Japan Fleet Sets Off To Hunt Humpback Whales

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SHIMONOSEKI, Japan — A defiant Japan embarked on its largest whaling expedition in decades yesterday, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s despite international opposition. An anti-whaling protest boat awaited the fleet offshore.

Bid farewell in a festive ceremony in the southern port of Shimonoseki, four ships headed for the waters off Antarctica, resuming a hunt that was cut short by a deadly fire last February that crippled the fleet’s mother ship.

Families waved little flags emblazoned with smiling whales, and the crew raised a toast with cans of beer, while a brass band played “Popeye the Sailor Man.” Officials told the crowd that Japan should not give into militant activists and preserve its whale-eating culture. “They’re violent environmental terrorists,” the mission leader, Hajime Ishikawa, told the ceremony. “Their violence is unforgivable … we must fight against their hypocrisy and lies.”

The whalers plan to kill up to 50 humpbacks in what is believed to be the first large-scale hunt for the once nearly extinct species since a 1963 moratorium in the Southern Pacific put the giant marine mammals under international protection. The mission also aims to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in what Japan’s Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever scientific whale hunt. The expedition lasts through April.


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