A box of whale meat which Greenpeace claims was illicitly removed by crew of the Nisshin Maru, the whaling factory ship, following this year's Southern Ocean whale hunt has been put on display by Greenpeace activists in Tokyo.

It is being handed over to the Public Prosecutor's office in Tokyo as evidence of what Greenpeace alleges is "wide-scale corruption at the heart of the Japanese government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation" in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Greenpeace is also calling for an end to taxpayer subsidies for the programme, and for the licence of the company operating the whale hunt to be withdrawn.

A four-month Greenpeace undercover investigation claims to have revealed disturbing evidence of an embezzlement ring involving crewmembers on board the Nisshin Maru, who it says are openly taking the best cuts of whale meat during the so-called scientific hunt, smuggling it ashore disguised as personal luggage and then passing it

to traders for illegal sales.

Informers claim that senior crew and officials from Kyodo Senpaku - the company operating the fleet - are turning a blind eye to the theft, allowing it to continue for decades. One informer associated with Kyodo Senpaku told Greenpeace that officials from the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) who were on board the Nisshin Maru also knew of the scandal and did nothing.

"The information we have gathered indicates that the scale of the scandal is so great, it would be impossible for the ship's operating company, Kyodo Senpaku and the ICR, not to know," said Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan whales campaign coordinator. "They are turning their back on large scale corruption and theft of taxpayers' money. What we need to know now, through a full public enquiry, is who else is profiting from the whaling programme? Who else has allowed this fraud to continue?" Sato added.

Working from information given by former and current Kyodo Senpaku employees, Greenpeace says it documented the offloading of smuggled whale meat into a special truck, in full view of Kyodo Senpaku officials and crew members when the Nisshin Maru docked on April 15, this year. The consignment was documented by Greenpeace activists once it left the ship and tracked to a depot in Tokyo. One of four boxes destined for the same private address was then intercepted in order to verify the contents and establish the alleged fraud, Greenpeace says.

The consignment notes claimed the box contained 'cardboard' but in reality it held 23.5kg of salted 'prime' whale meat, worth up to US$3,000. One informer told Greenpeace that dozens of crew take as many as 20 boxes each. Further inquiries in pubs and restaurants in a number of different locations around Japan confirmed that they were expecting the imminent delivery of whale meat from this year's hunt, despite the fact that the Japanese Fisheries Agency and the Institute of Cetacean Research do not release the whale meat for sale before the end of June.

Additional allegations from informers include:

- Throwing tonnes of whale meat overboard daily because they did not have processing capacity for the increased quotas

- Cancerous tumours being found and cut out of whales and the remaining meat processed for public sale

- Targeted hunts to ensure maximum catch, not random "sampling" as required by the research permits

- Very bad working conditions because of the increased workload from the increased quotas

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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