Many
whale species are still struggling to recover from the effects of the mass slaughter that was industrial whaling in the 20th century.
Whale meat caught further off the coast will be frozen and distributed for wider consumption.
'We confirmed that it's a calf of the blue
whale after sharing its picture with other experts,' said Mohammad Moazzam Khan, a representative of the WWF-P and also the president of the Pakistan
Whales and Dolphins Society.
Earlier, this week an 8-meter sperm
whale was found dead off Sardinia with 22 kilograms of plastic in its belly.
Blatchley said the rice sacks and other plastic waste found inside the
whale's belly were one-tenth of its total weight of 500 kilos.
Local schoolchildren also come to the seaside facility where they can get a closer look at the rare sight of workers stripping the flesh from the thick skin of
whales with special choppers.
In terms of politics, many members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's conservative Liberal Democratic Party are supporters of whaling, and he himself comes from a constituency where
whale hunting remains popular.
The North Atlantic right
whale, Eubalaena glacialis, weighs approximately 70 tons and averages 50 feet in length.
To promote better understanding about
whale hunting, Japan will be pressed to greatly retool its strategy for that purpose.
The Philippines is known to promote
whale shark interaction as a tourist attraction, particularly in Donsol in Sorsogon and Oslob in Cebu, where the largest congregation of
whale sharks have been observed in the past.
Whale hunting, or whaling, grew popular in Japan after World War 2.