Whale Update
Just thought I’d post a quick follow-up to the controversy surrounding whales. I wrote about my first (and probably last) experience eating whale meat and my thoughts on the modern practice of whaling – especially in Japan – in my post Whale of a Tale. Well, I caught this update thanks to JapanProbe and its daily aggregation of newsworthy bits and blurbs. Apparently, the Japanese media has been discussing the rise in the populations of Humpback, Minke, and Blue whales. The blog David @ Tokyo posted about these reports. Please visit his post about Southern Hemisphere Humpbacks, his post about Antarctic Blue Whales, and his entry that JapanProbe picked up.
Basically, the Japanese media is reporting that the IUCN Red List people are giving thought to reclassification of a couple of types of whales. David translated the Yomiuri Shinbun’s article about it. I have reproduced David’s translation below.
Humpback and Minke, removed from “Endangered” list – New impetus for whaling resumption
It has been learnt that the IUCN, after confirming increases in the number of Humpback and Minke whales which had been threatened with extinction, has moved to down list these two species to a lower rank of extinction risk.
The downgrade is expected to be published shortly in the “Red List”, which classifies animal species by different levels of extinction risk. Coming on the eve of the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Anchorage USA, the controversy surrounding the resumption of commercial whaling for these two species is likely to be heightened.
According to the Red List, the Humpback was “Endangered (Threatened)”, and the Minke whale species, while not meeting the criteria of a Threatened species, had been classified in the “Near Threatened” category, requiring caution, due to a notable decreasing trend in their numbers.
The IUCN, in progressing their re-evaluation of the rankings for the world’s mammal species, held a meeting of specialists in January this year, and confirmed that they would downgrade the Humpback and Minke whale species to “Least Concern”, a ranking indicating a low risk of extinction, based on scientific data such as that provided by the research whaling conducted by Japan.
The research whaling is currently conducted with respect to Minke whales, and from this autumn will commence for Humpback whales. This downgrade will potentially provide the nations who are aiming for a resumption in commercial whaling, such as Japan, with a powerful reinforcement. Yoshio Kaneko of Iwate Prefectural University’s Faculty of Policy Studies commented that “This is the result of an objective judgement of the status of whale abundance. With respect to these two species, anti-whaling advocates will lose any grounds they had to say that these whales are facing extinction”.
(2007/4/27/ 3:10 Yomiuri Shinbun)
Wish I’d found David’s blog a lot earlier. He posts tons of stuff about whaling in Japan. I’ll be following it with interest. Thanks, David! 
