LONDON — When the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission opened in Alaska last Monday, Japan declared that it planned to kill 50 humpback whales as well as the usual minke and fin whales next year in its "scientific" whale hunt (catch them, count them and sell them as food).
The plan was "highly provocative," Australian Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. It was also carefully calculated, as Japan's real goal was to restart commercial whaling. Japan offered to drop the plan to kill humpbacks if the IWC approved a return to "limited commercial whaling" by four Japanese coastal villages — just four little villages, for now, and strictly limited numbers of whales. But the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling would have been broken.
The pro-moratorium countries at the IWC understood Japan's tactics and didn't make the deal, reckoning that the lives of 50 humpbacks were less important than the principle of no commercial whaling. On Thursday, the final day of the meeting, fierce opposition forced Japan to scrap its "community whaling" proposal. The IWC then approved a nonbinding resolution to continue the temporary ban on commercial whaling.