PORTOROZ, Slovenia: In the crosshairs of anti-whaling nations, Japan, on Thursday, defended its annual Southern Ocean whale hunt, insisting it was gathering scientific data even as detractors accused it of harvesting meat under false pretenses. At the 66th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Japan denied the claims that it was neglecting a 30-year-old whaling moratorium which allows kills for science. Japan insisted that the actions were in accordance with a 2014 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found that permits issued by Japan were “not for scientific purposes” and instructed the country to halt its JARPA II programme. “Reports oftentimes say that Japan started the research in violation of the ICJ judgment and that’s not true,” Japan’s commissioner to the IWC, Joji Morishita told fellow delegates on Thursday. “It is clear that the ICJ assumes there can be future research activities. The ICJ also said that the use of lethal sampling is not unreasonable for research objectives,” he insisted. After the court ruling, Japan cancelled its 2014-15 hunt, only to resume it the following year under a new programme called NEWREP-A (New Scientific Whale Research Program in the Antarctic Ocean).