Blood in the ocean

In the far reaches of the Southern Ocean, a gripping and dangerous duel is being conducted between Japan's Antarctic whaling fleet and two ships manned by the environmental campaigners of Greenpeace. On board one of the ships are two friends, Yuko Hirono, and the photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, who regularly works for The Times in Tokyo. The Greenpeace blog of their expedition, and Jeremy's photographs, are compelling.

The Japanese whalers intend to kill 950 whales as part of a so-called "scientific" hunt to monitor the health of whale populations. Environmentalists claim that this is a crude excuse for keeping commercial whaling alive – no one denies that almost all of the whale meat garnered in these culls is eventually sold for food. The Greenpeace campaigners attempt to foil the hunters by manouvering small motor launches between the whales and the explosive harpoon guns. The whalers retaliate by dousing them with hoses and, allegedly, scraping the side of their ship (the Japanese insist that this collision was caused by the Greenpeace captain). To make things even more complicated, a radical environmental group, Sea Shepherd, which does not share Greenpeace's principle of non-violence, is also dogging the whalers. Tempers are running very high, and there is talk of sending either Japanese, Australian or New Zealand law enforcers to keep the two sides apart.

Here's an extract from a Greenpeace blog entry describing a recent encounter:

"When they sight the pod or whale they want, [the Japanese ships] weave all over the place and constantly change speed as well, so it really is an amazingly challenging task to stay in front of that harpoon; you have to drive looking backwards if you're trying to stay just off their bow. When the whale tires the speed of the ship drops off, but the steering is highly erratic. The whale can surface within feet of your boat and the harpoon will swing around to see if he's got a clear shot. To look up and see that grenade-tipped weapon pointed directly at your face by a guy with his hand on the trigger, seeking the shot, well: honestly, it's startling.

While we were out there he took a shot and missed. He fired right between our boats. The boom of the explosion that propels the harpoon from the cannon is deafening and the projectile strikes the water with a violent force. It takes a minute to realize they've missed; even they thought they got the whale initially. At least for a brief moment, the realization that they've missed brings pure elation. Then they reel it back in fast and are ready to try again so you have to jump back on their bow.

Seeing that first shot close up makes you realized that to be hit with that harpoon is a no-f*king-around dangerous thing: I'm confident it would tear right through the console of the boat and anything in it's path. I'm not trying to be too dramatic here, but it's an odd feeling to know that the lives of you and your crew rest in the fingers of this guy up there. He's amazing at what he does, no joke; I respect his skill immensely, but it's a dangerous needle being threaded here...while I've done work for Greenpeace that I knew carried some serious risks in the worst case scenario, this literally feels like putting your life in a clear, tense danger.

For long spells of time the whale(s) would be surfacing right next to us and if we hadn't been at the right spot it would certainly have been a kill; the boat crews did an excellent job of spotting the whales break the surface before the ship could turn to line up the shot for the harpooner. Several times we caused them to lose the whale altogether and have to find another one ...

Eventually he took his second shot and made the kill. The whale dove and resurfaced right in front of us, no more than a dozen feet forward of us. Blood everywhere, it's head emerging out of the water for a second before falling back and going under. A fluke breaks the water a moment later and the harpoon cable starts reeling the whale in. It's done. The harpoon had gone all the way through the whale; the whale appeared to be not much more than maybe fifteen feet long or so. Another young one. Science, my ass, taking down the young of the herd like that...

Then they reel the whale all the way up to below their bow and winch it to the surface and you see it: the entirety of the whale, beautiful smooth blue and white skin except where this jagged dynamite knife blew right through it, it's cable unnaturally tugging this creature of the deep towards the sky, rolled over on it's side, eye dead, a picture of exhaustion, beauty and shameful waste of life."

I have mixed feelings about all this. If a creature is close to being endangered, then there is no question that it should be completely protected. But this seems not to be the case for minke whales. If survival of the species is guaranteed, is eating whale ethically different from eating venison, wild boar, pheasant or any other animal hunted in the wild?

Envornmentalists say (I hope I'm doing their argument justice) that we can't know whether they're endangered or not, whales, by their nature, being very difficult to count. They are also impossible to kill humanely - even the grenade harpoons can take half an hour or more to finish the creature off. Some also argue that with their large brains, complex social behaviour and musical gifts, whales are in a different moral category from deer and birds.

The mystery is why the Japanese government insists on continuing with the hunt. I know few Japanese who are interested in eating whale - it's regarded as rather a quaint, nostalgic dish, associated with the days of post-war austerity when it was served in school lunch boxes as a cheap substitute for meat. Politically, accepting a ban on whaling would alienate a relatively small number of whalers and their families. Continuing with the hunt does the country enormous damage internationally, as it plays to the racist stereotype of Japanese as cruel and bloodthirsty little bastards.

As far as I can tell, the agenda seems to be driven by a small clique of aggressive nationalists in the Fisheries Agency who relish the confrontation and regard the whale hunters as kind of sea-borne samurai - a proud element of Japan's tough, self-sacrificing, warrior culture. Perhaps more importantly they see a danger beyond the issue of the whales themselves: if the environmentalists (and governments which support them, including Britain) succeed in their goal of a permanent ban on all whaling, they will next try to do the same thing with tuna fishing - which would have genuine economic and social impact on Japan.

Comments

[Mike]

Mr. Parry,

Thanks for your interesting take on this issue. I am a political science Ph.D. student from the US who is currently living in Tsukuba, researching my dissertation on international norms (including whaling) and domestic politics in Japan.

Do you think that the Japanese state has any reason to think that they lose the whaling issue than the international community will next turn its attention banning the consumption of tuna? Where do you think that idea came from? And why do you think that Japan has remained in the IWC? Considering the fact that the 3/4 majority needed to end the moratorium on commercial whaling is still not within reach?

Thanks,
Michael Strausz
University of Washington

[Masashi Kawai]

As you know, Only few Japanese are interested in eating whale.
So why?
See below
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/20/opinion/20KRIS.html

[Richard Lloyd Parry]

Thanks, Mr Strausz. There is already a campaign against tuna fishing, although for the time being it attracts less attention and stirs up much less emotion than the whaling issue (tunas simpe aren't as sexy as whales). Perhaps whaling is the 'outer rampart', where the Japanese are choosing to make a stand in order to prevent their assailants pentetrating the Tuna Citadel within.

As for remaining in the International Whaling Commission, I think that the Japanese government has an institutional respect for international organisations and an interest in being seen to adhere to international rukles and norms. Iceland and Norway don't have any ambitions to get permanent seats on the UN Security Council. Japan does, and needs to remain respectable . . .