expense of replacing the vessel combined with the economic unviability of Japan's whaling industry may have also caused Japan to use withdrawal from IWC as a pretext to pragmatically end costly, subsidized Antarctic scientific whaling.

Pressure by conservationists made it too expensive for Japan to continue Antarctic hunt

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society also takes credit for Japan's IWC pullout. The conservation group has long actively opposed Japan's research whaling activities in the Antarctic and in Japanese coastal waters. The society's annual campaigns sparked Whales Wars, a long-running reality television program, and founder and CEO Paul Watson became an Interpol “international wanted person” because of his anti-whaling and conservation activities.

According to Sea Shepherd:

In 2017, the Japanese government began to invest millions of dollars in security efforts to prevent Sea Shepherd fromengaging their fleets. These security measures included military-grade real-time surveillance. Although this prevented Sea Shepherd from returning to the Southern Ocean in 2018, it also placed Japan in a position of expending huge resources on continuous security. In other words, the cost of preventing Sea Shepherd intervention became very expensive.

While Sea Shepherd has claimed victory over Japanese whaling off Antarctica, they say they will continue to fight against whaling in Japanese coastal waters.

With the whalers worldwide retreating to their own EEZ areas, we no longer need to intervene in pelagic waters. We will continue our opposition against coastal whaling. We presently have a crew in Taiji, Japan. We will continue to urge nations to uphold the IWC moratorium and to embargo products from Japan as stated in their