The Kangei Maru is seen sailing off the coast of Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, on Friday, March 29, 2024. (The Yomiuri Shimbun)
Inexplicably, considering the fact that there is almost zero demand for whale meat by the general public in Japan and throughout the world, the construction of a brand new whaling fleet “mother ship,” Kangei Maru, was just completed. Owned by Kyodo Senpaku Co., it was reported in The Japan News that it has the capacity to “haul up 70-ton fin whales, two to three times larger than Bryde’s and sei whales loaded by the Nisshin Maru, because its slipway has a shallower slope than the predecessor’s.” The Nisshin Maru was decommissioned last November (2023) and the Kangei Maru is meant to replace it.
The Nisshin Maru, infamously, processed 17,072 whales caught by “catcher boats” since 1991. Some of the whales were processed ostensively for “research” purposes and others for commercial purposes, but, regardless of the stated purpose, the vast majority of the processed catch ended up in markets. While it plied the Southern Ocean, it was occasionally rammed by the far smaller Sea Shepherd anti-whaling vessels in a David and Goliath struggle over the protection vs. the slaughter of these majestic creatures far from Japan’s shores.
Tired of pretending to slaughter whales for “research” purposes, and always getting criticized by the international community for engaging in a practice most of the rest of the world considered to be barbaric, Japan quit its membership in the International Whaling Commission in 2019 and resumed the undisguised and unapologetic commercial exploitation of whales.
The replacement of Nisshin Maru with the larger capacity Kangei Maru shows Japan’s resolve to go against the prevailing world sentiment, the best interests of Japanese tax payers who will be subsidizing these expensive and wasteful whaling operations, and the protests of environmentalists and animal rights activists.
The president of Kyodo Senpaku, the owners of Kangei Maru, was quoted as saying, apparently without irony that “It’s important to protect marine resources, and we are the ones responsible for that,” He was further quoted as saying: “I believe that continuing (whaling) will benefit both Japan and the world.” He didn’t say how Japan or the world would benefit nor whether whales themselves would stand to benefit from these developments.
Since 2020 there have been hundreds of incidents involving orcas (so-called killer whales) and boats. Some people have characterized these encounters as "orca attacks." Most of them have happened in the waters off the Iberian Peninsula, especially in and around the Strait of Gibraltar, a waterway between Spain and Morocco.
In some cases orcas damaged boats by repeatedly ramming them and even breaking off their rudders, the boat's steering apparatus. People have been terribly frightened and, understandably, felt under attack. However, the fact remains that orcas in the wild have never attacked directly (much less eaten) humans. It is much more often the case that humans hurt orcas through accidental ship collisions, entangling them in abandoned fishing gear, or through acoustic damage caused by navy ships, explosions, or underwater mining operations.
Some commentators have sided with the orcas and others show more sympathy for the boats that they sometimes target. A recent article in the Atlantic by Jacob Stern has the ridiculous title “Killer Whales Are Not Our Friends: Stop rooting for orcas ramming boats.” While a Washington Post editorial, looking at the matter more from the whale's perspective, has the title "Why are orcas attacking boats? Hint: It’s not a war on humans.
The recent behavior of the orcas is unusual and seems to be something new. Scientists haven't found the reason for it but there are some theories. One theory is that after an orca that scientists called "White Gladis" was accidentally injured by a ship, she taught juvenile orca to attack every ship they came across. This theory isn't favored by marine biologists who study orca in depth. They think it's more likely that the orca are exhibiting playful behavior.
Deborah Giles, the research director for the NPO Wild Orca, has noted that orca sometimes engage in short-lived "fads," like moving the anchors of crab pots, hitching rides with larger whales, swimming around with salmon on their heads, or, perhaps most recently, messing around with boats around the Iberian Peninsula. Deborah Giles believes that the orca will eventually get bored interfering with boats and move on to doing some other naughty behavior.
Hopefully, those sailing boats through their waters will not try to get revenge on the orca. A simple way to stop attacks by the orca seems to be just stopping the boat's engine. Could it be that they are irritated by the engines of boats and want to send us a message, "We've had it with your noisy boats!"
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a very respected advocacy group which works to protect natural habitats and biodiversity. Therefore, I thought they would have a balanced view of the threats posed to whales other than whaling. It's important to look at non-whaling factors that may be threatening whales because they influence how vulnerable whales are and whether they should be better protected.
I found out that, in addition to whaling, whales are hurt by the following factors:
getting caught in fishing gear (by-catch)
climate change
ship collisions
toxic contamination
oil and gas development
habitat degradation
Whales, especially dolphins and porpoises (which are types of whales), get caught in nets accidentally when fishermen are trying to catch fish. This is called "by-catch." Since dolphins and porpoises need to breath air in order to live, they suffocate when they're caught in nets, so they can't just be thrown back into the sea.
Climate change is altering the whole ocean ecosystem and affecting the krill and other sea life that whales depend on to survive.
Fast moving ships sometimes strike whales and seriously injure or kill them. Some environmental groups want to impose lower speed limits on large ships, especially during critical whale migration periods.
Oil and gas development can hurt whales in various ways. For one thing, it releases toxic substances into the environment.
Finally, the natural habitat for whales is gradually degraded, partly by climate change and partly by the fact that the sea is getting more crowded with ships, pleasure craft, whale watching boats, oil rigs, etc.
According to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (part of the National Ocean Service, NOAA in the US), because marine animals, such as whales and dolphins, make use of sound for communication, feeding, and navigation, acoustic (i.e., sound) disturbances caused by dredging, mining, military activities, or boat traffic may affect whales and their behavior.
For all these reasons, whaling may be the additional threat to whales which sends some species into extinction. One of the reasons Japan and countries such as Norway and Iceland give for continuing to carry out whaling include the idea that ocean stocks of the whales they are catching are at "healthy" or sustainable levels. However, as we can see from all of the threats to whales and to all marine life (mentioned above), there is a cumulative negative effect on the various species and whaling can be the straw that, so to speak, breaks the whale's back. All the more reason to stop whaling immediately.
I knew that whales were a kind of reservoir of carbon, but I didn’t know just how much carbon they stored. Apparently, it’s enough to make a measurable contribution to the problem of the warming of the earth and the oceans. Basically, whales remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the way the eat and poop. It is described in this excellent Ted Talk I heard recently given by an economist, Ralph Chami, who became an ally of whales after he got to see a Blue Whale up close and when he learned how important they are in helping to regulate the climate.
Whales are useful for controlling carbon dioxide in the air because a major food on their menu is called krill, creatures that look like little shrimp. Krill, in turn, eat microscopic organisms called phytoplankton, which take so the equivalent of 4 Amazon forests of CO2 out of the atmosphere each year. By eating the krill, whales are storing much of that carbon in their bodies, so it doesn’t get released back into the air. When whales die, they sink to the bottom of the deep ocean. Anything below 1000 meters stays put in the ocean virtually forever. Even better, when the whales poop, they provide fertilizer for phytoplankton, which then grab even more CO2 from the atmosphere. Due to their tremendous size, the poop of whales contributes A LOT to nourishing the phytoplankton.
As an economist, Ralph Chami realized that he had to translate the services that whales do for the planet (that is, sequester huge amounts of carbon and therefore help mitigate global warming) in ways that people understand: dollars and cents. So, he estimated that the services a single whale does to capture carbon in the course of their lifetime could be valued at 3 million dollars. It turns out that, on land, elephants also do an excellent job storing carbon, not in their bodies but by fertilizing trees, which in turn sequester carbon. He valued their services to the earth to be about 2.6 million dollars each.
Armed with this information Ralph Chami has been trying to create a market place where companies who need to off-set their carbon footprints purchase credits from countries or areas that are taking measures to protect whales or elephants, or grow sea grass, which is also good at capturing carbon dioxide.
It may see cold and calculating to give a monetary value to living things such as elephants and whales, but, if it helps to protect them, it can be a positive thing.
This blog has been in existence since 2011. It was mainly started to serve as an example for students taking a seminar focused on using web resources to research controversial issues at a private university in Tokyo. However, it has been maintained for more than 12 years out of interest and in light of the fact that thousands of visitors have come to the blog and may have enjoyed reading some of the posts.
The situation regarding Japan's role in whaling operations has gotten somewhat better over the last several years since the international court of justice demanded in 2014 that Japan end its annual hunt of whales. It complied with that only after pulling out of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 2019. When it left the IWC, the Japanese government said that it would limit commercial whaling to within its own territorial waters. So, they would no longer have the pretense that they were engaged in whaling for "research purposes" when it was actually commercial in nature, as they did for many years
Unfortunately, however, the British newspaper, the Guardian reported in February of 2023 that a Japanese company, Kyodo Senpaku, is currently building a huge factory whaling ship, which they call a "mother ship." That ship will be capable of sailing 13,000 KM and can stay at sea for as long as two months. The idea is that smaller ships will capture the whales and the bigger "mother ship" will process the whale meat, freezing and storing it.
Minke whales, including a 1-year-old juvenile, being loaded aboard Nisshin Maru. This photograph was taken in the Southern Ocean by agents from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service vessel, during a 2008 surveillance mission.
The government of Australia is strongly opposed to this planned return to whaling in the Antarctic Ocean, which Australia sees as its backyard, with whales in its waters that travel in and out of the so-called Southern Ocean. The Japanese government gave assurances to Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibsersek, that they were not funding this "mother ship" and claimed that it was a private endeavor. Given that it is highly unlikely that any future whaling operation can turn a profit, it's almost surely the case that the Japanese government is subsidizing the project with tax payer yen.
The Guardian quotes the president of Kyodo Senpaku, Hideki Tokoro, as saying that the "mother ship" was intended to pass on “whaling culture" to future generations. As was noted elsewhere in this blog, this kind of whaling operation, with its exploding harpoons and huge vessels is a far cry from the traditional small-scale whaling that Japan engaged in for hundreds of years. It is something that Japan took up following the example of Western nations that have long since given up the practice as being barbaric and not in line with what is now known about the value of whales to the oceans' ecosystems.
It looks like the Japanese government is now outsourcing the tired old claim that Japan's "whaling culture must be preserved" to private companies. The other claim, that it is needed for future "food security," is laughable given the unsustainable nature of the industry, huge ships using fossil fuels to travel thousands of miles to catch animals that are no longer part of the diet of modern Japanese.
I watched “A Whale of a Tale” last night and found it disappointing and annoying although I understood the admirable motivation of its director, Megumi Sasaki, and respect the fact that she spent 6 years of her life making it. In an interview (Sasaki, 2018) that was conducted by the Asia Society soon after the release of the film, she mentioned how disgusted she was by the total breakdown in communication between the anti-whaling activists, the filmmakers of “The Cove,” and the fishermen and townspeople of Taiji. She wanted to make a film that showed the town’s perspective, and that of the fishermen, in a more balanced way.
On the plus side, she did succeed in her film to humanize the fishermen, Taiji officials, and citizens who were mostly vilified in “The Cove.” As a Japanese filmmaker who was not perceived as being aligned with activist groups, she gained the trust of the fishermen, mayor, and even local right-wing activists in order to get their candid comments. “A Whale of a Tale” uncovered the hatred and xenophobia that existed on both sides, emanating from the activists, foreign critics of the dolphin/whale slaughter, the fishermen, the rightist defenders of the drive, and from the townspeople.
Those in Taiji, whether they were directly connected with the whaling industry or not, felt under attack. They had been losing the media battle abroad, mainly thanks to “The Cove” and the notoriety it caused, but gained domestic sympathy because they were seen as underdogs defending their ancient traditions. In the intervening years, between the filming of “The Cove” and “A Whale of a Tale,” the fishermen and local officials seemed to realize they had to change their approach to activists, journalists, and filmmakers.
They turned on a charm offensive for the cameras, in the case of the more recent documentary, without changing the brutality of their dolphin hunt drive methods or the bloody consequences of them, except for some lip service about more humanely severing the dolphins' cervical spine. Nor did they make any attempt to try to justify the continuation of the hunt in the 21st century, when the vast majority of Japanese eschew whale meat the harm done to captive animals is well known (Bearzi, 2014).
The claims of neutrality or objectivity by the filmmaker, Megumi Sasaki, and one of the film’s chief protagonists, Jay Alabaster (a doctoral student and AP stringer), is laughable. The very reason why “The Cove” gained the notoriety that it did was because of the coup that it pulled off in successfully (albeit clandestinely and through trickery) of showing the drive hunt in its full gory detail, despite the best efforts of the “fishermen” to shield the bloodletting with tarps and to intimidate the activists/filmmakers. Jay Alabaster is both a character in the doc and the vehicle for the film’s main contention that things could be so much better if the two sides (portrayed simplistically as Americans and people in Taiji, or the Japanese in general) could just understand each other and “get along.”
Only token consideration is given to the whales/dolphins themselves and Alabaster becomes an apologist for the Fisheries Agency/ Fishermen’s argument that the species being slaughtered are not endangered and “only” about 2000 of them are killed each year. At the end of the film, Alabaster sits down for a beer and a meal of whale meat with the fishermen who treat him condescendingly like their pet “good gaijin,” unlike those nasty gaijin who want them to stop making Taiji’s cove red with blood each year.
The biggest lost opportunity in the film was that it did not give greater screen time to local activists. A Japanese activist who worked since the late 1960s, and her younger protege, to protect dolphins and whales were interviewed in the film for just a few minutes despite offering valuable insights that could have been expanded upon. An excellent article appeared in the Japan Times (O’dwyer, 2015) explaining how much domestic activism was set back by “The Cove” and the confrontational tactics of Sea Shepherd. That outside pressure made it possible for The Fisheries Agency, right-wing agitators, and the fishermen to paint any resistance to the hunt as anti-Japanese, a threat to Japanese cultural identity, and a menace to Japan’s sovereignty and autonomy. This distracted from the sheer barbarity and gruesomeness of the slaughter and put that on the back burner.
The most fundamental problem with the film “A Whale of a Tale” is its argument that the two sides (Japan/Taiji fishermen and townspeople vs. foreigners/activists) misunderstand each other and can all be happier if they came to see each other’s perspective. This was beyond naive. The naivety of it was laid bare in a particularly revealing scene that appeared late in the documentary, one in which Jay Alabaster met with a relatively young whaler equipped with some of the recent Tweets and streamed video by Sea Shepherd (and copious comments on those Tweets).
Just a single day of tweeting filled pages and pages, whereas the town of Taiji and the fishermen had hardly any social media presence at all. One of the Tweets showed a streaming video of dolphins being slaughtered beyond a barrier of tarps that had been set up. Wind gusts blew the tarp up exposing the bloodshed and reddening sea. Alabaster was trying to make the point that if only the fishermen and the town could get their side of the story out they’d be able to compete against the foreign social media onslaught. What the fisherman was concerned with, however, was how they could better shield the slaughter by tying down the tarp better. The “sides” understand each other only too well. Alabaster and Sasaki were a boon to Taiji's (and the Fisheries Agency's) PR efforts but did nothing to advance any true "meeting of minds." Their lack of care or concern for the thousands of dolphins and whales being killed each year was obvious. A anthropocentric worldview can not easily be reconciled with a biocentric one, and differences in these worldviews go beyond cultural differences or mere preferences.
In the film, one of the Taiji fishermen made an excellent point and he did so quietly and earnestly. He asked why slaughterhouses in the US didn't carry out their activities openly, freely allowing cameras so all could see what was being done. Why indeed? He said this to point out the hypocrisy of what he perceived to be unfair criticism of the Taiji slaughter. Setting aside points that might be made about wild cetaceans vs. livestock raised for human consumption, of course, a more genuinely biocentric approach would just as vigorously advocate for an end to the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji as it would the slaughter of hogs in Iowa. The quickening pace of our biosphere's destruction will, hopefully, advance a more consistent biocentric worldview...but it's unfortunate that that's what it may take before we start to come around. Empathy is not only needed to bring people together, but also to bring about respect for sentient creatures of all stripes, even if they happen to be striped dolphins.
