Whale Wars Resume

Iceland suspended its fin whale hunt pending developments in Japan's whale meat market, but the 2011 minke whale hunt opened in April and so far 32 minke whales have been slaughtered [photo courtesy Greenpeace].  Since resuming whaling in 2006 Icelandic hunters have killed 280 endangered fin whales.  Iceland whaling is indisputably commercial in nature so it violates the International Whaling Commission ban.  The US Secretary of Commerce has recommended to the President trade sanctions against Iceland. Conservationists are calling on Obama to implement the recommendations.  The US government has received over a quarter million protests from the public against Iceland's whaling industry.  Iceland has temporarily stopped whaling before (2007), only to return with larger boats, larger quotas, and a full-on export business.

On the other side of the planet, Japan announced it will resume what it calls "scientific research", commercial whaling by another name, in the Southern Ocean.  The ban on commercial whaling permits taking of whales for scientific research.  Japanese whalers will again meet their nemesis, the Sea Shepherd Society, which has successfully curtailed Japan's whaling operations in what it calls the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.  Japan made the announcement at the annual meeting of the IWC this month.  In February the Japanese fleet left the Southern Ocean six weeks ahead of schedule with taking only a fraction of their self-imposed quota of whales because of confrontations with Sea Shepherd vessels.  Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson said the objective is not to harm Japanese whalers, but "to sink the Japanese whaling fleet economically and bankrupt their illegal activities."  More than commercial whaling threatens cetaceans.  Pollution and noise from oil exploration off Sakhalin Island in the North Pacific threaten the fewer than 130 Western North Pacific gray whales.  Shipping collisions in the North Atlantic threaten the 300 or fewer right whales which migrate off America's busy eastern seaboard.  Over 300,000 cetaceans are killed each year by entanglement in fishing tackle.