JAPAN-WHALING Japan's top whaling official says too early to say if Japan will resume whaling

Record ID: 151877

  • Title: JAPAN-WHALING Japan's top whaling official says too early to say if Japan will resume whaling
  • Date: 22nd June 2015
  • Summary: TOKYO, JAPAN (JUNE 22, 2015) (REUTERS) JAPAN'S COMMISSIONER TO THE INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION, JOJI MORISHITA, WALKING INTO NEWS CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE)(English) JAPAN'S COMMISSIONER TO THE INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION, JOJI MORISHITA, SAYING: "My standing answer is that we will strive to finalise our research plan, responding to the latest recommendations and obs
  • Embargoed: 7th July 2015 13:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA53IRXE0WI88KCTVT4HLQO91HN
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
    EDITORS NOTE: PART AUDIO QUALITY AS INCOMING
    Japan's top whaling official said on Monday (June 22) that it is too early to say if Japan can resume whaling at the end of the year as more work needs to be done to prove the science behind its annual whale hunt.
    Joji Morishita, the country's commissioner to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), had told reporters last week that Japan hoped to resume whale hunting in the Antarctic later this year, despite a finding by the IWC that Tokyo had yet to prove the kill was scientifically justified.
    In April, an IWC panel of experts said it opposed Japan's proposal for its Antarctic whaling program in the Southern Ocean because it did not demonstrate a need for "lethal sampling," requiring Japan to submit additional information.
    The IWC's Scientific Committee said in a report released on Friday (June 19) that Japan's additional material had failed to clear all doubts about whether "lethally obtained data" would contribute to management and conservation of whales, calling on Japan to provide even more analysis.
    "My standing answer is that we will strive to finalise our research plan, responding to the latest recommendations and observation from Scientific Committee meeting," Morishita told reporters.
    "There are some recommendations we think we have to complete and we will, our scientists will continue to do that," he added.
    Japan has long maintained that most whale species are not endangered and that eating whale is part of its food culture. Its most recent whaling plan proposed to take 333 minke whales in the Antarctic.
    Officials, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - who hails from an area with a long tradition of whaling - have said that their ultimate goal is the resumption of commercial whaling.
    Japan began what it calls scientific whaling in 1987, a year after an international whaling moratorium took effect. It runs a separate whaling program in the Northern Pacific that was unaffected by the international court ruling and began earlier this month.
    Last year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's decades-old whale hunt in the Southern Ocean should stop, prompting Tokyo to cancel the bulk of its whaling for the 2014/2015 season.
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