News A new mother ship for Japan's whalers

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."

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"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."

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