Japan’s antarctic whale hunts not scientific: ICJ

(CNN)-The International Court of Justice ruled Monday that Japan can no longer continue its annual whale hunt, rejecting the country’s argument that it was for scientific purposes. The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United State. Japan’s fleet carries out an annual whale hunt despite a worldwide moratorium, taking advantage of a loophole in the law that permits the killing of mammals for scientific research. Whale meat is commonly available for consumption in Japan.

Each year, environmental groups such as Sea Shepherd pursue the Japanese hunters in an attempt to disrupt the whaling. (read more.. on cnn)

The decision to ban Japan’s annual whaling drive off Antarctica handed down by the United Nations’ highest court on Monday, was a hard won victory for conservationists who long argued that Tokyo’s whaling research was a cover for commercial whaling. The course’s decision does not affect smaller hunts that Japan carries out in the northern Pacific, or coastal whaling carried out on a smaller scale by local fishermen. Lawyers attending the proceedings said there was a gasp among the audience when Judge Tomka ordered Japan to immediately “revoke all whaling permits” and not issue any new ones under the existing program. Australia, a former whaling country, brought the suit against Japan in 2010, accusing the country of using a loophole to get around a 1986 worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling.Despite the Ban, Japan has captured and killed more than 10,000 whales in what Tokyo describes as efforts to collect data to monitor the impact of whales on Japan’s fishing industry and to study the health and habitat of the whale population.. (Read more..nytimes.com)

While the primary targets of the Japanese, like the Norwegians, are mink whales, so plentiful that they call them the cockroaches of the sea. bowheads are rare, and with extraordinary lifetimes of up to 300 years. It makes them the longest living mammals.  Norway, Iceland and Greenland are still hunting whale. (read more on the guardian.com)