Machetes in hand, two dozen rubber-booted workers hacked into the bloody carcass of a Baird's beaked whale as this small Japanese seaside community began its whaling season Wednesday with its first catch.
WADA, Japan — Machetes in hand, two dozen rubber-booted workers hacked into the bloody carcass of a Baird's beaked whale as this small Japanese seaside community began its whaling season Wednesday with its first catch.
Townspeople towed away brick-sized chunks of meat in buckets and on bicycles as they joined in an event that some Japanese see as a tradition to be preserved.
The Japanese involved in hunting and slaughtering whales are on the front lines of their country's campaign to overturn the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling -- an effort boosted this week when the International Whaling Commission narrowly passed a resolution endorsing a resumption of the whale hunt.
Japan has said it hopes to consolidate its gains at the IWC and move toward the 75 percent majority needed in the 70-nation organization to overturn the ban.
But the fight has embittered a town that sees the outside world -- and foreign environmentalists -- encroaching on its traditions. Villagers shunned a pair of foreign journalists Wednesday and refused to talk about the whale hunt.
"When I was younger, the whalers came in summer to sell their catch. ... But now that's disappearing," a worker for the town's last whaling company, Gaibo Hogei, said later in a telephone interview. She asked not to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the topic.
Gaibo Hogei owns one of only five commercial whaling boats still plying Japan's coastal waters. Before the moratorium, the company and seven others across Japan hunted minke whales as well. They are now limited to a combined seasonal catch of 66 Baird's beaked whales, a species not subject to the IWC ban.
That catch isn't enough to sustain Japan's traditional whaling communities, said Hideki Moronuki, an official in the oceanic section of Japan's Fisheries Agency. Wada's population has tumbled since the whaling heydays, and the town has now been consumed by larger Minamiboso City.
"Communities like Wada are heavily dependent on the whaling. People's livelihoods depend on it," Moronuki said. "The fact is, traditional whaling communities still exist in Japan and they must be preserved," he said, likening them to aboriginal whalers in Greenland and Alaska, who are granted hunting quotas.
The town of Wada is seeking to pass along its whaling heritage to the next generation, and a local elementary school serves whale meat several times a year.
Schoolchildren made a field trip to witness the first catch of the season. As workers hacked into the carcass, the children gaped and giggled at the blood and blubber on the slaughterhouse floor.
The Baird's beaked whale is a species that can reach a maximum length of up to 42 feet. Japanese whalers say that beaked whales are good to dry or process but that minke whales are vastly preferable for fresh whale meat to be served as sashimi,
Tokyo's demands that the IWC approve a limited coastal catch of minke whales was again rebuffed at the commission's meeting on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, which ended Tuesday.
The ban isn't the only issue worrying whale traditionalists in Japan, however.
Though whale was considered a rich source of protein in the lean years after defeat in World War II, people have since moved on to other meats -- notably beef -- as they became more affluent, leading to an unprecedented glut in whale meat.
But that hasn't stopped the harpoon guns. Tokyo plans to kill -- under a research program -- more than 1,000 minke whales in 2006, over 400 more than last year and more than double the number it hunted a decade ago. Opponents have called Japan's research hunts merely a way for it to dodge the ban.
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Associated Press writer Hiroko Tabuchi contributed to this report.
Source: Associated Press
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