Five years after leaving the international organization responsible for maintaining the global moratorium on commercial whaling, Japan has just inaugurated a new factory ship which will allow it to butcher at sea the cetaceans which will be hunted in the coming years. years. It is the only ship of its kind in operation in the world.
This 112 meter long ship, named Kangei Maru, is the first to have been built in more than 70 years in Japan. This new “factory ship” cost more than $60 million, according to official data disclosed by the Kyōdō Senpaku company, which will operate the boat.
The ship was designed to be able to carry out commercial hunting campaigns in the Pacific, but also in the waters around Antarctica. Its role is to take charge of butchering the whales which are hunted by the harpooning ships which will accompany the Kangei Maru.
On a technical level, this boat is able to hoist whales on board whose weight can reach 70 tonnes, which means that it will be able to carve up fin whales, the second largest animal living on Earth, whose populations have been decimated by commercial hunting in the 20e century.
It succeeds the factory ship Nisshin Maruwhich was mainly used as part of the “scientific” hunting campaigns carried out for several years in Antarctica and which made it possible to harpoon more than 17,000 whales.
“It is important to protect marine resources, and we are responsible for it,” said Kyōdō Senpaku President Hideki Tokoro during the press briefing for the launch of the Kangei Maru. “I believe that continued whaling will benefit Japan and the rest of the world,” he added.
“Death machine”
Environmentalist and animal rights organizations, however, denounced the inauguration of the new vessel, which means a continuation of commercial hunting operations for several years, even decades.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation called the boat a “death machine,” while promising to launch a new campaign opposing whaling this fall. Mr Watson, formerly a leader of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has participated in several clashes against Japanese whaling ships in Antarctica in the past.
Japan decided to relaunch commercial whaling in 2019, after Tokyo’s decision to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in December 2018. This organization has the mandate to ensure the protection of cetacean populations, including several Species have been decimated by commercial hunting in the past. There has also been an international moratorium on this activity since 1986.
Before relaunching the commercial hunt, Japan had previously tried, in vain, to convince the other member countries of the IWC to revive the industry. The country mainly hunts three species, including the sei whale, a species classified as “endangered” on the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the Bryde’s whale, the precise population status of which is unknown. .
Iceland also conducted commercial hunting until last year, in contravention of the international moratorium. It is planned to end this year, but the only company able to hunt whales wants to obtain a new government permit valid for 10 years.
Finally, Norway is also pursuing commercial hunting. The country claims that this is “legal and sustainable”, despite the international moratorium and uncertainties about the state of whale populations.
Whales and climate
If there is therefore a firm desire, particularly on the part of Japan, to continue hunting large cetaceans, the meat market has declined significantly over the years, including in Japan (around 1000 tonnes sold, according to data of 2021). The company Kyōdō Senpaku is therefore trying to revive the market and last year it inaugurated vending machines in Tokyo where consumers can obtain whale meat products. Other points of sale should emerge in the coming years.
A study published in 2019 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had already found that protecting whales in the world’s oceans was part of an effective strategy to combat the climate crisis. Norwegian researchers also published a study last year whose conclusions point in this direction.
The climatic role of whales arises from the fact that these animals, through their annual migrations of several thousand kilometers, help to disperse, with their excrement, substances such as iron and nitrogen, which directly participate in the growth of phytoplankton. The presence of whales, and especially the “fertilization” that results from it, therefore has a considerable impact on the growth of phytoplankton.
However, this plant plankton is the origin of “at least 50% of all the oxygen present in our atmosphere”, in addition to capturing no less than 37 billion metric tons of CO₂ each year, “or nearly 40 % of all CO₂ produced,” according to IMF data.