[MARINE_BIOLOGY_INTERNATIONAL] Japan stuffed with whale meat

(Australian Broadcasting Company)

Japan's whale meat stockpile hits record level

Japan's whale meat stocks may have reached a record high of more than 6,000 tonnes last August, a conservation group said.

The stocks might reflect falling demand for whale meat, which is sourced from Japan's controversial government-run whaling programs in waters near Japan and Antarctica.

The finding will likely heighten calls for Tokyo to review its research whaling program as it is financed partly by revenues from sales of the meat.

Anti-whaling nations and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd have long criticised Japan for its whale hunts, criticising them as cruel and unnecessary.

Japan kills hundreds of whales a year under a loophole in the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling that allows "lethal research".

The Iruka & Kujira (Dolphin & Whale) Action Network and freelance journalist Junko Sakuma said the amount of whale meat at storehouses across Japan is estimated to have topped 6,000 tonnes as of the end of August based on data released by the Fisheries Agency.

''Although the supply was small and wholesale prices of whale meat have been cut in the past two years, the pace of decline in stocks has been slowing as Japanese people are moving away from whale meat,'' Mr Sakuma said.

The Fisheries Agency has said Japan's whale meat stockpile in August was estimated at 5,790 tonnes, but the activists challenge the figure, saying it is based on a smaller sample of warehouses than previous surveys.

Activists said the data covered only about 500 warehouses, down from 651 tallied until December 2009, and would have reached 6,025 tonnes if 651 were covered as before, the group said.

Whale meat stocks tend to increase in August when those hunted in the north-west Pacific off the Sanriku coast in Miyagi prefecture are landed. Supply hardly increases after that month.

In 2010 the catch came to about 3,770 tonnes before August, down early 827 tonnes from the same period the previous year.

Stocks at the end of August are estimated to have grown more than 700 tonnes from the 5,254 tonnes a year earlier, as consumption fell short of supply, according to the group.

- Kyodo