A Japanese ship has been caught with a slaughtered whale in the Antarctic in defiance of an international court decision against Tokyo\u2019s hunts, activist group Sea Shepherd said on Sunday. The conservationist organisation \u2013 whose two vessels departed Australia last month for the Southern Ocean to disrupt the hunt \u2013 said it spotted the Nisshin Maru in the Australian whale sanctuary around the nation\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. \u201cThe fact that the Japanese crew went to cover up their harpoons and the dead minke whale on deck just shows that they know what they\u2019re doing is wrong,\u201d the captain of Sea Shepherd\u2019s MY Steve Irwin, Wyanda Lublink, said in a statement. The news came a day after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney, with their talks focusing on trade and defence. Japan is a signatory to the International Whaling Commission\u2019s moratorium on whaling in force since 1986. But it exploits a loophole allowing whales to be killed for the purposes of \u201cscientific research\u201d. Australia\u2019s Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said in a statement his government was \u201cdeeply disappointed\u201d Japan had returned to whaling in the Southern Ocean this summer. \u201cWe will continue our efforts in the International Whaling Commission to strongly oppose commercial whaling and so-called \u2018scientific\u2019 whaling, uphold the moratorium on commercial whaling and promote whale conservation,\u201d he added. In 2014 the United Nations\u2019 ICJ ordered Tokyo to end the Antarctic hunt, saying it found permits issued by Japan were \u201cnot for purposes of scientific research\u201d. Japan cancelled its 2014-15 hunt after the ruling, but restarted it the following year under a new programme with a two-thirds cut in the target catch number — saying the fresh plan was genuinely scientific. Tokyo claims it is trying to prove the whale population is large enough to sustain a return to commercial hunting. But the meat from what it calls scientific research often ends up on dinner tables.<\/p>\n