Japan argues to hunt minke whales

Japan said Wednesday that the International Whaling Commission should allow four of its coastal communities to hunt minke whales because the tradition is so old that it qualifies as subsistence hunting. Japan's proposal at the annual meeting of the 77-nation commission started a long and contentious debate Wednesday, a day after the body allowed Alaska Natives to continue the subsistence hunts of bowhead whales through 2012. The issue is scheduled to be decided Thursday, the final day of the meeting.Joji Morishita, the alternate IWC commissioner for Japan, told delegates that the Japanese communities "have been living on this tradition for hundreds of years; it is part of their lives." Morishita said science cannot draw the line between small coastal whaling and aboriginal whaling.Japan for more than two decades has sought "community whaling" status, which would give it quotas similar to those allowing Alaska Natives and other indigenous groups to hunt the mammals.Japan already kills about a 1,000 whales a year and sells the meat under a scientific research provision allowed by the whaling commission, which enacted a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986.The proposal was heard a day after the whaling commission allowed Alaska Natives to continue the subsistence hunts of bowhead whales through 2012.Morishita acknowledged Wednesday that if Japan's request is approved, some meat from the minke whales, a relatively small species, would be sold."What's wrong with commerciality?" he said. "Even the media here is commercial. Why do people have to see only commercial whaling as evil?"Russia supports the proposal, with its delegation saying Japan's traditional whaling is likely twice as old as Arctic whaling.That contention is misleading, said Atsushi Ishii, an environmental studies professor at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.Of the four communities, he said, only Taiji on the southeastern coast has a tradition of hunting right whales — now under the commission moratorium — dating back more than 100 years. Only later, around the World War II era, did the other three begin hunting species now banned, he said. However, a number of nations voiced strong opposition.New Zealand said the minke proposal is the type of commercial whaling banned by the 1986 ban. The U.S. delegation noted that 360 minke whales are already caught annually in the Sea of Japan and the North Pacific. Of that, 220 are for Japan's scientific research program and 140 are bycatch.Both the United States and New Zealand also have expressed outrage at Japan's plan to kill 50 humpback whales, an endangered species, as part of its science program. The two were among nations to successfully pass a symbolic resolution Wednesday calling for Japan to suspend all lethal aspects of the program conducted within the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, an area around Antarctica where commercial whaling is banned.Also Wednesday, Greenland failed to win consensus on a revised proposal to increase its aboriginal quota of minke whales. Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory, originally wanted to add bowhead and humpback whales to its hunt for the first time. Critics said the giant mammals have low reproduction cycles and should not be treated as menu items, According to Gregory