Japan resumes commercial whale hunting after more than 30 years

SHOULD WHALES be hunted for profit? Japan is one of a handful of countries that says yes. In December the country announced it was leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC)—its first withdrawal from an international body since the second world war—and would no longer abide by a global moratorium imposed by the IWC in 1986. Today Japanese whaling vessels set sail to hunt whales commercially for the first time in more than three decades.

Environmentalists and whale enthusiasts may despair, but some believe Japan’s decision may in fact be a face-saving admission that its long, expensive campaign to reverse the IWC’s moratorium is over. As Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a conservation charity, recently told the Associated Press, “what we are seeing is the beginning of the end of Japanese whaling.”