A DEFIANT Japan embarked on its largest whaling expedition in decades yesterday, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s despite international opposition. An anti-whaling protest boat awaited the fleet offshore. Bid farewell in a festive ceremony in the southern port of Shimonoseki, four ships headed for the waters off Antarctica, resuming a hunt that was cut short by a deadly fire last February that crippled the fleet's mother ship.
The whalers plan to kill up to 50 humpbacks in what is believed to be the first large-scale hunt for the once nearly extinct species since a 1963 moratorium in the Southern Pacific put the giant marine mammals under international protection.
The mission also aims to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in what Japan's Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever scientific whale hunt. The expedition lasts through April.
Japan says it needs to kill the animals in order to conduct research on their reproductive and feeding patterns.
While scientific whale hunts are allowed by the International Whaling Commission, or IWC, critics say Japan is simply using science as a cover for commercial whaling.
The anti-whaling group Greenpeace said its protest ship, Esperanza, was moored just outside Japan's territorial waters and would chase the fleet to the southern ocean.
"We are going to do everything in our power to reduce their catch," Karli Thomas, expedition leader on the Esperanza, told reporters. "Japan's research program is a sham. We demand that the Japanese Government cancel it."
An IWC moratorium on commercial whaling took effect in 1986, but Japan - where coastal villages have hunted whales for hundreds of years - has killed almost 10,500 mostly minke and Brydes whales under research permits since then.
The Japanese hunt, which puts meat from the whales on the commercial market, is growing rapidly despite an increasingly vocal anti-whaling movement. This winter season's target of up to 1,035 whales is more than double the number the country hunted a decade ago.
The focus on this year's hunt is the humpback, which was in serious danger of extinction just a few decades ago. They are now a favorite of whale-watchers for their playful antics at sea, where the beasts - which grow as large as 40 tons - throw themselves out of the water.
Japan's plans to resume hunts of the famed humpback have also raised furor among some other Asia-Pacific countries.
In Australia, newspapers regularly run stories with headlines like "Help stop murder on the high seas." Politicians there have promised to tackle whaling through diplomacy.
An Australian opposition Labor Party executive, Robert McClelland, said last week that military aircraft will monitor Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean if the party wins upcoming elections.
Meat from Japan's scientific catch is sold commercially, triggering criticism that the research is a pretext for keeping its whaling industry alive. Some also criticize Japan's hunting methods, saying they are unnecessarily cruel.
(SD-Agencies)
