REPORTING. "A unique factory boat" : Japan presents its new whaling admiral
Cairo: Hani Kamal El-Din
Japan, which resumed hunting whales for consumption in 2019 after a 30-year moratorium, now wants to amplify this activity thanks to a new flagship specially built and ready to leave on a mission in May. Franceinfo visited it in preview.
It sits majestically in the port of Shimonoseki, the Japanese whaling capital. THE Kangei Maru is the first whaling flagship built in Japan in 73 years, a building of completely new construction. Yoshihasa Ina is one of the directors of Kyodo Senpaku, the operating company : “It’s a unique whaling flagship that combines a factory ship and a cargo ship. In a sense, you could almost say it’s an experimental ship.”
The lower part of this electrically powered building, nearly 113 meters long, 21 wide and some 9 200 tons looks like a huge factory workshop. A gigantic door lowers to form a ramp with a slight inclination, at 18 degrees, allowing the loading of very large whales spotted using an on-board drone. Sailor Shimoda’s explanations : “We haul the whale that we have caught up here from the back, then we cut it up directly on site. We plan to hunt 70-tonne fin whales and prepare them here.”
To carve the beast, you need around ten technicians : “We can cut up a whale in about an hour, by hand, with large knives. The pieces are put in bags to be frozen in rapid mode in 6 hours at -40 degrees Celsius. The entire preparation chain mobilizes around 50 people.” THE Kangei Maru can hold up to 800 tonnes of frozen meat.
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- Source of information and images “pleinevie“
