30 May 2018
Japanese hunters caught and killed
122 pregnant minke whales as part of its Antarctic summer "field
survey".
A report sent to the
International Whaling Commission (IWC) reveals hunters caught 333 minkes in
total.
The team left Japan in November
2017 for the Southern Ocean and returned in March 2018.
Japan says its whaling programme
is for scientific purposes, despite a 2014 UN ruling against its "lethal
research" and widespread condemnation.
In a new research plan published
after the UN ruling, Japan said it was
"scientifically imperative" to understand Antarctica's ecosystem through
collecting and analysing animals.
How many whales did Japan catch?
The country's New Scientific
Whale Research Program in the Antarctic Ocean (NEWREP-A) sent a report
to the IWC detailing the 333 minkes caught, 152 male and 181 female,
during its "third biological field survey" in the area.
Japan cut down its catch by
two-thirds under its new research plan, and has stuck to taking about 330
whales each year.
The data shows that in the
2017/18 hunt, 122 of the female minkes captured were pregnant, while 61 of the
males and 53 of the females were not yet adults.
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