Distinguished Scientists Urge Japan to Suspend Scientific Whale Hunt

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As Whaling Meeting Opens, Distinguished Scientists Urge Japan to Suspend Scientific Whale Hunt

From World Wildlife Fund Monday, May 20, 2002

SHIMONOSEKI, JAPAN - On the opening day of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting here, 21 prominent scientists from around the world - among them three Nobel Prize winners - challenged the scientific credibility of Japan's 'scientific' whaling program and called on the Japanese government to halt it. A letter from the scientists was delivered today to top officials in Tokyo, including the prime minister. Although Japan's 'scientific whaling' program has long been criticized within the whaling commission itself, Monday's letter is the first definitive scientific judgment from outside the IWC. The scientists criticized the country's whaling program, ostensibly done as scientific research, as failing to meet 'minimum standards for credible science.' The letter also ran as a full-page ad in the western edition of The New York Times today.

The open letter to the Japanese government was signed by marine biologists and distinguished scientists such as David Suzuki, Jared Diamond, Jane Lubchenco, Sylvia Earle, E.O. Wilson and Nobel laureates Sir Aaron Klug and Roger Guillemin.

'The letter serves as an independent critique of Japan's 'scientific whaling' program outside the IWC and it comes from world-recognized scientific authorities,' said Richard Mott, vice president for international policy at World Wildlife Fund, which sponsored the newspaper ad. 'We are pleased to see so many luminaries in the science world defending science so forcefully.'

Despite a global moratorium imposed by the IWC in 1986, Japan has continued to hunt whales, using a loophole in the moratorium that allows the killing of whales for scientific research. But Japan has never allowed outside experts to review its results. And the country distributes its whale quota among commercial whaling interests, which sell the whale meat to upscale stores and restaurants in Japan. 'The commercial nature of Japan's whaling program conflicts with its scientific independence,' the scientists' letter says. 'Most of the data being gathered by Japan's 'scientific whaling' are obtainable by non-lethal means. Yet Japan's whale research program kills hundreds of whales each year in the absence of a compelling scientific

Aha.

I see. So they aren't the scientific committee of the IWC, but some scientists from presumably other completely unrelated fields?

Funny, the IWC scientific committee never found such problems.

This letter sounds like it was written by WWF, not by the scientists themselves.

Wassa matter debs, you gone sour on WWF now that they are following their philosophy?

You presume a lot. I also see you snipped out the part about at least some of them being marine biologists. Not too bright there, dude. Lets see, one is a member of the UN Experts group on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protects.....sounds like he might know something there....and your favorite organization as well, the UN, one was awarded the Pew Scholars award in Environment and Conservation, one has a medal from The Zoological Society of London and the Nakayama Prize, one is with the National Geographic Society, one is a professor of Marine sciences, and so forth If you follow the link you can read both the full page ad as well as the scientists names and their specialties and associations. It's even in Japanese also, so that you can claim that it is mistranslated.

Yeah, isn't that funny? Could it be......*bias*!!!!! Could it be that what all the western nations say about Japanese whaling is true???!!! Could be......

themselves.

They put all their names to it, so they obviously agree enough to stake their names to it. Is that really the best you can do?

Richard (getting ready to count debs ad hominums in his reply) Hayduke Lives! 'Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.' Henry David Thoreau

The stress of listening to and reading statements from those who see the further destruction of mega fauna as a necessity and that anyone holding a counter view as somehow incomplete has been worth it for me anyhow. Seems that now that mean spirited self interested support of ecological vandalism has disgusted a lot of people and anti whaling support is on the rise. That Japanese whalers are seen as destructive and callous and working against global public interests, that Icelandic whaling interests are seen as spoiled nasty little buggers who want to dictate the rules, and if they don't get their way will storm out of the clubroom, that Norway should be booted out of the IWC for flaunting the rules.

Seems to me that the world is waking up again as the whales are threatened and as the pro whaling philosophy is seen for what it is. Greedy and unnecessary. > >

So any whale scientists?

Not really, are you

You'd have to look that up.

Yes, I am. So sorry you are not. Richard Hayduke Lives! 'We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites.' George Bernard Shaw