Tuna for Whales?

Japan should offer to cut its still legal whale hunting in exchange for the rest of the world cutting way back on bluefin tuna consumption.

The New York Times reported today that a worldwide shortage of bluefin Tuna is causing alarm among Japan's sushi chefs. Apparently the world wide popularity of sushi, especially in the US, Russia, China, and South Korea, is driving up the price and the giant tuna get scarcer.

Recently, the Anchorage Daily News reported that Japan was denied their request to reopen commercial whaling

Japan threatened to abandon the International Whaling Commission, which in a meeting in Anchorage last week passed a resolution upholding a 21-year moratorium on commercial whaling.

The ADN also reports that Japan does have the right to kill some whales.

Japan kills about 1,000 whales annually and sells the meat under a scientific program allowed by the commission, although the annual whale hunt off Antarctica was cut short in February by a ship fire that killed one crew member. The program is nothing but a loophole that defies the moratorium and it should be better scrutinized, said Joel Reynolds with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Thousands of whales are killed each year, ostensibly for research, but the overwhelming majority of whale scientists around the world consider it a fraud," he said. "Essentially it's commercial whaling in the guise of scientific research."

While the world - as reflected in the Whaling Commission - rejects Japan's claims that whales are not endangered and so Japan should be free to hunt whales for Japanese to eat, I'm sure that the world would be much more sympathetic to Japan's claim to tuna in sushi.

Perhaps Japan should propose to withdraw from killing the whales it still legally hunts in exchange for other countries greatly reducing their consumption of tuna in sushi. Surely, the world would understand that sushi is fundamental to Japan and while it has become quite popular elsewhere, foreigners could make do with California rolls and other non-Tuna adaptations of sushi.