In South African waters, these collisions may be a growing menace, but are not yet a major threat to populations
First-ever recorded stranding in more than 30 years in Namibia, South Africa and probably the continent
Japan’s whaling fleet left for the Southern Ocean last month, planning to kill 333 minke whales over a four-month period.
The chronically deadlocked International Whaling Commission will debate ways to boost transparency and battle alleged corruption.
Thousands of whales will continue to be killed each year following the collapse of international negotiations to redraw whaling rules.
Plans to overturn the 25-year-old ban on commercial whaling were in confusion on Monday, with governments and environmental groups divided.
Anti-whaling campaigners said on Thursday that they had uncovered an embezzlement ring at the heart of the Japanese whaling fleet, accusing crew members of stealing choice cuts of whale meat worth millions of yen for sale on the black market.
Militant environmentalists hurled stinging acid for more than an hour onto a Japanese whaling ship off Antarctica on Monday, hurting three crew members, officials said. Both Japan and Australia, the leading opponent of whaling, condemned the latest attack by the Sea Shepherd group.
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/ 21 December 2007
Japan’s whaling fleet in the Antarctic will avoid killing humpback whales for now, but will press on with plans to slay 1 000 other whales by early in the New Year, a government official said on Friday. Plans by Japan to include 50 endangered humpbacks in its annual hunt had sparked an outcry from activists.
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/ 18 December 2007
Australia will send a fisheries patrol ship to shadow Japan’s whaling fleet near Antarctica and gather evidence for a possible international court challenge to halt the yearly slaughter. The icebreaker Oceanic Viking would leave for the Southern Ocean in days to follow the Japanese fleet.
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/ 17 November 2007
Japan’s whaling fleet is set to depart on Sunday for an annual hunt that this year for the first time will take humpback whales — a perennial favourite among whale-watchers — sparking protests from activists. Japan abandoned commercial whaling in accordance with an international moratorium in 1986, but began the next year to conduct what it calls scientific research whaling.