Japan has announced plans to catch 4,000 minke whales over the next 12 years for scientific research, despite the International Whaling Commission denying that Tokyo has proven the necessity of lethal sampling. Earlier in the year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's revised Antarctic whaling plans were not truly for science.
Japan killed 6,500 Antarctic minke whales between 1987 and 2005, after the IWC banned commercial whaling. Prior to the ban, Japan had killed 840 whales for research in 31 years. It is now up to individual nations to issue permits for the lethal sampling of whales.
"We have not changed any policies and our goal," Joji Morishita, Japan's representative to the IWC, said.
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The whale meat market in Japan has declined in recent years, both due to decreasing demand and to the efforts of high-profile anti-whaling activists, such as Whale Wars' Sea Shepherd crew.
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