Whaling

Junichi Sato's face clenched when he recalled opening the reeking box of whale meat -- all 50 pounds of it. "At first we thought it was someone's dismembered body," Sato said. "It was quite depressing." He and fellow Greenpeace activist Toru Suzuki had tracked the package to a mail depot in northern Japan after tipsters told them it contained whale meat bound for the country's black market, smuggled by crew members of a ship commissioned to kill the mammals for scientific research, not profit.

The U.S. is initiating a closed-door negotiation that could open new areas to whale hunting for the first time in decades, part of an attempt to end a long-standing impasse over whaling limits with Japan, the world's most avid whaling nation. The tentative plan, outlined in documents obtained by the Washington Post, seeks to achieve a breakthrough in the dispute that has raged since the International Whaling Commission voted in 1986 to ban commercial whaling.

They were "pirates" to some, "hostages" to others. But two anti-whaling activists who drew global attention this week by forcibly boarding a Japanese harpoon ship in Antarctic waters have demonstrated how the emotional clash over Japan's annual whale hunt can disrupt even the best international friendships.

NEW YORK -- Animal Planet's desire to become less warm and fuzzy means exposure to some unaccustomed issues, like danger on the high seas and journalistic fairness. A network crew returned to port in Australia last week after tagging along on a mission to interfere with a Japanese whaling expedition in the Antarctic. A miniseries about the experience, "Whale Wars," is expected to air this fall.

A hard-line environmentalist group chasing Japanese whalers near Antarctica said it had found the Japanese fleet and had attempted to attack one of the vessels with stink bombs. In a statement on its website, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said the attack by a boat launched from its ship the Steve Irwin was called off because of blizzard conditions.

Crew members hooked up power cables today for fans to try to clear dense smoke from a Japanese whaling ship on fire near Antarctica. The blaze aboard the drifting 8,000-ton Nisshin Maru, the mother ship of six vessels in a whaling fleet, left one crewman missing, raised concerns about a possible environmental disaster and threatened to cut short the controversial hunt.

Japan has decided to pull its whaling fleet out of the Antarctic and end a hunt early in the wake of a fire that crippled its mother ship, officials said today. The blaze aboard the Nisshin Maru two weeks ago killed one crew member and left the vessel unable to move under its own power for 10 days, prompting strong protests from New Zealand and Greenpeace over potential oil and chemical spills or damage to penguin colonies.

Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru returned to Tokyo from Antarctica with a catch of 508 whales, despite having its annual hunt cut short by a fire. Tokyo says whaling provides crucial data on whale populations and feeding habits. Environmental groups call the hunts a pretext for continued commercial whaling.

A California gray whale died after being shot with a machine gun off the western tip of Washington state and then trying to swim out to sea, officials said. Coast Guard Petty Officer Kelly Parker said five people believed to be members of the Makah tribe shot and harpooned the whale. Coast Guard officials created a 1,000-yard safety zone around the injured whale, which was shot about a mile east of Neah Bay in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

A federal grand jury has charged five American Indians with misdemeanor counts in the killing of a protected gray whale without a permit last month, the government said Thursday. The indictment charges the men, all members of the Makah tribe, with conspiracy, unlawful taking of a marine mammal and unauthorized whaling, all punishable by up to a year in jail and a $100,000 fine.