abide by any quotas that the IWC might set in accordance with the advice of the IWC Scientifc Committee.
Even in the absence of regulations (not something that should be considered, but just for argumentation's sake), the "revised management procedure" which the IWC Scientific Committee devised would in theory regulate the industry to an extent, anyway. The procedure requires that regular abundance estimates for commercially exploited whale stocks be conducted. In the absence of such estimates, catch limits would quickly be reduced to zero. In the event that the estimates indicate unexpected declines in abundance, again catch limits would be adjusted downwards. Couple these dynamics with various regulatory measures, and I for one believe that the risk of over-depletion reoccuring today is extremely small, particularly so considering the wide range of whale meat substitutes that are available today.
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