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JAPAN WHALING PROGRAMME LACKS SCIENTIFIC CREDIBILITY - REPORT
(New Zealand Press Association)Wellington Dec 22 NZPA - As Greenpeace campaigners geared up for another day of confrontation with a Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean, the New Zealand Government today released a damning report on Japan's whaling programme, saying it lacked scientific credibility .
Conservation Minister Chris Carter said under the programme now underway in the Southern Ocean, known as JARPA II, Japan was going to more than double the number of whales it killed.
``Those whales will be killed inside the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary and well outside Japan's own territorial waters,'' he said in a statement.
``For any nation to contemplate this kind of programme, it should at the very least have a robust scientific justification. Japan does not.
``This critique has been compiled by New Zealand's internationally respected whale experts. It demonstrates that the reasons Japan is using to kill whales in the Southern Ocean lack scientific credibility.''
Yesterday, two Greenpeace boats tracked down Japanese whaling vessel Nisshin Maru off the Antarctic coast and watched a whale being harpooned. They then attempted to stop the boat loading the dead whale.
One of the smaller Japanese capture boats later rammed one of the Greenpeace ships to try and push it clear of the whale loading process.
Greenpeace New Zealand whales campaigner Pia Mancia said that the Greenpeace vessels had remained near the whalers through the short Antarctic night, but there had been no whaling activity since yesterday afternoon.
The Government's report, prepared by scientists Simon Childerhouse, Mike Donoghue and Scott Baker, says JARPA II contains numerous flaws and is based on speculative and unsound science.
The key findings in the report are:
* Most of the data proposed to be collected in Japan's programme is not required for the management of conservation of whale stocks;
* Many of the objective of the programme are based on unsubstantiated or incorrect assumptions;
* Many of the identified objectives can be addressed through analysis of data from Japan's previous 18-year scientific programme;
* The few objectives that do have some relevance to the management and conservation of whale stocks can be addressed better using non-lethal methods;
* There are serious concerns about the impact of the proposed kills on protected stocks, for which there are no agreed abundance estimates; and
* The proposed kills are being undertaken in the IWC (International Whaling Commission) approved Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary which was set up to allow scientific study of the recovery of whale stocks without whaling.
The Green Party praised the report and called on New Zealanders to express their outrage by writing to the Japanese Government.
``Japan's whaling is about a meat market, it has nothing to do with cultural expression whatsoever,'' the party's conservation spokeswoman Metiria Turei said.
Greenpeace had ``shocking footage of high seas butchery in a whale sanctuary...which shows the total unrelenting moral bankruptcy of Japan's so-called scientific whaling programme''.
Ms Mancia said that Greenpeace needed to take non-violent direct action because international diplomacy had failed.
``We have an international ban in whaling in place, the Southern Ocean has been declared a whale sanctuary, and yet the slaughter continues,'' she said.
The Fisheries Agency of Japan announced earlier this year that it intended doubling its whale take to 1000, including the threatened fin whales -- the second largest whales in the world.
The agency describes its whaling operation as scientific, which allows it to exploit an International Whaling Commission loophole, but the meat from the whales will end up on the shelves of Japanese markets as an expensive luxury item.
This anti-whaling campaign -- one of Greenpeace's biggest -- comes following a meeting last month of 13 southern hemisphere countries, including New Zealand, to strengthen promotion of whale sanctuaries in the South Atlantic and Pacific.
NZPA WGT pw ecm pm mgr
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