Australia fights to stop Japanese whalers

Updated 23.12 Thu Feb 07 2008

Keywords: Japan, Australia, whaling

Graphic images showing a mother whale and her calf being winched aboard a Japanese vessel after they were shot with harpoons have been released.

The pictures, which were taken by an Australian customs ship, have re-ignited the furious debate about Japan's whaling missions.

The pictures, which were taken by an Australian customs ship, have re-ignited the furious debate about Japan's whaling missions

The Japanese are allowed to hunt about 1,000 whales every year - for scientific purposes.

But the Australian Government, which is launching international legal action to stop the annual slaughter, claims their pictures prove the whales are killed for reasons other than science.

Peter Garrett, the Australian Environment Minister, said: "It is explicitly clear from these images that this is indiscriminate killing of whales, where you have a whale and its calf killed in this way."

"And to claim that this is in any way scientific is to continue the charade that has surrounded this issue from day one," he added.

A Japanese official said on Wednesday that Japan had resumed its annual whale hunt after anti-whaling activists ran low on fuel and stopped pursuing the fleet.

Japan temporarily halted its hunt in mid-January after confrontations with both Greenpeace and the militant anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, Japanese Fisheries Agency official Jiro Hyuga said.