A Japanese ship has been caught with a slaughtered whale in the Antarctic in defiance of an international court decision against Tokyo’s hunts, activist group Sea Shepherd said on Sunday. The conservationist organisation – whose two vessels departed Australia last month for the Southern Ocean to disrupt the hunt – said it spotted the Nisshin Maru in the Australian whale sanctuary around the nation’s Antarctic territory. The Japanese fleet set sail on November 18 last year in defiance of a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling and international opposition. Sea Shepherd released photographs of a dead minke whale on the deck of the Nisshin Maru, a factory ship, adding that the vessel’s crew covered the carcass with a tarp when its helicopter approached. The dead whale is the first to be documented since the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), said Sea Shepherd. It has spent more than a decade harassing Japanese harpoon ships during the Southern Hemisphere summer.
