Sunday, December 23, 2007

Happy Humpback Christmas


Some good Christmas news for the humpback whales in the neighborhood. It was a bad idea in the first place as whale meat is no longer popular in Japan and the younger population there have come to see whaling in a bad light. Now all we have to do is get Norway signed up.


Japan has suspended its first humpback whale hunt in seas off Antarctica since the 1960s, its government said yesterday, backing down in an escalating international battle over the expansion of its hunt.

Japan dropped the planned taking of 50 humpbacks at the behest of the United States, which chairs the International Whaling Commission (IWC), said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura. He said the suspension would last a year or two but that there would be "no changes" to Japan's stance on research whaling itself.


photo credit National Geographic

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