The International Whaling Commission's board of experts scrutinized Japan's revised Antarctic whaling arrangement, instructing it to present more data to justify the proposal.

The IWC's remarks on April 13 were the latest hindrance for the Japanese, whose scientific whaling project was deemed illegal last year by the United Nations' highest court, the International Court of Justice, following negative feedback from anti-whaling countries and crusaders.

The panel said it had not been provided sufficient information on the new Japanese plan, called New Scientific Whale Research Program in the Antarctic Ocean (NEWREP-A).

In order for the IWC to figure out why it was important to slaughter whales, Japan must present more arguments and analysis. Tokyo proposed a yearly target of 333 minke whales for potential hunts in the Antarctic, supposedly lower than the approximately 900 whales targeted in past projects.

Japan believes the planet's whale population, particularly the number of minke whales, is enough to accommodate sustainable whaling. It contended in its proposition to the IWC that the knowledge obtained by the research killing would assist the IWC in measuring renewable levels for whale hunting. The hunting research could also serve as a guide to examining the Antarctic marine biological system, Japan claims.

The ICJ issued a ruling in March 2014 that Tokyo was abusing a technical exclusion set out in the 1986 global ban on whaling. The court reasoned that the country was doing a commercial hunt under the facade of scientific research.

After that ruling, Japan said it would not hunt during this winter season but has spoken of its intent to start research whaling again in 2015 to 2016. NEWREP-A has defined the exploration period as 12 years from 2015 in reply to the ICJ's disapproval of the program's open-ended nature.

Concerned environmentalists welcomed the IWC panel's verdict.

"[The findings] underline and reiterate the concern of the international community: you don't need to kill whales to study them," said Claire Bass, UK director of the Humane Society International.

"It has long been clear that Japan's large-scale whaling operations are driven by politicians, not scientists, and serve no scientific need or useful conservation. This latest report from the IWC review panel essentially sends Japan back to the drawing board as it has failed to make a case for the need to kill whales in the name of science."

Photo: Martin Cathrae | Flickr