Huge. Bigger than a whale.

Apparently Japan's whaling regime in the Southern Ocean has been deemed by the International Court of Justice to be unscientific.
Now who would have thunk it?

I've had plenty of arguments with Old Salt about modern day whaling in the Antarctic, but my final answer came when he tried to explain that it was a 'cultural thing'.
"What. With diesel powered gunboats? Thousands of nautical miles from their traditional hunting grounds?"

It's rare for 'cultural things' to dress up in a sciencie frock to justify a commercial industry, but this particular frock has been doing the hokey pokey in the Australian Whale Sanctuary and getting away with it for ages*. So it was with a glad heart that I learned the ICJ has ruled that Japan's whaling program over the last decade or so has been carried out for commercial purposes. Not scientific ones. Therefore, the court has ruled, no future permits will be issued for the Japanese to hunt whales in the Southern Ocean. There is to be no appeal.

Here's the news: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-31/ijc-japan-whaling-southern-ocean-scientific-research/5357416

*Did you see what I did there? The shittiest sentence ever, dressed up in a frock with fractals. And it has whales in it.