Will Japan hunt Southern Ocean whales again this year?

According to The Sydney Morning Herald last Monday:

THE RUDD Government's new special envoy on whaling, the former Sydney Olympics chief Sandy Hollway, will try to persuade Japan to curtail its Antarctic whaling this summer.

Mr Hollway has opened a confidential new diplomatic dialogue, and the summer's whaling is high on his agenda.

The fleet is due to leave Japan next month for waters south-east of Australia, and into Antarctica's Ross Sea.

It plans to kill up to 985 whales. The fleet also faces direct action from Sea Shepherd, and possibly Greenpeace.

Mr Hollway told the Herald last night that Australia should keep working for a whaling suspension, and he would visit Tokyo again before the fleet was due to leave.

Will Japan hunt Southern Ocean whales again this year?

It would be nice to answer that question with a negative, however it is highly unlikely that Japan will willingly forgo its annual hunt in Antarctic waters.

So called scientific whaling has become an issue of stubborn pride for the Government of Japan, who curiously continue to endorse the killing and eating of a range of whale and dolphin species even though there is evidence of high levels of mercury contamination.

The Japan Times last Friday:

People who frequently eat pilot whale meat tend to have abnormally high levels of mercury in their hair, according to a study of residents of the whaling town of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture.
The study was conducted by a team that included researchers from the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido and the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Daiichi University in Fukuoka Prefecture.
The team said there were three people whose hair mercury exceeded 50 parts per million, a level that can cause neurological symptoms.
Whales and dolphins tend to have high concentrations of mercury accumulated through the food chain.
Tetsuya Endo, an associate professor at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido, said it is unlikely the residents will immediately experience mercury-induced health problems, but those with high mercury levels should consider cutting down on the amount of whale they eat.
The group collected hair samples from 30 men and 20 women between last December and July and asked them how often they eat pilot whale meat.
Mercury levels averaged 21.6 ppm among the men and 11.9 ppm among the women, both of which are about 10 times the national average, it said.
The three people whose hair mercury levels exceeded 50 ppm were all men, the team said. The three men ate whale meat more than once a month.
The study found that mercury levels were halved in about two months if the test subjects stopped eating whale meat.

This contamination is not restricted to species within Japanese territorial waters and whales migrating up and down the Australian east coast are currently being monitored for mercury contamination and its effect on species viability and sustainability.

So to remind us all of what is at stake here.

Whales of the Southern Ocean - Australian East Coast to Antarctica

Photographs from Google Images.