Japan plans to resume the controversial whaling in the Antarctic Ocean by end of March next year despite an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling barring the country from doing so. The Japanese fisheries agency said on Saturday it will restart the whaling with a revised plan, in which it will decrease the number of annual minke whale catches by two-thirds to just over 300.
In March 2014, a 16-judge panel of the ICJ, the judicial division of the United Nations, ruled 12 to 4 that Japan’s killing of Antarctic whales -- whose meat is sold in shops and restaurants -- was not justified. The decision proved a major victory for Australian environmentalists who had filed a lawsuit with the ICJ against Japan in 2010 over the country’s whaling practices.