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Japan To Continue Whaling Expedition In The Face Of U.N. Objection

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Dec 01, 2015 11:54 AM EST

Japan has set up a whale of a problem by announcing that it is continuing to resume its whaling research operations by the end of March next year in the Antarctic.

This is in spite of global regulations asking for more evidence disclosing that there is a scientific purpose attached to their expeditions.

Japan was suspended for a season of hunting for a year by the United Nations in 2014. It has now decided to continue its course, and has told the International Whaling Commission that it would again go back to its activity by cutting down on its annual minke whale catches by two-thirds, according to AFP.

Japan pursued its research when it got an exemption to a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling that allowed catching a whale for scientific purposes. Yet, conservationists have slammed the exemption with the claim that it is a loophole, looking to pursue the hunt with "non-lethal means".

More than 13,000 whales in the past three decades have been caught by the Japs, even as a number of global questions to Japanese fisheries were not answered at that time, Bloomberg reported.

The most active participants in the battle against whaling include Australia and New Zealand.

"Australia is committed to the protection of whales and we will continue to work with the international community to promote whale conservation and uphold the global moratorium on commercial whaling," Environment Minister Greg Hunt said.

Japan's plan of limiting their catch to 333 was turned down by the IWC. It was mainly because the Japanese did not tackle the issue of why they wanted to kill nearly 4,000 whales in the next 12 years.

The record that is linked to the Japanese is that of using the whale meat for food and then claiming that "the whale population is adequate enough to be used to for this purpose", flying in the face of the United Nations protest, according to The Daily Mail.

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