Japan Buys Whaling Votes With Prostitutes

Between the closed-door meeting on Earth Day, of all days, to convince President Obama to sell out whales, and the distinct impression that Japan will keep killing whales because they don't like being told not to, you might be thinking that the politics around lifting the ban on whaling couldn't get any shadier. You'd be wrong.

An investigation by the Sunday Times found that Japan has been bribing other countries to vote in favor of ending the 24 year old moratorium on commercial whaling at the upcoming meeting of the International Whaling Commission. In some ways, this underhanded campaigning is unsurprising. Back in March, Japan was accused of buying votes against protection for bluefin tuna by wining and dining smaller countries with a tuna sushi dinner the night before the vote. And, as Te-Ping Chen noted on the Global Poverty blog, there's a long history of countries using promises of aid to further a political agenda.

But cash payments and hookers aren't exactly the traditional definition of foreign aid.

The undercover investigators filmed officials from six countries talking about all the great benefits they get from Japan, like envelopes of cash at IWC meetings and the offer of call girls when they visit Japan.

And these smaller countries aren't just selling out whales; in some cases, they're also selling out their own country. Among the officials caught on video admitting to the bribery were representatives from Guinea and Ivory Coast, two of the countries hit hardest by illegal fishing from — you guessed it — Japanese ships.

Some of the other countries are landlocked, or pretty sure their territorial waters are whale-free, so what do they have to lose? Oh, right. Biodiversity and healthy oceans. Prior to the moratorium, several species of whales were in trouble. Since then, Japan has continued to hunt whales under a loophole that allows whaling in the name of research (and conveniently allows the unused whale meat to then be sold to restaurants), but the global ban has still allowed whale populations to recover.

The new proposal that the IWC will be considering sets quotas for how many whales can be hunted. Lest you thought those catch limits had anything to do with conservation, the International Fund for Animal Welfare clears up that misconception on their blog: "Those numbers essentially reflect what the Chairman and Vice-Chairman thought the whalers and the others might agree to, although subsequent events and declarations suggest that even that assessment of the situation is wrong."

Japan probably isn't too worried about the details since they've happily hunted without these limitations for over twenty years, so why should they adhere to any proposal they don't like that comes out of the IWC now? And, under the new proposal, they only have another ten years to wait until the quotas expire and there are zero protections for whales. By then, we might all have whale-free waters. And there's no amount of sex and money that justifies endangering the future of whales and our oceans.

Photo credit: flickkerphotos