Japan will target fewer whales when its Pacific hunt begins next week and will observe them in the Antarctic next season with the aim of resuming full-fledged commercial whaling, the fisheries minister said Friday, according to Reuters.
The announcement underscored that Japan hasn't abandoned its plans to continue whaling in both oceans for research purposes, an allowed exception to a global ban on commercial whaling, Reuters reported.
Japan said it would conduct a sharply scaled down form of its annual Northwest Pacific whaling campaign this year despite an international court ruling last month against the mainstay of its whaling program in the Antarctic, according to Reuters. The ministry said it would submit a new plan for Antarctic whaling to the International Whaling Commission in 2015 for the purpose of resuming whaling in that area later in the year.
Last month, the International Court of Justice ordered Japan to suspend its Antarctic program because it was virtually commercial, not scientific as Japan had contended, Reuters reported.
The annual spring hunt along Japan's northern coast is to begin next week, and the distant northern Pacific expedition in May, with another coastal hunt planned in the autumn with Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi stating the target was being cut by half from 380 to 210, according to Reuters.
Hayashi said Japan will limit next season's Antarctic program to whale observation, but plans to return to the southern seas with hunting plans under a new program for the 2015-2016 season, Reuters reported. During the 2013-1014 season, Japan caught 251 minke whales in the Antarctic, or just a quarter of its quota, and 246 others in the Pacific.
The court said Japan produced little actual research under its supposedly scientific program and failed to explain why it needed to kill so many whales in order to study them, according to Reuters.
Experts say the ruling could be a convenient, face-saving solution for Japan to scale back the research whaling as it struggles with growing stockpile of whale meat and escalating anti-whaling protests in the Antarctic, Reuters reported.
