TOKYO — Japanese whalers returned to port Monday with their first catch after resuming commercial whaling for the first time in 31 years, achieving the long-cherished goal of traditionalists that is seen as largely a lost cause amid slowing demand for the meat and changing views on conservation.
A fleet of five boats left the northern Japanese port of Kushiro earlier Monday and brought back two minke whales. A crane lifted them and slowly placed them on the back of a truck to be taken to a portside factory for processing. Workers in blue plastic overalls poured sake from paper cups onto the first whale to express thanks and celebrate the first catch.
It was the first commercial hunt since 1988, when Japan switched to what it called research whaling after commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission. Japan gave six months’ notice that it was withdrawing from the IWC, a move that took effect Sunday.
The Fisheries Agency said the hunts will stay within the country’s exclusive economic zone, and the catch quota for the rest of this year will be 227 whales, fewer than the 637 that Japan hunted in the Antarctic and the northwestern Pacific in its research program in recent years. The announcement of the quota, originally planned for late June, was delayed until Monday in an apparent move to avoid criticism during this past weekend’s Group of 20 summit in Osaka.
Fisheries Agency officials said the whale meat will be auctioned at a local fish market Thursday and later hit stores, mainly in the region but possibly in Tokyo. Whalers are hoping for a special price for the historic meat that is higher than the average $18 per 2.2 pounds that their counterparts from Antarctic research whaling used to get.
While the resumption of commercial whaling was condemned by many conservation groups, others see it as a face-saving way to let the government’s embattled and expensive whaling program gradually succumb to changing times and tastes.
Despite massive attention, tax money and political support from ruling party lawmakers, whaling in Japan involved only a few hundred people and accounted for less than 0.1% of the total meat consumption in fiscal 2017, according to government data.
Japan will stick to a very strict catch quota and will continue conducting research, Hideki Moronuki, a Fisheries Agency official and the chief negotiator at the IWC, said in a recent interview. He said Japan’s commercial whaling will never harm whale stocks.