The hunting of endangered species was banned in 1963. Yet, because of a loophole in the International Whaling Commission ban  in 1986 against commercial whaling, Japan has continued to kill whales every year for “scientific research”. Scientists collect data on the whales’ age and diet, and then the meat is sold for consumption. Suprise Suprise. Many say Japan’s research program is actually commercial whaling because the government sells the whale meat to restaurants to pay for it.  Japan found a hole in the law and are using it in order to continue killing whales for meat. There would not be a problem with this, except many of the whale species that they are harpooning are endangered. With Japan’s continued hunting, these whale populations have little to no chance of recovering.
According to the New York Times, there are many people who are taking action against this whale hunting, yet it still continues.
“Under intensifying pressure, particularly from Australia and the United States, Japan last month put off plans to kill up to 50 humpback whales this year as part of what it insists is a scientific research project, but it still intends to kill up to 935 minke whales (a small and relatively abundant species) and 50 finbacks (the second largest whale).”

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/whale-hunters-hunted/

 Organizations such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd go out and hunt the whale hunters, forcing them to flee and give up their efforts to kill whales. Greenpeace, as inferred by its name, is a peaceful organization that does not promote violence of any sort, so they tend to follow the whale hunting ships and photograph the greusome harpoonings of whales. Se Shepherd, on the other hand, is much more “hands-on” with its approach to stopping the Japanese whale hunt. They often throw stink bombs (not like normal stink bombs, really, really powerful ones!) aboard the whaling ship and do other things to bother the Japanese whalers in order to get them to stop harpooning the whales. Some of the Sea Shepherd supporters even jump onto the whaling ship and basically try to hijack it! In watching the first episode of “Whale Wars” on Animal Planet, I learned that the Captain of the Sea Shepherd group was actually the co-founder of Greenpeace, but the group voted him out because he was too violent. Now, Greenpeace refuses to associate with their former founder as well as all members of Sea Shepherd. If you would like to see more of this insanely fascinating way to stop whale hunting, you can watch Animal Planet’s new show called “WHALE WARS”