Tokyo announces new round of culls in the Southern Ocean despite a majority ‘no’ vote at International Whaling Commission

Japan has responded to a non-binding International Whaling Commission (IWC) vote to impose strict limits on its ‘scientific whaling’ programme, by announcing that it will proceed with a new round of culls in the Southern Ocean next year regardless.

The 65th meeting of the world’s whale conservation body voted by 35 to 20 with five abstentions in favour of a resolution by New Zealand, requiring members to put future scientific whaling programmes to the IWC’s scientific committee and the biennial commission itself for guidance.

Had Japan respected the vote, it would have extended until 2016 a one year moratorium that Tokyo declared after the International Court of Justice judged it in breach of IWC rules on scientific whaling.

But Japanese diplomats at the summit in Slovenia said that they would not be bound by the resolution because they took a different interpretation of the ICJ ruling, and would proceed with the new round of research whaling in the Southern Ocean that they had already declared.

“We are disappointed with their announcement,” Gerard Van Bohemen, the leader of the New Zealand delegation told the Guardian. “We thought it important that there was a strong statement agreed about the interpretation and application of the court’s decision but in the end it wasn’t possible to reach consensus on that.”

“We urge Japan to abide by the decision of the IWC and to refrain from launching more hunts outside of the process set up today,” said WWF’s Aimee Leslie. “If Japan truly wants to advance whale conservation as it says it does, then it should not circumvent these new IWC rules.”

Amid heated wrangling between pro- and anti-whaling nations, a beefed-up version of the original resolution was submitted with provisions for whale sanctuaries, added by Chile. Van Bohemen said these were “so inflexible that there was no point in trying to resolve the other harder issues as we were never going to achieve consensus.”

Japan argued that the sanctuaries text went beyond the remit of the ICJ’s ruling, but it’s declared intent to resist any delay to its 2015 whaling programme, would also have prevented it from honouring the original resolution.

Tokyo should now present details of its planned whale cull project later this year, ahead of a meeting of the IWC’s scientific committee which should take place in early 2015.

Later today, the IWC will vote on proposals for the creation of a South Atlantic whale sanctuary, and on Japanese coastal whaling.