Japan to launch whale-watching satellite

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Why does this fill me with dread...

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/009/world/Japan_to_launch_whale_watching:.shtml

Japan to launch whale-watching satellite this fall

By Gary Schaefer, Associated Press, 1/9/2002 01:46

TOKYO (AP) Japan is planning to launch a satellite that will use global-positioning technology to track the migration patterns of whales.

University and space officials said Wednesday that the satellite was designed and built by a private Japanese university as part of a $2.72 million research project and will be launched around October by the nation's space agency.

The Japanese government has been widely criticized by the international community and environmental groups for hunting hundreds of whales every year for what it says are research purposes. Critics argue that the program is merely a cover for supplying restaurants with whale meat, a delicacy in Japan.

The university behind the Whale Ecology Observation Satellite said that it was intended to test new applications of global-positioning technology and was unrelated to the controversial hunts.

''This kind of technology could be useful for whale watchers,'' said Tomonao Hayashi, 74, an engineering professor at the Chiba Institute of Technology who is leading the project. ''I think it has a lot of applications related to whale protection.''

From nearly 500 miles above the earth, the 110-pound, cube-shaped satellite will track whales that have been fitted with transmitters that record their position, depth, and other data, such as water temperature.

The coconut-sized transmitters will be attached to a still-undetermined number of whales using small titanium pins up to 5.9 inches long. Hayashi said that the whales would not be harmed by the pins, which will pushed into their layer of blubber.

The university has not yet decided under what conditions the data it collects will be made available to third parties, the professor said.

It received a subsidy from Japan's Ministry of Education to build and operate the satellite, but the project has no connection to government agencies responsible for the nation's whaling activities, he said.

The satellite is scheduled to be boosted into orbit sometime around October by Japan's mainstay H2-A rocket, said Junichi Moriuma, spokesman for the National Space Development Agency. It is expected to operate for one or two years.

Earlier this year Japan drew fire from other governments for sending an expedition to hunt 440 minke whales in Antarctic waters. Washington expressed concern that whale populations have declined drastically over the past decade. New Zealand called the hunt ''despicable.''

An international ban on commercial whaling has been in place for the last two decades. Japan's whale hunt is allowed by the International Whaling Commission as scientific research.

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2002


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