While we in the United States slept, Japan came out and announced that in compliance with the court ruling they have officially cancelled the whale hunt in the Southern Ocean. Despite cancelling this hunt, Japan will continue it's whaling campaign in the North Pacific as well as their coastal whaling program which is not covered under the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, called the ruling "a pity". The only pity about this ruling is that these people are actually calling the ruling a pity. Now that Japan has canned the hunt for this year, there are two questions. When the time comes, will Japan send it's whaling fleet to the Southern Ocean anyway and use the ruling as a sort of smokescreen to try and sneak past Sea Shepherd? Will the Japanese seek a way to skirt around the court ruling and return to the Southern Ocean after this next season passes? Time will tell on both of those questions, but today is another day of celebration in the worlds of those who fight for the whales! So what is next for me then?
Personally, beyond this point (until the fall) I don't expect to be doing anymore blogs on the topic of Japanese whaling. On the whale front I will be focused on the Faroe Island whale slaughter. Japan does have a North Pacific whaling campaign that they do, but I am one person and simply cannot cover everything as once again, this is a shark first blog so my primary focus is on them. If more massive news comes out I will be sure to touch on it as I have done with these past two major pieces of news. So for now it is back to Operation Bleeding Seas II. In the spirit of the operation of exposing the horrors of what we do to animals, lets take a look at what the Japanese whaling fleet has been responsible of doing to the whales of the Southern Ocean over the past 25 years. Remember, some of these whales are Endangered Species and each one of these whales were illegally killed. Out of all the conservation groups in the world, only one has consistently ventured to the Southern Ocean to do the job that the Australian Government failed to do, uphold international law.
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It is beyond disturbing to know that people will literally travel thousands of miles to do something like this to an animal. There is no place for it in this world and hopefully this court ruling will spawn similar cases that eventually phase out commercial whaling for good. Thank you all for reading. Never forget that for 25 years in a row the Japanese whaling fleet were allowed to kill whales in a whale sanctuary with no recourse. Should they return they should be arrested and the ships confiscated. If the Australian Government fails again to step up should the Japanese return, Sea Shepherd will once again return as well to uphold international law.
