South Korea Firms-up Plan to Re-start Scientific Whaling

26 years after a global moratorium on commercial whaling was put in place, South Korea’s decision to resume hunting whales for scientific research has dismayed environmental campaigners and stunned other members of the International Whaling Commission.

South Korea’s plans to start a so-called scientific whaling program have been widely condemned by politicians and environmental groups. South Korean delegates confirmed the plan to kill whales in coastal waters at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Panama this morning, saying they wanted to start hunting minke whales under a loophole that allows the killing of whales for scientific research.

They said fishermen had been calling for the whales to be killed because “an increasing number of minke whales are eating away large amount of fish stocks which should be consumed by human being.” At the sometimes heated talks, South Korea said it would announce later how many whales it would kill and when, but insisted that it did not need foreign approval.

Whale meat remains highly popular along the east coast of South Korea, which maintained a large whaling fleet based in the southeastern port of Ulsan until the moratorium on commercial whaling was put in place in 1986. Last year, South Korean fishermen accounted for 21 out of the 23 cases of illegal whaling reported to the IWC :: Read the full article »»»»