Antiwhaling activists of the Sea Shepherd group hurled more than two dozen bottles containing a liquid and more than 100 envelopes containing a white powder onto the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru off Antarctica on Monday. A crew member of the ship and two Japan Coast Guard officers suffered eye injuries from what is believed to have been butyric acid. The attack should be strongly condemned. As Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said, the attack was an unpardonable act that causes unjust harm to Japanese ship crew members working legally on the high seas.

The Nisshin Maru is engaged in scientific research whaling. It is clear that the environmentalist group used violence to protest whaling activities that are being carried out in accordance with procedures accepted by the International Whaling Commission. But it also must be questioned whether Japan is adequately responding to the popular view in foreign countries that whales are intelligent wild animals that cannot be killed humanely and should be protected. At the very least, the Fisheries Agency should try to clearly answer questions that may crop up.

Japan started research whaling in 1987, originally catching about 300 whales. The scope of the research has expanded so that the catch is now more than 1,200 whales. The catch for fiscal 2007 originally included 50 humpback whales. Since humpbacks are feared to be near extinction, the plan drew strong protest from abroad and Japan backed down from the plan. The agency needs to explain how decisions are made on the number and types of whales that must be killed.