(Tokyo) Japan’s largest whaling company released footage Wednesday showing the first fin whale hunted for commercial purposes in Japanese waters in nearly 50 years.
The fin whale is the second largest animal in the world after the blue whale.
Japan, one of three countries that practice the highly controversial commercial whaling along with Norway and Iceland, this year added the fin whale to its list of possible prey, which already includes the minke whale, Bryde’s whale and sei whale.
Footage provided to AFP shows the dead whale being hauled onto Japan’s new whaling “mother ship” as workers pose next to the carcass for the camera and prepare large knives to cut it up.
“This is the first catch of a fin whale in Japanese commercial whaling since 1976,” said Masuo Ide, a spokesman for the whaling company Kyodo Senpaku.
The male, harpooned by smaller ships on the 1er August off the coast of Japan, measured 19.61 meters and weighed at least 55 tons, he told AFP.
The crew of the Kangei Maru, which launched in May, butchered the carcass and then froze and stored the meat on board.
Fin whales are considered “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Four other fin whales have been hunted since this catch.
Last week, fin whale meat was served in the northern city of Sapporo, with a wholesaler telling local media it was “delicious, odorless.”
“It changed my impression of whale meat,” he added.
The whaling company plans another tasting in Tokyo on Friday.
Japan, which considers whale meat to have been a key source of protein in the years following World War II, left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 2019.
It has since resumed open commercial whaling, only in its own maritime area.
This year, the government has allowed whalers to take up to 376 whales, including 59 fin whales, out of an estimated 19,299 in its waters and economic exclusion zone (EEZ).
Meanwhile, Japan is currently seeking the extradition of Paul Watson, 73, a Canadian-American anti-whaling activist who was arrested in Greenland in July.
Mr. Watson co-founded Sea Shepherd, whose members fought a fierce battle on the high seas against Japanese whaling ships in the 2000s and 2010s.