JAPANESE whalers have been throwing away tons of their catches at sea because of a slump in consumption that has resulted in a vast whale meat surplus.

The revelation, presented yesterday by a Japanese researcher from analysis of official statistics, contradicts two of the central claims of Japan’s pro-whaling lobby: that Japanese people like eating whale, and that none of the carcasses of the slaughtered mammals goes to waste.

“The total protection of all whales . . . is contradictory to Japanese cultural values, where whale meat is still eaten and where whales are still revered through religious ceremonies and festivals,” said Joji Morishita, of the Japanese Fisheries Agency. The study reveals that the price of whale meat is plummeting because it is so hard to sell.

Commercial whaling has been banned since 1986 after overwhelming evidence that it was driving the world’s largest mammals to extinction. But Japan gets around the moratorium by claiming the right to carry out “scientific whaling” supposedly to gain “research” data from slaughtered whales. The number killed in this hunt has been steadily increasing — last winter the research fleet returned to Japan with 6,400 tons of meat. As whale supplies have increased, however, demand has continued to shrink.

“The whale meat diet is becoming more and more obsolete in Japan,” the author of the report, Junko Sakuma, of the Dolphin and Whale Action Network, said yesterday. “The Japanese Government has long been blatantly (telling) the world that we need whale meat as a nation, but it must be challenged.”

In the past, whalers prided themselves on using every part of an animal, but on their last expedition to the Antarctic, environmentalists monitoring the catch saw Japanese ships throwing back parts of the whales, apparently because of oversupply. According to Ms Sakuma, the average whale used to yield 4.3 tonnes of meat; on the last voyage, this had gone down to 3.7 tonnes.

In 2000, the wholesale price of red whale meat was 3,760 yen (£18) per kg; today the same amount of meat has halved in value to 1,900 yen (£9). An opinion poll four years ago indicated that 13 per cent of Japanese eat whale meat.

BAIT FOR VOTES

• Japan has recruited 21 developing nations into the International Whaling Commission, including several Caribbean and East African countries
• The annual fees for a developing country were £21,000 until 2002, when they were reduced to £10,500 and then further to £6,500 this year
• Several countries have indicated that Japan pays their annual fees, including the Dominican Republic and the Solomon Islands. Grenada’s funding is under investigation
• Japan has also made grants of between $14 million (£7.6 million) and $51 million in fisheries aid to Antigua and Barbuda, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent
• Some landlocked countries, such as Mali and Mongolia, are members of the commission, although they conduct no whaling. Japan has been Mongolia’s largest aid donor since 1991, and Mongolia’s presence is thought to be a result of Japanese recruitment
• Three commission members carry out whaling on a significant scale. Japan and Iceland conduct “scientific whaling” and Norway hunts in defiance of the international ban.
• Aboriginal communities are also allowed to hunt whales. More than 25,000 whales have been killed since 1986
• For procedural changes, such as the proposed removal of Greenpeace’s status as an observer, a simple majority vote is sufficient. Pro-whaling motions are likely to gain majority support this year

  Source: Third Millennium Foundation/Greenpeace

Times Recommends

• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Indian Army spends10m rupees on golf buggies
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating