Japan's intention to increase its whaling take is not justified, Conservation Minister Sandra Lee has told an International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting.
Japan is expanding its whaling programme in the North Pacific to include an extra 50 minke whales and 50 sei whales under its scientific whaling programme. It already takes hundreds of whales under the programme.
"Neither of these proposals appears justified either from the scientific information to be gained from taking these whales nor from the available evidence of stock levels in the region," Ms Lee told the meeting, being held in Japan.
"The taking of 50 additional minke whales appears to be a circumvention of a vote which Japan has lost for the past 15 years and the taking of sei whales looks like an act of defiance in the face of the evidence available on the abundance of these whales."
The IWC had listed sei whales in the North Pacific as protected stock, with a zero quota, and they were listed by some organisations as an endangered species.
The pro-whaling lobby has also been trying to reduce the requirement for a 75 per cent majority to a 50 per cent threshold in the hopes of overturning the moratorium on commercial whaling but Ms Lee did not believe that would happen.
The strength of the pro-whaling sentiment in Japan is such that the Institute of Cetacean Research -- which Ms Lee has said received money from the Japanese government -- circulated 125,000 leaflets to Wellington households.
The leaflet claimed whales were not endangered and eating whale meat was part of Japanese culture.
"What would you do if Japanese people told New Zealanders 'no more Sunday lamb roast'," it said.
New Zealand had joined 16 other countries in making a demarche, or statement, to Japan opposing its scientific whaling programme.
Ms Lee told the meeting New Zealand and Australia still considered the concept of a South Pacific whale sanctuary important enough to put before the meeting for consideration.
Nearly two thirds of all IWC countries which voted on the proposal in 2000 and 2001 supported it but 75 per cent support was needed.
Pacific countries supported the sanctuary and were taking their own steps -- the Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea had declared their exclusive economic zones as whale sanctuaries.
- NZPA
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