Japan Fleet Sets Off to Hunt Humpbacks

SHIMONOSEKI, Japan (AP) -- "A defiant Japan embarked on its largest whaling expedition in decades Sunday, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s despite international opposition. An anti-whaling protest boat awaited the fleet offshore.

Bid farewell in a festive ceremony in the southern port of Shimonoseki, four ships headed for the waters off Antarctica, resuming a hunt that was cut short by a deadly fire last February that crippled the fleet's mother ship.

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.

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."

And good for them.

Forget the research-schmesearch folderol; whale meat is so damned delicious it makes lobster seem like shoe leather in comparison and since the oceans are veritably teeming with whales, then why not spend a few months stocking the larder. Then there are these bozo's who believe themselves to be lord and master of all they survey...

"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.

"We are going to do everything in our power to reduce their catch," Karli Thomas, expedition leader on the Esperanza, told The Associated Press by telephone. "Japan's research program is a sham. We demand that the Japanese government cancel it."

Demand THIS. It is my most sincere hope that the Japanese whalers brought along an 8" gun or two.