Sea Shepherd and Japan’s Decision to Commercially Slaughter Whales

Sea Shepherd welcomes the end of whaling in the Southern Ocean.

Sea Shepherd Statement On Japan’s Decision to Commercially Slaughter Whales

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 25th, 2018 – Since 2002, Sea Shepherd has opposed Japanese whaling operations in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary with expeditions to Antarctic waters first in 2002 followed by continuous campaigns from 2005 until 2017.

During this period over 6,000 whales were saved from the harpoons of Japanese commercial whalers posing as research whalers by Sea Shepherd interventions.

In 2017, the Japanese government began to invest millions of dollars in security efforts to prevent Sea Shepherd from engaging their fleets. These security measures included military-grade real-time surveillance.

Although this prevented Sea Shepherd from returning to the Southern Ocean in 2018, it also placed Japan in a position of expending huge resources on continuous security.

In other words, the cost of preventing Sea Shepherd intervention became very expensive.

This, and the verdict of the International Court of Justice that exposed Japanese research as fraudulent, coupled with worldwide condemnation of their Southern Ocean activities has in the opinion of Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd led to this decision to declare they will openly undertake commercial whaling activities.

The scheme to pose as researchers will now be dropped and that means there can be absolutely no justification for hunting whales in an internationally established whale sanctuary. This will be the last year of Japanese whaling activities in the Southern Ocean.

Sea Shepherd’s objective of ending the slaughter of whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary has been realized. This is a victory for the campaign to make the Southern Ocean a whaling free zone.

If Japan decides to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) it will allow the IWC to pass the motion to establish the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary thus effectively ending whaling in the Southern Hemisphere.

Japan will now join Norway and Iceland as rogue outlaw whaling nations in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic.

The Whale Wars in the Southern Ocean will soon be over. The focus now must be the Northern Hemisphere.

Sea Shepherd welcomes this announcement by Japan and views it as a positive development.

Captain Paul Watson issued a statement saying, “We are delighted to see the end of whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. We are delighted that we will soon have a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary and we look forward to continuing to oppose the three remaining pirate whaling nations of Norway, Japan, and Iceland. Whaling as a ‘legal’ industry has ended. All that remains is to mop up the pirates.”

Japan announces withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission

Note: The statement in this article of Sea Shepherd accusing Japan of taking an extreme step that goes against international consensus is false. Sea Shepherd welcomes this development.

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About Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Captain Paul Watson is a renowned, respected leader in environmental issues and co-founder of Greenpeace. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is a non-profit marine conservation organization whose mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans to conserve and protect ecosystems and species. Established in 1977, Sea Shepherd uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and act when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately balanced oceanic ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their survival for future generations. Visit seashepherd.org for more information