Japan stands by its renewed 'scientific' whale slaughter

Luis Pastene's name is virtually unknown in the anti-whaling countries of the Western world.

It is his work that drives Japan's 'scientific whaling' program, which in turn provoked international outrage. Japan's giant 8030-tonne factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, and three smaller whaling boats, left for the Antarctic Ocean on the biggest scientific whale hunt in history. The fleet is intent on slaughtering as many as 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales, and, crucially, 50 of the vulnerable humpback whales protected by an international moratorium since 1966. Back at the laboratories of the institute, not far from the world's biggest fish and seafood market at Tsukiji, Dr. Pastene and his colleagues will scrutinize thousands of samples taken from blubber, livers, earplugs, ovaries and testes, bones, lungs and even the skin of foetuses borne by cows at the time of their death. The institute is the centre of Japan's scientific whaling program. Critics say its research is a sham designed to allow the country to continue commercial whaling.

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