Japan exploits a loophole in IWC legislation, and has never stopped killing whales despite the Moratorium. They simply assign themselves a permit to undertake ‘ scientific whaling ’ and continue hunting whales as before.
This practice has been described as “commercial whaling in disguise” – particularly as the meat ends up for sale in high class Japanese restaurants.
Japanese claim to be undertaking research by killing whales. However, most of the data collected by the Japanese ‘Scientific whaling’ program is not required for management or conservation of whale stocks and is never published in reputable scientific journals.
Many Japanese ‘research’ objectives are based on unsubstantiated or incorrect scientific assumptions. The few relevant research objectives they have can be much better addressed using non-lethal methods (e.g. tagging, DNA profiling, and photo-ID etc), or by analyzing a century’s worth of commercial catch statistics, plus data from the previous 20 years of Japan’s lethal research program.