Japan fleet is targeting humpbacks

SHIMONOSEKI, Japan — Vowing to face down "environmental terrorists," a Japanese fleet embarked on the country's largest whaling expedition Sunday, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s.

Bidding farewell in a festive ceremony in the southern port of Shimonoseki, four ships headed for the waters off Antarctica. Families waved little flags emblazoned with smiling whales, and the crew raised a toast with cans of beer while a brass band played "Popeye the Sailor Man."

Officials told the crowd that Japan should not give into militant activists and preserve its whale-eating culture.

"They're violent environmental terrorists," mission leader Hajime Ishikawa told the ceremony. "Their violence is unforgivable ... we must fight against their hypocrisy and lies."

The anti-whaling group Greenpeace said its protest ship, Esperanza, was moored just outside Japan's territorial waters and would chase the fleet to the southern ocean. There was no immediate word Sunday of an offshore confrontation.

The whalers plan to kill up to 50 humpbacks in what is believed to be the first large-scale hunt for the once nearly extinct species since a 1963 moratorium in the Southern Pacific put the giant marine mammals under international protection.

The mission also aims to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in what Japan's Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever scientific whale hunt. The expedition lasts through April.

Japan says it needs to kill the animals in order to conduct research on their reproductive and feeding patterns.

While scientific whale hunts are allowed by the International Whaling Commission, or IWC, critics say Japan is simply using science as a cover for commercial whaling.

Ken Findlay, a whale biologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said the humpback population was recovering but said he was worried Japan would kill whales from vulnerable breeding grounds like those off New Zealand.

He also said Japan's hunting methods were unnecessarily cruel. Japanese whalers sometimes chase wounded animals for hours, he said.

"I don't think firing a harpoon at a whale and then dragging it next to the ship is ethical," Findlay said. "You question the necessity of that. It's not research."