SOUTH KOREA THREATENS TO KILL WHALES

South Korea has indicated it wants to resume whaling if the IWC permits Japan to increased coastal whaling in exchange for scaling down its Antarctic hunt.

“This would open the floodgates for commercial whaling,” a manager from the Marine Science Program told Reuters in Rome. Korean whaling used to supply Japan with whale meat before the 1986 moratorium, after which Korea received a “scientific” quota of 69 whales but has since complied with the global ban. If South Korea follows through on its threat to resume hunting, particularly threatened would be minke whales which are accidentally caught in fishing nets and then sold as food.

“We should be closing the loopholes that permit whaling rather than creating new loopholes,” said Nicolas Entrup, spokesman for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.