Japan is confirming a record low haul from its latest attempt at “research whaling”, blaming “unforgivable sabotage” by anti-whaling environmentalists:  Congratulations, Captain Paul Watson!

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi says the whaling fleet killed and butchered only 103 whales this year.  That’s less than half of last year’s take and about 10 percent of this year’s goal.

Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson says this year’s campaign to stop the Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean was “enormously successful”.  Watson says his team managed to interrupt the hunt four times, and forced the whalers to spend 21 days just running from the Sea Shepherd vessels.

The season also saw the two sides accusing each other when their vessels collided.  And a US judge for some reason ruled the environmentalists were “pirates”, leading one to wonder what authority this judge believes he has in an ocean on the other side of the world from his court.

Hayashi doesn’t have much else in the way of international sympathy, especially since he tacitly admitted that the “cetacean research” kills were pretty much all about eating, not learning.  

And the Japanese people are growing increasingly weary of the annual hunt.  Most people do not eat and cannot afford whale meat.  And the money-losing hunt is largely propped up by public tax money, and rife with corruption, at a time when the nation is still slowly recovering from the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster of 2011.