Chalk it up as a rare conservation win: humpback whales have bounced back so strongly since the whaling era that there is no longer a need to include them on Australia’s official threatened species list.
Japan will need to try again to justify killing whales for scientific research.
AAP Image/Supplied by Sea Shepherd Australia, Tim Watters
This week, Japan announced a research plan for its New Scientific Whale Research Program in the Antarctic Ocean, to replace previous programs. In March this year, Japan’s previous whaling program, JARPA…
Japan’s whaling program was defeated in The Hague, but that might not stop more whales being taken in the future.
EPA/Tim Watters/Sea Shepherd Australia/AAP
Japan is reportedly set to release plans to resume killing whales in the Southern Ocean in the 2015-16 season. It seems like a defiant move, coming just six months after the International Court of Justice…
Centuries of over-exploitation of whales for their meat and blubber has seen populations of most species plummet. But with no small amount of irony, the tables have turned with research discovering that…
Japan’s harvest of endangered minke whales was ruled not to be for scientific purposes.
EPA/Tim Watters/Sea Shepherd Australia/AAP
The International Court of Justice’s ruling this week that Japan’s Southern Ocean whaling program is not scientific does not represent an ultimate victory over whaling. The finer points of the court’s…
Japan has been ordered to quit its scientific whaling program in the Southern Ocean.
Josh/Flickr
Japan’s Southern Ocean “scientific” whaling program is contrary to international law, the International Court of Justice found last night after a four week trial between Australia and Japan in June last…
Australia brings its last case against the Japanese whaling program.
AAP Image
Australia had its second (and last) chance this week to argue against Japan’s whaling program in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). But before it did, New Zealand appeared before the Court to provide…
Are whales sacred? That’s what Japan wants to know this week in the International Court of Justice.
Flickr/fugm10
Dispatches from The Hague: Tony Press, CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre at the University of Tasmania, is in The Hague for four weeks of hearings at the International…
Hearings have opened: is Japan’s whaling scientific, or just hunting?
International Court of Justice
Dispatches from The Hague: Tony Press, CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre at the University of Tasmania, is in The Hague for four weeks of hearings at the International…
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) meets this week to begin hearing its most prominent case in years. It pits two heavyweights, Australia and Japan, against each other in a legal and political dispute…
Meet a minke whale: should Japan be allowed to continue taking whales in the name of science?
Len2040/Flickr
From June 26 to July 6 2013 one of the most intriguing environmental court cases in years will be heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Australia has taken Japan to court over…
The Institute of Cetacean Research has accused the Sea Shepherd of ramming its vessels at sea.
AAP/The Institute of Cetacean Research
The US ninth circuit Court of Appeal has decided today that Sea Shepherd activists are pirates. The decision begins with colourful rhetoric about the appearance of pirates throughout fiction, but it addresses…
Sea Shepherd has just launched its new ship, the Sam Simon, but it might not see much action if a US court has its way.
AAP Image/Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Carolina Castro
On Monday a US federal appeals court granted an injunction requiring the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to stay at least “500 yards” (457 metres) away from Japanese whaling vessels. It is a significant…
Antarctic and pygmy blue whale subspecies may be interbreeding in waters off Antarctica. The study of whale genetics challenges…
Minke whale breaching: Australian delegates to the International Whaling Commission should not have been surprised by South Korea’s embrace of sanctioned whaling, which we should accept given certain provisos.
Flickr/Martin Cathrae
South Korea’s announcement to the International Whaling Commission meeting in Panama last week that it would permit “scientific” whaling in accordance with Article VIII of the IWC Convention surprised…
South Korea says following Japan in their whaling pursuits for “scientific” purposes is not open to moral debate.
Flickr.Issac Kohane
The Australian government has sought urgent high level talks over an announcement by South Korea that it intends to resume whaling for “scientific” reasons. South Korea delegate Park Jeong-Seok has told…