Australia invests millions in non-lethal whale research

[Guest guest]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/16/austalia.whales.ap/index.html

 

 

Australia invests millions in non-lethal whale research

 

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Australia will invest millions of dollars in

non-lethal

whale research to show Japan that the animals do not need to be killed in order

to be studied, the government announced Monday.

 

International opposition to Japanese whaling fleets killing whales for

scientific

research has been repeatedly ignored by Tokyo.

 

The $3.87 million campaign begins just ahead of Japan's Southern Ocean summer

whaling season, when its fleet regularly kills more than 1,000 whales for

research.

Critics say the hunts are a cover for commercial whaling, banned since 1986..

The

Australian campaign will invest in aerial surveys, satellite tags and genetic

studies.

Environment Minister Peter Garrett said researchers do not need to use

" grenade-tipped

harpoons. "

" Australia does not believe that we need to kill whales to understand them, "

Garrett said.

The fund will also carry out an assessment of Japan's scientific whaling

program.

Japan's Fisheries Agency said last week that its whaling fleet is expected to

cull up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales this season.

Japan kills the whales under a scientific program that Tokyo says provides

crucial

data on populations, feeding habits and distribution of the mammals in the seas

near Antarctica and the north Pacific Ocean.

The research hunts are allowed by the International Whaling Commission, but

opponents

-- including Australia and New Zealand -- say they are killing the whales for

commercial

purposes. The meat is sold for food and ends up in restaurants.

The Japanese have hunted whales for centuries, and whale meat was widely eaten

in

the lean years after World War II. However, it has plunged in popularity in

today's

prosperous Japan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fascism, like socialism, is rooted in a market society that refused to function.

A financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a

Mafia capitalism -- and a Mafia political system.

A self-regulating market turns human beings and the natural environment into

commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the

natural environment.

 

Karl Polanyi