Whaling

Updates to past Pacific Standard stories.

Japanese officials claim hunting a select number of whales each year provides valuable insight into the animal's health and migration. Conservationists, however, criticize the whaling program as a front to evade commercial whaling bans.

Fifty years ago 180,000 whales disappeared from the oceans without a trace, and researchers are still trying to make sense of why. Inside the most irrational environmental crime of the century.