Australia-Japan clash over whale hunt

SYDNEY, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Australian and Japanese officials clashed verbally Thursday over photographs purporting to show the Japanese slaughter of a whale and calf.

The photographs, taken by an Australian Customs ship in the Southern Ocean, allegedly showed the two whales being dragged bleeding into a Japanese processing vessel.

The photos were printed in Australian newspapers and Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus, at a news conference in Sydney, said the government "has evidence of whaling being carried out in circumstances that we believe it should not be done."

The Australian Broadcasting Corp, however, said the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research accused the Australian Customs of misleading the public.

The institute's Director General Minoru Morimoto denied the two minke whales in the photographs were related and said the variance in size was only due to "random sampling" of the Antarctic whale population, the ABC said.

Despite whale meat ending up in Japanese markets, the Tokyo government insists Japan is conducting its annual slaughter of whales for "scientific purposes."