Kathmandu. A move by Japan has raised new questions about the existence of marine ecosystems. It is the responsibility of all of us to understand and protect nature. However, the opposite is happening in Japan. Instead of protecting nature, the Japanese government made such a decision, which is being heavily criticized. Recently, Japan has announced that fin whale hunting will be included in the hunting list to approve it. This has threatened the existence of fin whales. The fin whale is the second largest animal in the world.
Japanese government officials recently announced that fin whaling may soon be included in the country’s commercial whaling activities. Experts have strongly condemned the move. Once the hunt for fin whales begins, the number of whale species hunted in Japan’s territorial waters will increase to four.
In 1982, the IWC imposed a ban on commercial whaling, which became effective in 1986. More than 80 countries signed the IWC Convention. However, many countries such as Norway, Denmark/Greenland, Russia, Iceland and Japan are violating the ban on whaling under the guise of scientific research.
In 2019, Japan officially withdrew from the IWC and once again began commercial whaling. However, Japan’s whaling is now limited to the country’s territorial waters in the North-Pacific Ocean. According to recently published whaling data from the IWC, Japan hunted 25 Sei whales, 187 Bryde’s whales and 58 Minke whales in 2022. Japan has also imported fin-whale meat from Iceland in recent years, according to OceanCare.
A threat to the existence of fin whales
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has placed fin whales on the globally endangered list. However, this species is listed as endangered as of 2018. Considered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. However, according to the IWC, the picture of their local population is not clear due to the lack of data in the North Pacific region.
Claire Perry, a senior adviser at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an international NGO that investigates environmental crimes and abuses, said in a statement that Japan’s move to hunt fin whales without reliable population estimates was a “terrible blow to marine conservation”.
Perry said fin whales are one of the Earth’s best carbon sinks and must be fully protected so they can continue to play their vital role in the marine environment. Like all cetaceans, fin whales are threatened by human-caused threats to the marine environment, including climate change, chemical and plastic pollution, fishing, and ship strikes.
Because there is no reliable data on fin whale population numbers, the EIA believes it is impossible to establish a ‘sustainable’ catch quota for Japan. The analysis takes into account the increasing threat to the marine environment and the generally declining status of fin whales as a result of historical whaling errors. Before the global ban on commercial whaling in 1986, about 50,000 fin whales were hunted in the North Pacific.
