Japan to press ahead with bigger whale hunt

Japan to press ahead with bigger whale hunt

Japan said yesterday it would press ahead with an expanded whaling expedition as activists charged that Tokyo had delayed the hunt to avoid international friction.

Further enraging environmentalists, Japan for the first time plans to kill humpback whales, which are internationally considered a vulnerable species and are popular with whale-watchers.

Japan's Fisheries Agency said its fleet would go ahead with the expedition but the date would be announced only shortly before for security reasons.

"We will go ahead on the day that we planned," said an official from the whaling division.

The fleet usually leaves in November. Environmental group Greenpeace alleged the hunt was delayed because of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's current visit to the United States.

The whaling programme "is a sham and a source of diplomatic tension between Japan and countries that support whale conservation, like the United States", said Karli Thomas, leader of Greenpeace's Esperanza which will try to track the whalers.

"Prime Minister Fukuda should not just delay the whaling fleet's departure to avoid political embarrassment abroad, he should cancel Japan's entire whaling programme and decommission the vessels to end the domestic scandal of wasting Japanese taxpayers' money," she said.

The whaling official denied the charges, saying: "I don't think this has anything to do with Mr Fukuda visiting the US."

Japan has used a loophole in the two-decade international moratorium on commercial whaling that allows the killing of whales for research.