Japan Ends Whaling Season Short of Quota
Japan has ended its whaling season with less than a third of its annual target, said the country’s Fisheries Agency.
The whaling ships headed home from the Antarctic Ocean this week with 266 minke whales and one fin whale, said the agency on Friday.
This is far short of the quota of about 900 set when they began the hunt in December 2011.
Japan’s fleet sails south to the Antarctic in the autumn each year, returning the following spring.
There has been a ban on commercial whaling for 25 years, but Japan catches about 1,000 whales each year in what it says is a scientific research programme.
Critics say it is commercial whaling in another guise.
Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd which follows the Japanese fleet south every year in a bid to disrupt its hunt announced on its website on Thursday that the whalers had left the Southern Ocean.