Whalers' fear

Press, 22 July 1980, Page 16

Whalers ' fear

By

DONALD KIRK

in Tokyo

Japan’s whaling interests are amassing emotional arguments and scientific evidence to prevent what they fear may be the imminent destruction of their industry by nations anxious to ban whaling. ' ■ “Why do they want to destroy, us?” asked Chichi Ohmura, vice-secretary of the Japan Whaling Association. “What do they want to stop us from earning our living?”

The plaintive tone of Ohmura’s question indicated the sense of persecution as Japanese government officials prepare to fight on its behalf at the annual conference of the International Whaling Commission opening on July 21. “A ban on whaling would be totally unreasonable,” said Kunio Yonezawa, deputy director-general of the Fisheries Agency and leader of the Japanese delegation to the commission.

As a bare minimum, he said, the commission should “stabilise the catch quotas,” under which Japanese whalers last year caught 5510 whales, two-thirds of the quota set for the Soviet Union. '

The crux of the argument of Japanese whalers is that the number of minke whales is increasing. Japanese scientists estimate 170,000 minke — a relatively small species about 28ft long and weighing three tons — are now in the Antarctic, where Japan’s lone remaining “mother” whaling ship and its four catch vessels spend five-and-half months a year beginning in October. The mother ship processed 3279 minke whales last season, while coastal vessels filled quotas of 1350 sperm whales. 460 bryde whales and another 421 minke whales

Japan ate 11.300 tons of whale meat last year, as opposed to 80,000 tons a decade ago, when six factory ships plied the Antarctic and the North Pacific, the latter now completely banned for whaling. The Japanese,, second only to the Russians as a whaling nation, expect only’ limited co-operation from Soviet delegates to the conference. “The Soviet Union does not send good scientists,” said Yonezawa, complaining that Russian delegates “do not always understand what is going on.” He was “not pessimistic” about the outcome of the conference and said it was too early to consider what Japan would do if the commission ignored its “scien-

tific arguments” and voted for a complete ban. The Whaling Association, a private organisation that shares offices with Japan’s solitary large whaling company, Nihon Kyodo Hogei, formed by three once-pow-erful whaling firms, has left no doubt about its own position. “If the' industry is faced with total collapse,” said Ohmura, “we would urge withdrawal from the commission.”

Until then, he promised, “our. basic principle is that we obey the spirit of the Whaling Convention,” which; he said, “aims at the order and development of the whaling industry and not its complete destruction.” —

Copyright London Observer Service.