Japan Protests Whale-Hunting Moratorium

Capping a week of defeats for Japan, the International Whaling Commission on Friday turned down a request that whalers in four Japanese coastal villages be allowed to kill 320 whales in the coming year.

The action came on the final day of the commission’s annual meeting and prompted a strongly-worded protest from Japan, which has opposed the international moratorium on commercial whaling since it was approved by the commission in 1982 and took effect in 1986.

“A lot of suffering is being created under this moratorium decision by the commission,” said Kazuo Shima, the Japanese delegate. “It is my deep regret that at this year’s meeting no . . . solution has been identified.”

Shima said his government would take “any appropriate measures” to meet the nutritional, traditional and cultural needs of the villages, but did not specify what those measures might be. A spokesman for Shima said later that Japan probably would not kill whales in defiance of the resolution.

Criticized for Whale Kills

Earlier in the week, the commission approved resolutions criticizing Japan, Norway and Iceland for their plans to kill whales under an exception for scientific research. Japan killed 241 whales under the research exception last year and plans to kill about 400 in the coming year. Norway, which killed 29 last year, is expected to kill 20 in the coming year.

Iceland, which originally planned to kill 90 whales in the coming year, reduced the number to 68 after the commission approved a resolution calling on that country to reconsider its plan.

However, Japan and Norway indicated they will proceed with the research kills.

The United States was among the countries that sponsored the resolutions criticizing the Japanese, Norwegian and Icelandic research programs.

“There really has not been a moratorium on whaling,” William E. Evans, the U.S. delegate, said in an interview after the meeting Friday. “The United States is for a good comprehensive conservation program.”

‘Trying to Make It a Whale-Free World’

It is generally unnecessary to kill whales to conduct research on them, Evans said. “There are some people trying to make it a whale-free world,” he said, “and we would like to prevent that.”

However, the Japanese contend that their research provides valuable information about the sex and age of whale populations that could not otherwise be obtained. After the research whales are analyzed, their meat is sold commercially.

The United States has banned commercial whaling since 1971, but certain native tribes in Alaska are permitted to kill 43 whales annually under a whaling commission exception for aboriginal subsistence.

Campbell Plowden, whale campaign coordinator for Greenpeace, said Friday that the meeting bought an “affirmation on the part of the commission that Japan, Iceland and Norway have yet to justify their lethal research.”

Japan came to the meeting this year hoping to win support for a new category of exception that would allow whaling in small coastal communities. A committee was unable to reach a decision about the new category, and as the weeklong meeting came to an end, Japan made a request for an emergency “relief allocation,” saying the coastal villages are economically and culturally dependent on whaling.

The request sought permission for the killing of 320 minke whales within 200 miles of the coast of Japan, “in order to respect the human rights of these peoples, to ease human suffering, and to reduce the pressure on other cetacean species.”

Because of the ban on killing whales, which are classified as large cetaceans, Japan has greatly increased its kill of small cetaceans, such as porpoises and dolphins, provoking outcries from animal protection groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund.

Early in the week, a scientific committee strongly criticized Japan for killing 39,000 Dall’s porpoises in 1988 from a population of 105,000. The porpoises were taken by Japanese hand-harpoon fishermen and apparently were used as a substitute for whale meat, the committee report said.

“The committee is extremely concerned about the great increase in the take of Dall’s porpoise,” the report said, adding that the situation may be “even worse” than is immediately apparent.

“The committee believes that it is urgent that the catch be reduced at least to the levels of previous years,” the report said. Even that number--13,000--may be too high, the report said. Evans, the American delegate, said he is bothered by Japan’s take of porpoises as a substitute for whales and said the commission may eventually have to deal with small cetaceans as well as their larger relatives.

American tuna fisherman also came under attack this week for killing thousands of dolphins and porpoises that become entangled in fishing nets.

Between the tuna fishermen who kill dolphins and porpoises unintentionally and hand harpoon fishermen who kill them for food, as many as 500,000 of the small cetaceans are taken annually, according to Samuel F. LaBudde, a research biologist for Earth Island Institute, an activist group.

LaBudde said the Japanese have increased the killing of Dall’s porpoises in an attempt to “blackmail” the commission into lifting the moratorium on whale killing.