After decades of worldwide conservation efforts, it often comes as a surprise to discover that the hunting of whales continues to this day.
Despite the regulatory International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) moratorium on almost all whaling activities, whaling activities persists under various exceptions to the general ban on the practice.
The most controversial of these permitted hunts by far is the annual Japanese whaling expedition around the waters of Antarctica.
Additionally, Several European nations continue to hunt whales in the Atlantic and elsewhere, and several indigenous groups such as the Inuit continue traditional subsistence hunting on a small scale.
Nonetheless, it is the Japanese whaling fleet’s operations in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary that have garnered the most global attention and opposition from anti-whaling groups.
The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) moratorium applies to commercial whaling and permits regulated whaling in two forms: “aboriginal-subsistence” hunts and hunting for “scientific research,” although some nations, including Norway, continue to engage in commercial hunting and actively dispute the IWC’s rulings.
Japan, by contrast, presents its Antarctic whaling as an example of the “scientific research” exception.
Since the ICRW forbids wasting the meat of captured whales, Japan claims that it has no choice but to process and sell the meat for human consumption.
In general, every permitted hunt is subject to multiple justifications and accusations of bad faith from all sides, and the picture of which hunts are permitted and why is complex and evolving.
The vast majority of the yearly catch in Antarctica consists of the Antarctic minke whale, also known as the southern minke whale.
Some fin whales are also harvested, but in significantly smaller numbers.
The minke whale is one of the smallest of the baleen whales, which are known for the plates of feathery, krill-filtering baleen that they have instead of teeth.
Once thought to be part of a single species known as the common minke whale, recent studies have shown that Antarctic minkes are a separate species from their northern cousins.
They grow to sizes between 24 and 35 feet and weights of 5.8 to 9.1 tons and range throughout the southern zones of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans and throughout the Southern Ocean.
Permitted whaling operations take between 500 and 1,000 Antarctic minkes yearly; the total southern Japanese catch between 1988 and 2012 was 10,339 whales.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature assigns the Antarctic minke a conservation status of “data deficient,” meaning that not enough is known about the whale’s population to determine whether it is threatened.
Although most authorities believe that there are hundreds of thousands of minkes in the Antarctic region, this uncertainty has fueled the debate over permitted whaling.
Proponents of scientific-research hunting claim, first, that some killing is necessary for accurate research and therefore for the conservation of the species.
The Japanese government maintains that since the IWC authorities will not accept head counts of whales as proof of recovering populations, they must capture whales in order to study their ages and sexes and the distribution of their population.
Whaling is thus categorized as a crucial component of the overall whale conservation effort.
A related argument claims that, since whales consume vast quantities of fish, some hunting is necessary in order to conserve collapsing fisheries.
Second, pro-whalers claim that the effected species are not or at least no longer endangered, and that there is no reason why limited hunting should not be permitted.
Third, advocates justify whaling as an important component of the cultures and traditions of the whaling nations.
Japan has claimed, for example, that the IWC should permit aboriginal-subsistence whaling in Japanese waters, and defenders of the Japanese whaling program believe that the tradition of eating whale meat deserves preservation.
Opponents of whaling argue that the scientific-research exception is simply a cover for commercial whaling, and that equally effective non-lethal methods of study are available.
They claim that the number of minkes caught in the Antarctic far exceeds any reasonable scientific need and point to the fact that the vast majority of whales end up on dinner tables in Japan and not in laboratories.
Anti-whalers dismiss the idea that whaling is necessary to protect fisheries, especially since the baleen species primarily consume krill rather than fish.
Critics within and outside of Japan have also attacked the “culture and tradition” argument, suggesting that large-scale whaling is a recent development with no real cultural significance comparable to the hunts protected by the aboriginal-subsistence exception.
Whale advocates also deny that the preservation of any tradition should trump the welfare of what they see as intelligent, self-aware creatures.
Opposition to Antarctic whaling includes attempts at the IWC and elsewhere to revoke or alter the exceptions used by Japan and others and direct attempts to interfere with whaling operations.
This latter method, particularly the activities of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has brought Antarctic whaling into the international spotlight.
Sea Shepherd has a small fleet of vessels and every season the organization travels to the Southern Ocean and attempts to disrupt whaling by blocking whaling ships, damaging their propellers and other means.
Anti-whaling forces have also taken to the internet and social media in order to promote their cause.
However, despite major publicity and frequent disruptions of the annual hunt, whaling continues in the Antarctic, and the debate at the IWC and in the media rages on.