Whaling nations are again girding for the battle to resume industrial whaling ahead of the meeting this spring of the two bodies that could lift the international moratorium on industrial whaling -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the International Whaling Commission.
Joji Morishita, deputy director of Japan's High Seas Fisheries division, said last month that Japan would like to resume commercial whaling on minke and eastern gray whales, adding that populations of humpback whales are also increasing rapidly. He said as many as 2,000 minkes, out of a population of about 750,000, could be killed each year without endangering the species.
There is little disagreement that minke populations are high enough to permit a limited hunt, and whalers say there will be no return to the bad old days of "wasteful" whaling, which apparently ended in 1986 with the current moratorium.
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