Japan whalers return from Antarctic hunt after killing 333 whales

[FarCenter]

TOKYO (AFP) -
Japanese whaling vessels returned to port on Saturday after catching more than 300 of the mammals in the Antarctic Ocean without facing any protests by anti-whaling groups, officials said.

A fleet of five whalers set sail for the Southern Ocean in November, as Tokyo pursues its "research whaling" in defiance of global criticism.

Three of the vessels, including the fleet's main ship, the Nisshin Maru, arrived in the morning at Shimonoseki port in western Japan, a port official said.

The fleet caught 333 minke whales as planned without any interruption by anti-whaling campaigners, the Fisheries Agency said in a statement.

Japanese whalers have in the past clashed at sea with animal rights campaigners, particularly the Sea Shepherd activist group, which last year announced it had no plan to make offshore protests this season.

http://www.france24.com/en/20180331-japan-whalers-return-antarctic-hunt-after-killing-333-whales

[Farmer-Rick]

1. Wiping out our Ocean's biodiversity one whale at a time

Thanks Japan.

An average male minke whale is about 26-feet long and weighs about 10 tons. Their life span was 50 years....until they were hunted down.

[aikoaiko]

2. What happened to the Sea Shepherd?

[HAB911]

3. The Japanese government armed the whalers with military grade weapons

Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd says Japan's use of military-grade technology to track its ships has ended its attempts to stop the Southern Ocean whale hunt.

For the past 12 years, the activist group's ships have confronted the Japanese whaling fleet in a bid to limit its ability to conduct what the country calls scientific whaling.

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said he would now have to find an alternative.

"They're using military technology," he said.






http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-29/sea-shepherd-abandons-antarctic-whale-wars/8851890

[betsuni]

4. I still don't understand, only really old people in Japan eat whale.

It was served after the war in school lunches when protein was scarce. A pointless obsession of old men, in my opinion. The excuse that "it's Japanese culture" applies to a few coastal whaling areas only, same as if the U.S. claimed whaling is a cultural right because of nineteenth century Northeastern waling (hello "Moby Dick" ) or the Pacific Northwest whaling of the Makah (although they have a point because they still use little boats and harpoons and hardly kill any whales because it's hard to do it the actual old-fashioned way). Not fair to use modern industrial fishing fleets and claim "It's cultural, leave me alone!"

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Horrible. Why can't there be a charge like crimes against living creatures?