Carl Safina is an award-winning scientist and author, founding president of Blue Ocean Institute at Stony Brook University, and host of the PBS television series "Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
On Monday the World Court in the Hague ruled that Japan's "scientific" whale-hunting was baloney. It ordered Japan to revoke its "scientific research" permits to all its ships, effectively tying Japan's fleet to the dock and silencing the cannons and exploding bombs that are the way whales die nowadays.
Japan says it will abide. I wish it would take this opportunity to bow gracefully out of something so dishonest and unfit for modernity. But I expect a fragile truce, and only a partial one.
That's because Japan has a history of creatively bending the rules beyond the breaking point of international intent. Authorities and whalers seem committed to killing whales first and finding a rationale second, and it would be no surprise if the program were tweaked in some meaningless way so they could excuse continued hunting. Or they might say the court's ruling applies only in Antarctic waters and not the Pacific, where they also hunt. Or they might simply ignore the ban like their suppliers Norway and Iceland.