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In Japan, Business of Watching Whales Far Larger Than Hunting Them

Reuters

   RAUSU, JAPAN - People packed the decks of the Japanese whale-watching
   boat, screaming in joy as a pod of orcas put on a show: splashing tails
   at each other, rolling over, and leaping out of the water.

   In Kushiro, just 160 kilometers south of Rausu, where the four dozen
   people laughed and cheered, boats were setting off on Japan's first
   commercial whale hunt in 31 years.

   Killed that day were two minke whales, which the boats in Rausu also
   search for glimpses of - a situation that whale-watching boat captain
   Masato Hasegawa confessed had him worried.

   "They won't come into this area - it's a national park - or there'd be
   big trouble," the 57-year-old former pollock fisherman said. "And the
   whales we saw today, the sperm whales and orcas, aren't things they
   hunt."

   "But we also watch minkes," he added. "If they take a lot in the
   (nearby) Sea of Okhotsk, we could well see a change, and that would be
   too bad for whale watching."