Japan may resume whaling voyage

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6383241.stm

Version 0 of 1.

Japan is likely to decide next week whether its disabled whaling vessel Nisshin Maru can resume operations.

The stricken factory ship is drifting in Antarctica's Ross Sea following a fire in its meat processing unit.

Conservation groups have maintained that the fire means the end of this season's whale hunt, but Japan says no decision has yet been made.

If the engine and the processing unit can be repaired, a spokesman said, operations can resume.

Whale conservation currently faces the biggest onslaught since the ban on commercial whaling was put in place Sue Fisher, WDCS "We're pretty confident that the Nisshin Maru will be able to get going under her own steam again," said Glenn Inwood, who speaks for Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research.

"And if they can get the engine up and running, and if the processing deck is repairable, they might decide to start whaling again," he told the BBC News website.

Meat that has already been processed is stored in freezers, Mr Inwood said, which were not affected by the fire.

It is not known how many whales have been caught and processed. Japan's aim was to hunt about 10 fin whales and 935 minkes.

Hunting up

The governments of Australia and New Zealand have warned there is potential for an "ecological disaster" if oil leaks from the Nisshin Maru.

However, there is no sign of this happening, and Mr Inwood said comments from the two governments have been politically motivated.

Australia and New Zealand have been the most vehement critics of Japan's whaling programmes.

With a global moratorium on commercial hunting in place, the Japanese fleet operates under regulations permitting whaling for scientific research.

Through various provisions in the international convention regulating whaling, more whales - more than 2,000 per year - are being hunted now than at any time since the moratorium came into force 21 years ago.

With pro-whaling countries having won a vote at last year's International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, conservation and animal rights groups are producing increasingly vocal warnings that further expansion of whaling is a real prospect.

THE LEGALITIES OF WHALING Objection - A country formally objects to the IWC moratorium, declaring itself exemptScientific - A nation issues unilateral 'scientific permits'; any IWC member can do thisAboriginal - IWC grants permits to indigenous groups for subsistence food They are particularly keen to block moves to liberalise the trade in whalemeat, which is tightly regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

"Whale conservation currently faces the biggest onslaught since the ban on commercial whaling was put in place," said Sue Fisher of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).

"Lifting restrictions on international trade in whale products would once again fuel an uncontrollable slaughter."

This years's IWC meeting in May, and the Cites meeting which immediately follows it, are expected to prove highly contentious as pro- and anti-whaling blocs lock horns on an issue where few options for compromise appear to exist.

<a href="mailto:Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk"><i>Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk</i></a>