This news is sparking outrage: Last week, Japan announced that its whaling boats had returned from Antarctic waters hauling the carcasses of 333 minke whales — including some 157 pregnant females.*

Minke whales aren't endangered, but their numbers do seem to be declining over time. And what makes this hunt so striking is that the International Court of Justice had ordered Japan to halt a similar Antarctic whaling program back in 2014.

Japan claims it is killing minke whales for research purposes. But as Alejandro Davila Fragoso reminds us at Climate Progress, this excuse is nonsense. It has been for a long time. There's absolutely no reason to kill hundreds of whales for science.

Why Japan still kills whales in Antarctica — despite being ordered not to

The story starts in 1982, when most members of the International Whaling Commission agreed to a moratorium on commercial whaling around the world (save for Norway and Iceland). Yet there was always an exception for boats engaged in "scientific research."

Japan, which had initially objected to the moratorium, took that loophole and rammed a whole fleet through it, issuing research permits for its ships. Between 2005 and 2013, Japan's fleet has killed nearly 4,000 minke whales and 18 fin whales (which are endangered).** The meat from the whales was subsequently sold at fish markets and high-end restaurants.

The "research" rationale struck many as paper-thin. Whale scientists in the rest of the world manage to study whale populations just fine without lethal methods. Of the 14,410 whales killed for research since 1982, Japan is responsible for 95 percent. What's more, Japan isn't producing much valuable science: Since 2005, the country has just two peer-reviewed papers to show for its whale hunts.

Even so, the International Whaling Commission has never been able to muster the votes to stop Japan. So, more recently, Australia and New Zealand took their complaints about Japan's whale hunts to a different court, the International Court of Justice. In a surprise ruling in 2014, the ICJ ordered Japan to halt its whaling program in Antarctic waters — saying that the research rationale simply didn't hold up.

Japan canceled that program for the following season, but then turned around and argued that the ICJ didn't have jurisdiction over whaling. Since then, the country has developed a brand-new research plan that would allow its ships to kill nearly 4,000 minke whales over the next 12 years. And that's where we are today.

Scientists keep denouncing Japan's whaling "research"

The rest of the world's scientists continue to find Japan's actions preposterous.

In a letter to Nature this past January, 30 members of the International Whaling Commission's Scientific Committee argued that Japan's whaling program "has not passed a reasonable standard of peer review." They pointed out that Japan continues to ignore the committee's advice in designing suitable research programs.

Case in point: Japan keeps saying it needs to kill the whales to study their health, age, diets, and so on. The IWC's review committee keeps pointing out that you could very easily do this through non-lethal means — by collecting tissue sample or feces — just like every other cetacean researcher on the planet does. Japan just straight up ignored that advice. The scientists conclude that the current IWC review is a "waste of time," because Japan doesn't bother listening.

Whale meat is no longer even popular. So why is Japan still whaling?

It's clear that Japan's "science" excuse is a facade. Japan is basically hunting the whales for meat. Except here's the other twist: Whale meat is no longer even popular in Japan.

It used to be. After World War II, when the country had been ravaged by combat and people were starving, US General Douglas MacArthur urged Japan to revive large-scale whaling to feed itself. Whale meat became a staple of school lunches in the postwar era, and the industry anchored various coastal communities.

But this is no longer the case. Most people now prefer beef and pork instead, and whale-meat demand has collapsed. The Japanese government now has to subsidize the industry to the tune of roughly $10 million per year.

Back in February, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes wrote an insightful piece for BBC about why Japan continues to support whaling despite having every reason to quit. The public isn't particularly gung-ho about it, but there's a fair bit of inertia. Japanese politicians have long supported whaling, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is from a whaling town. Many officials know the practice is obsolete — but still can't quit it:

The answer from the Japanese government is that whaling is an ancient part of Japanese culture, that fishermen have caught whales for centuries, and that Japan will never allow foreigners to tell its people what they can and cannot eat. ... Recently I was at a private briefing with a high-ranking member of the Japanese government. Japan had just announced it was going to resuming whaling. I outlined to him why I thought it made no sense, and asked him to respond. His answer was astonishingly frank. "I agree with you," he said. "Antarctic whaling is not part of Japanese culture. It is terrible for our international image and there is no commercial demand for the meat. I think in another 10 years there will be no deep sea whaling in Japan." "So why not stop now?" asked another journalist. "There are some important political reasons why it is difficult to stop now." he said. He would say no more.

It seems like Japan's whaling program has to end eventually. But so far, it hasn't.

Even if Japan does stop whaling, whales still face other threats

Back in the early 20th century, it really did look like humans might hunt some of the largest whales to extinction. More than 50,000 whales were killed annually in the 1930s, often for meat, and many whale populations had plummeted.

Then came the "save the whales" campaign, as environmentalists rallied to save these big, charismatic mammals. Subsequent regulations and quotas by the International Whaling Commission — as well as, most sweepingly, the 1982 moratorium — have altered whales' fortunes. Many populations are now recovering around the world.

Still, the moratorium isn't airtight, and Japan's not the only one eluding it. Norway has hunted the minke whale for meat for centuries and still catches about 500 whales per year. The Norwegian government has lodged a formal objection to the moratorium, which means the country isn't bound by the whaling ban and there's no way to challenge it in court.

Iceland is another interesting case. In 2013, the country set a quota of hunting 184 fin whales every year for the next five years. Fin whales are an endangered species and the second-largest mammal on Earth. Environmentalists are pushing the Obama administration to level stricter sanctions on the country and get it to halt whaling.

But even if commercial whaling did come to an end, that wouldn't be the end of the story. True, whale populations have been rebounding since the advent of stricter regulations in the 1940s. But it's slow going, and the blue whale, gray whale, fin whale, and sei whale are all still endangered species.

What's more, hunting is arguably no longer the biggest threat facing whales. Ocean noise from sonar, oil and gas exploration, and shipping vessels can confuse whales and leave them stranded on beaches, or disrupt their feeding and migration routes. An increase in maritime traffic has led to an uptick in whales getting hit by large shipping vessels. And, finally, climate change is increasingly a threat to some whale species: Ocean acidification could threaten the smaller fish and plankton that baleen whales feed on. And the melting Arctic sea ice poses a risk to the narwhal up north.

So whales have plenty of problems. But it's hard to make a compelling case that a fake research program killing hundreds of minkes in the Antarctic each year needs to be one of them.

* Correction: I originally misstated the number of pregnant females killed this past summer. It was 157, not 200.