japan's whaling fleet set sail few days back,apparently on an annual antarctic hunt likely to provoke fresh friction with anti-whaling countries such as Australia.Greenpeace activists said they saw the whalers depart from a port in western hiroshima prefecture waved off by their families.The fisheries agency and Kyodo Senpaku which owns the mother ship,refused to confirm whether the fleet had left on its annual five month Antarctic voyage,which last year departed on November 18.Greenpeace also had denounced the hunt but decided not to chase the whalers this year as it fights to clear two activists being prosecuted in japan on charges of stealing whale meat during an investigation into alleged corruption.Japan aims to kill some 1,000 whales a year using a loophole in a 1986 global whaling moratorium that allows 'lethal research' on the ocean giants.As the Japanese whalers set off,Australia unveileda four-million-dollar scientific research programme aimed at persuading japan that it is not necessary to kill the mammals in order to study them.
japan's whaling fleet set sail few days back,apparently on an annual antarctic hunt likely to provoke fresh friction with anti-whaling countries such as Australia.Greenpeace activists said they saw the whalers depart from a port in western hiroshima prefecture waved off by their families.The fisheries agency and Kyodo Senpaku which owns the mother ship,refused to confirm whether the fleet had left on its annual five month Antarctic voyage,which last year departed on November 18.Greenpeace also had denounced the hunt but decided not to chase the whalers this year as it fights to clear two activists being prosecuted in japan on charges of stealing whale meat during an investigation into alleged corruption.Japan aims to kill some 1,000 whales a year using a loophole in a 1986 global whaling moratorium that allows 'lethal research' on the ocean giants.As the Japanese whalers set off,Australia unveileda four-million-dollar scientific research programme aimed at persuading japan that it is not necessary to kill the mammals in order to study them.
