April 18, 2014 — Japan says it will kill fewer whales when its seasonal Pacific hunt begins next week and will only observe whales in the Antarctic, after a U.N. court ordered it to stop taking the marine mammals from the Southern Ocean.
Fisheries Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said the Pacific catch target would be lowered to about 210 from the current 380. Hayashi said that while the Southern Ocean hunt is suspended this year, Japan would invite "famous scientists from home and abroad" to help devise a new research program that would satisfy the court's demands," according to The New York Times.