Yahoo News 23 Aug 08;
Japanese whaling ships will start arriving back back home Saturday after catching 211 whales during their three-month voyage in the northwest Pacific, the fisheries agency said.
The main ship of the six-vessel fleet, 8,044-ton Nisshin-maru, will arrive in Tokyo on Saturday, with the rest returning to their ports by the end of the month, the agency said.
Since they left on June 6, the ships caught 100 sei whales, 59 minke whales, 50 Bryde's whales and two sperm whales, the agency said Friday.
The Japanese government, which says whaling is part of the national culture, plans to kill around 1,000 whales a year using a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium that allows "lethal research" on whales.
Japan's last catch in the Antarctic Ocean earlier this year came to little more than half of that due to harassment by Sea Shepherd activists, who hurled stink bombs and hopped onto the whaling ship.
