Japanese whalers slaughter more than 300 whales in Antarctic hunt

The country’s Fisheries Agency said in a press release that the mission is “research for the purpose of studying the ecological system in the Antarctic Sea.”

But environmentalists disputed that explanation contending the Japanese are still hunting whale for their meat, The Guardian reported.

The Japanese fleet set sail in November and returned to port on Friday, the second year in a row that it has ignored the international moratorium on whale hunting and killed the animals instead.

The International Whaling Commission, which Japan is part of, placed a global moratorium on whale hunting in 1986, and it’s still in place.

In 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's Antarctic whaling program was illegal and must end because it had failed to yield any meaningful scientific results, according to the website Whale and Dolphin Conservation.