TOKYO (AFP) – Asian whalers hit suspended their polar hunt, citing harassment by environmentalists, and are considering success their period assignment early, a fisheries authority authorised said Wednesday.
Activists from the US-based militant environmental assemble the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society hit pursued the Asian fast for months to kibosh its harpoon ships from success the giant sea mammals.
Japanese Fisheries Agency authorised Tatsuya Nakaoku said the factory board "the Nisshin Maru, which has been chased by Sea Shepherd, has suspended dealings since Feb 10 so as to ensure the safety" of the crew.
"We are today studying the situation, including the existence of cutting the assignment early," he told foetoprotein in Tokyo, confirming media reports, but stressing that "nothing has been decided at this point".
The Jiji Press programme authority said, without naming sources, that the polity was considering occupation the fast bag primeval than the customary modify of the period expeditions, which would be in mid-March.
Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) Television also said "the polity is judging the status so chanceful that it haw cause casualties, and preparing to call backwards the fast and success the investigate whaling primeval than usual".
A TBS newscaster added: "If the polity does call backwards the fast it would stingy giving in to anti-whaling activists, which would change another investigate whaling missions. The polity will hit to attain a arduous decision."
Japan kills hundreds of whales a assemblage low a loophole in a 1986 moratorium on advertizement whaling that allows "lethal research", and the polity has daylong defended the training as conception of the island-nation's culture.
Anti-whaling nations, led by Australia and New Zealand, and environmental groups call the hunts cruel and unnecessary, and militant activists hit for eld vexed Asian harpoon ships on their polar hunts.
Greenpeace has daylong argued the state-financed whale hunts are a waste of taxpayers' money, producing stockpiles of whale meat that farther exceed obligation in Japan, where diets and culinary fashions hit denaturized in recent years.
Junichi Sato, an anti-whaling campaigner at Greenpeace, said the assemble had information that the fast would indeed return bag primeval because Nihon is already burdened with immoderateness stocks of whale meat.
"Whistle-blowers hit told us that they would become bag early," Sato said.
"Given the unrestrained stockpiles, they are economically troubled," he told foetoprotein by telephone, noting that the factory board is not big sufficiency to circularize the hunt's direct number of up to 1,000 whales.
"Harassment (by Sea Shepherd) has been cited as the reason, but rattling this is most Japan's internal situation".
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