Japan will resume whaling in the Antarctic Ocean by the end of March, after a hiatus since last year, in a move likely to prompt international outrage.
The International Court of Justice last year ruled that Japan's decades-old whale hunt in the Antarctic should stop, prompting Tokyo to cancel the bulk of its whaling for the 2014/2015 season.
But the Japanese Fisheries Agency has notified the International Whaling Commission that Japan will resume whaling in the 2015/2016 season under a revised plan.
The plan, which calls for cutting annual minke whale catches by two-thirds to 333, is scientifically reasonable, the agency said in a document filed with the IWC.
Japan began what it calls scientific whaling in 1987, a year after an international whaling moratorium took effect.
Japan has long maintained that most whale species are not endangered and that eating whale is part of its food culture.
