Japan whaling fleet sets sail, will take 333 whales

Tuesday, December 1, 2015, 1:11 PM - Less than a week after announcing it was ending a one-year pause in Antarctic whaling, Japan's whaling fleets are headed south once again.

An 8,000-tonne vessel and three smaller harpoon ships departed Japan on Tuesday, on a hunt lasting from December to March in the waters around the southern-most continent.

This is despite a 2014 order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the country cease whaling altogether, although Japan says it has modified this year's hunt in response to the ICJ's concerns. Specifically, the fleet will take a maximum 333 whales, a third of previous years' quotas.

The BBC reports the 2014 ruling said Japan did not need to kill the whales in order to study them scientifically, undermining Japan's main argument in support of its hunt. However, Japan says the hunt is an attempt to prove the whale population in the Antarctic is large enough to allow commercial whaling, and says it must kill some of the animals as part of that research.

Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have condemned the resumption of the hunt, and the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has raised concerns over Japan's scientific arguments.

"Japan cannot unilaterally decide whether it has adequately addressed the scientific committee's questions," Australia's environment minister, Greg Hunt told Sky News.

Those countries, along with environmental activists, reject Japan's assertions the hunt is for scientific purposes.

"It's not scientific research, it's straight-up commercial whaling, and it's been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice," Nathaniel Pelle of Greenpeace Australia told the AFP news agency.

Commercial whaling was banned by the IWC in 1986 over sustainability and conservation concerns. Japan has typically circumvented the ban by saying its hunt is for scientific purposes.

Aside from Japan, two other countries continue to hunt whales: Norway, which can hunt due to an "objection" to the ban, and Iceland, which left the IWC in 1992 but later rejoined with a "reservation" clause the country says allows it to hunt whales.

The charity Whale and Dolphin Conservation reports the three countries together take around 1,600 whales annually.

SOURCES: BBC | BBC | Sky News Australia | WDC

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