Whale Meat -rapidly increasing stocks and a huge potential stock Excluded Iceland's Fin Whale in the Japanese National Survey

This article is kindly translated in English by Japan Wildlife Conservation Society.
Thanks to Ms. Chikako Yamasaki and Mr. Simon Varnam who volunteered to translate.

Stocks reach new peak at the end of October

This graph shows the monthly whale meat stocks from 1997 to October 2010 when stocks reached 5,525 tons, the largest since 1990. But there is more to this than meets the eye. The actual amount of unsold meat may be higher than these figures for 2010 seem to show. Let's take a look at the background by comparing stock figures with production figures.

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IKAN Welcomes the Early End of Research Whaling

Iruka & Kujira (Dolphin&Whale) Action Network welcomes the early end of the Second Phase of the Japanese Whale Research Program under Special Permit in the Antarctic (JARPAII). We hope this will become the opportunity for unemotional and constructive discussions to take place based on more extensive sharing of information within Japan, to ultimately forever cease from any research whaling activities in the Antarctic.

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Dumped meat?

In our No. 33 newsletter of January 2006, we estimated that "The amount of the whale meat from the Antarctic Ocean would be about 4,000 tons. " The figure had been calculated based on the number of whales and " the meat amount" per whale in past research whaling.

However, the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) recently announced that the total amount of the whale meat in this season was 3, 435.8tons, of which the minke was 3168.7 tons, and the fin was 267.1 tons. Thus the minke was 500 tons lower than our estimation, 3,688t, which had been calculated based on annual data.

Usually, the average amount of the meat per minke is about 4.3 tons, but it was 3.7 tons in this season, decreased by nearly 600kg (14 %). Since nobody has talked about the possible shrinking of the whales, it looks as if some of the meat was dumped in the sea (!).

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J-stock minke whales threatened: the reality of bycatch

The forth type of 'whaling'

A recent study showed that more than 300 J-stock minke whales have graced the tables of Japan and Korea. From both species conservation and a resource management view this is too large of a number to dismiss. It even exceeds the provisional quota proposed by the Chair on April 22nd this year, which is 160 for both coastal and offshore catches.

This kind of whale by-catch is caused by the fixed fishnet fishery, practiced along the coasts of Japan.

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"Whales are eating up all the fish" ? -- No way!!

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