SPACE WIRE
Japanese whaling fleet returns after killing 440 minke whales
TOKYO (AFP) Apr 03, 2003
A five-vessel whaling fleet has returned to Japan after killing 440 minke whales during a five-month government-backed trip to the Antarctic Ocean, a Japanese fisheries official said Thursday.

The main research ship of Nisshin-maru and a smaller vessel returned to a port in Kochi prefecture, some 650 kilometres (400 miles) southwest of Tokyo, on Thursday, said Shuya Nakatsuka, chief of the far seas fisheries division at the Fisheries Agency.

Three other ships docked back at different ports in western Japan the previous day, he noted.

"This research expedition covered minke whales only," Nakatsuka said, adding that the mission was part of a government research programme.

Japan stopped commercial whaling in 1986 in line with a moratorium by the International Whaling Commission but the nation has been hunting whales since 1987 for what it calls research purposes to gather scientific data to back its claims that whale populations are robust.

Tokyo insists the whale hunt will enable it to study the marine ecosystem by investigating food eaten by whales, among other things.

In September, Japanese fishermen returned from the North Pacific after catching 194 whales in a similar government-sponsored whale hunting trip, which had set a self-imposed catch quota of 260 whales, including 50 endangered sei whales.

Ecologists worldwide have condemned the research programme as a disguise to continue whaling in defiance of the moratorium.

As the latest whaling fleet departed for the hunt in November, Greenpeace Japan criticised the programme from which the meat of the hunted whales is later sold on the open market.

Immediate comment from the environmental group was not available Thursday.

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