Japan's North Pacific whaling takes lowest catch for years

The Agence France-Presse reports that ‘Japanese whalers … in the northwestern Pacific caught a record-low 34 minke whales this Spring, the fisheries agency said Thursday, blaming bad weather.

The whaling, conducted in the name of “scientific research”, took place from April 18 to June 3 and netted 17 male and 17 female minke. The catch is the lowest since Tokyo started the program in 2003, the agency said.’

This will bring even further pressure on Japan to abandon a whaling programme that is dressed up in ‘science’ to simply justify trying to keep a dying commercial industry alive. This heavily subsidised industry is tottering on its keel as it cannot sell the whale meat that it already has to hoard because people are just no longer interested in eating this unnecessary catch.

We have recently been speculating on what motivates Japan to continue whaling, and ou can find out more about whaling in Japan throughout the site