Japan Whaling Ship Leaves for Antarctic Ocean

The first of Japan’s four-ship whaling fleet left Friday for the Antarctic, where officials say it will catch 300 of the mammals as part of a research program conservationists call commercial whaling in disguise.

The ship, the Nisshin Maru No. 3, will arrive in the Antarctic Ocean in December, where it will be joined by three catcher boats, said Nobuyuki Yagi, a Fishery Agency official.

Japan halted commercial whaling in the Antarctic at the end of the 1986-87 season, during which it caught 1,941 whales. It then began a program of research whaling, which it says is aimed at assessing whale stocks.

Japan killed 273 small minke whales, a non-endangered species, in the first year of the research program and 241 last year. The International Whaling Commission estimates the number of minke whales to be about 730,000, Yagi said.

In 1986, the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling to allow scientists to assess whale stocks without the disruption caused by regular whaling activities.

However, under the organization’s charter, member nations are allowed to conduct research whaling whenever they wish.

The meat obtained by the Japanese research program is sold for food, as permitted under commission regulations. Japan is the world’s largest consumer of whale meat, and officials say the food is an important part of the country’s culture.

Norway and Iceland also conduct research whaling, but Iceland has announced it will end its research whaling program at the end of this season.