![]() ![]() “I’m really opposed to commercial whaling seeing whales close is so exciting. “Today there were more (whale) jumps than usual it was fantastic,” said Kiyoko Ogi, a 47-year-old Tokyo bus driver who’s been whale-watching in Rausu three times. glimpses soviet ghost town norwegian isle series The mill still existed at the time of the county atlas in 1877 and is marked below as SM. ![]() Few places on the planet can exhibit such a concentration of wildlife, where one can also be in the midst of them. Waking up on the island of Isabelas coast makes you think you have travelled back to ancient times. Hasegawa’s customers came from all over Japan and several foreign countries. Glimpses soviet ghost town arctic norwegian. On a recent weekday, customers packed the parking lot at a wharf lined with squid-fishing boats, waiting to board Hasegawa’s boat and those of three other companies. Though the first few years were a struggle, he is now happy with his choice as Rausu’s reputation grows globally. Hasegawa, a fourth-generation fisherman, began his tour boat business in 2006. The population has dropped by several hundred annually, slipping below 5,000 this year. We were standing at the rudimentary dock in Pyramiden, a ghost town on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, in the High Arctic. Though fishing was long Rausu’s economic backbone, the industry has taken a hit from declining fish stocks, which locals blame on Russian trawlers and falling prices. Summer often brings thick fog, while winter storms can leave waist-high drifts. Consumption was widespread after World War Two, when an impoverished Japan needed cheap protein, but fell off after the early 1960s as other meat grew cheaper.įoxes run through the streets of the city’s downtown, which clings to a narrow strip of land below mountains and faces the Nemuro Strait. “They’ll be whaling for a week here, we may have more.”Įverybody acknowledges that rebuilding demand could be tough after decades of whale being a pricey, hard-to-find food. “We endured for 31 years, but now it’s all worth it,” he said in Kushiro on Monday night after the first minkes were brought in to be butchered. Whaling advocates, such as Yoshifumi Kai, head of the Japan Small-type Whaling Association, celebrated the hunt. Yet Japan, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - himself from a whaling district - left the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and returned to commercial whaling on July 1. Barely 300 people are directly involved with whaling around Japan, and though the government maintains whale meat is an important part of food culture, the amount consumed annually has fallen to only 0.1 percent of total meat consumption. ![]()
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