"The mother ship of the Japanese whaling fleet left Shimonoseki Port yesterday for the Southern Ocean, where it is planning to hunt more than 1000 whales including 50 endangered fin whales and 50 threatened humpack whales. "
It's that time of the year again unfortunately where the Japanese ignore the overwhelming world opinion on this matter and set out to kill whales in order to serve them up in restaurants.
There could be a small light at the end of the tunnel however and that is that the Japanese appetite for whales is decreasing. As whaling has not been carried out on a large basis for some considerable time, the habit of eating whale meat is something that the younger Japanese have not developed. The market for whale meat therefore is in decline.
Hypocrisy:
Japanese whaling in the last 20 years or so has been described as "scientific" by the Japanese. The "science" has not been to discover anything about whale biology, but to test the whale populations for the purpose of ultimately resuming commercial whaling!
So they stopped commercial whaling - and began "scientific" whaling - to decide when to resume commercial whaling.
Japanese whaling has ALWAYS been commercial. It has been necessary for the whalers to keep delivering an annual catch to shops and restaurants in order not to allow the habit of eating whale meat to die out for their own commercial reasons.