The Tokyo Two

The complicated and tragic mess that is Japan's "scientific" whaling expeditions lead to the arrest of two green peace activists over the weekend. Apparently the two activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki (now dubbed the Tokyo Two), found thousands of dollars worth of prime cuts of whale meat in a crate labled "cardboard." Hmmm... what kind of scientific experiment could this be? Double blind? Quadruple blind?

The story has already been covered by pepijin over at myfavouriteplaces.org:

Instead of going for the real culprits the public prosecutor decided to publicly criminalize the messengers.

In response, greenpeace is counting on environmentalism's secret weapon--public outrage. People can use their site to send emails of protest to the minister overseeing the prosecution of the activists.

What's especially startling to me about this is that Japanese whalers had no need to smuggle their own whale meat. Since 1988, the Japanese whale trade has killed more than 6,000 whales and the trade of whale meat has flourished out in the open under the guise of "science." I'm not sure what other scientific research results in direct-to-consumer sales, but the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has boldly found a way. (Check out their Why Research Whales PDF pamphlet to find out why whales are bad and should be killed.)

They've also pioneered new ways of researching minke whales that includes killing pregnant mothers. But whale infanticide is a good thing, you see, because according to Japan and Norway, whales are causing worldwide fish shortages.

So what exactly could this most recent debacle mean? If we already know there's an annual whale massacre sanctioned by the Japanese government and that the meat is sold to the Japanese citizens at a hefty price, why would the Tokyo Two be arrested at all? Why would whale meat be smuggled in crates marked "cardboard" when it's sold openly in supermarkets?

It could be a case of the whale traders eating their own. A whaler ("scientist") raided the year's take to sell on the black market for personal profit and was caught by greenpeace activists (who are diligently watching all of us 24/7, so you better recycle that coke can).

Or, worse, it could also mean that the whaling ships are harvesting more than their reported take: 850 Minke whales and 50 Fin whales in one outing. Because sometimes to study endangered animals, you have to kill a lot of them. (In 1996, minke whales were classified as Lower Risk/Near Threatened by the IUCN, but new data is needed. Fin whales are classified as endangered.)

So whatever it is, there's something rotten about this business ... and it's something even more rotten than what we know about it already.