News A new mother ship for Japan's whalers

[thomas]

Kyodo Senpaku plans to launch a new mother ship for its ageing whaling fleet.

Japan's largest whaling company is banking on a new mother ship to pull the industry out of the doldrums. Kyodo Senpaku Co. plans to complete the vessel, which measures more than 100 meters in length, in March 2024 as a successor to its aging Nisshin Maru. The company will procure the cost, estimated at 6 billion to 7 billion yen ($47 million to $55 million) on its own, except for the 300 million yen in subsidies to be provided by the city government of Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Hideki Tokoro, president of Kyodo Senpaku, said the whaling business is promising enough to justify the outlays. "We will continue whaling for 30 more years after the ship is up and ready," he said at a business fair for restaurant industry officials held in Tokyo on May 16. "Please don't worry. Our industry will be revived."

Thanks, but no! No need to revive a rotting carcass.

Japanese whaler hopes to beat the odds with new mother ship | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis

http://www.kyodo-senpaku.co.jp/new-mothership.html

 

[thomas]

While Australia's environment minister, Tanya Plibsersek, reaffirmed the Albanese government's commitment to a global moratorium on commercial whaling, Greenpeace condemned the practice as "brutal and unnecessary", Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha continues building its new whaling "mother ship". The term "mother-ship method" refers to a process in which smaller, more agile vessels are used to hunt whales before the carcasses are returned to the mother ship for freezing and storage.

The company's president, Hideki Tokoro, told reporters the ship was intended to pass on "whaling culture".

"We want to contribute to Japan's food security," he said. "We designed the ship to be able to travel as far as the Antarctic Ocean, hoping it will be useful in times of food crisis. "Unless a new mother ship is built, we cannot pass on our whaling culture to the next generation." [...]
"Whales in the waters surrounding Australia and Antarctica are under threat from several fronts – from destructive offshore gas and oil drilling, through to deep sea mining and climate change threatening their fragile ocean environments," he said. "We can't afford a whaling super-ship hunting whales in southern waters. Commercial whaling is brutal and unnecessary, and there is no place for it."

Japan’s new whaling ‘mother ship’ being built to travel as far as Antarctica

Company says vessel’s construction will help ‘pass on our whaling culture to the next generation’

www.theguardian.com

I sincerely hope this "culture" (whaling) will not be passed on to the next generation.

 

[musicisgood]

Sadly, the whales seem to be beaching. Not sure if in the future there'd be any whales to spear.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

In Maine , they are trying to pretty much destroy the very lucrative lobster business to protect Right Whales. There seems to be no real history of lobster trap ropes causing a problem , but facts don't seem to matter.