Despite international criticism, Japan launched a hunting expedition on Sunday to kill more than 1,000 whales, including the majestic humpback.

A four-ship whaling fleet left the port of Shimonoseki for the South Pacific and the waters off Antarctica.

Crew members of the Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru wave as they depart for a hunt that will target humpbacks for the first time in decades.
(Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press)

The expedition is believed to be the first of its kind since an international moratorium on hunting the endangered humpback was declared in 1963.

The hunt is due to last until April. Japan claims it's necessary for scientific purposes, but critics say it's commercial whaling in disguise. Whale meat is regularly sold in Japanese markets.

Scientific whale hunts are allowed by the International Whaling Commission. An IWC moratorium on commercial whaling took effect in 1986, but Japan has killed almost 10,500 mostly minke and brydes whales under research permits since then.

The anti-whaling group Greenpeace said its protest ship Esperanza was moored just outside Japan's territorial waters and would follow the fleet to the southern ocean. There was no immediate word Sunday of an offshore confrontation.

"We are going to do everything in our power to reduce their catch," Karli Thomas, expedition leader on the Esperanza, told the Associated Press by telephone. "Japan's research program is a sham. We demand that the Japanese government cancel it."

The Japanese hunt, which puts meat from the whales on the commercial market, is growing rapidly despite an increasingly vocal anti-whaling movement.

This winter season's target of up to 1,035 whales is more than double the number the country hunted a decade ago.

Japan argues that it should have the right to hunt whales as long as they are not in danger of extinction.

The whalers plan to kill as many as 935 minke whales, up to 50 fin whales and as many as 50 humpback whales.

The humpback was in serious danger of extinction just a few decades ago. The American Cetacean Society estimates the humpback population has recovered to between 30,000 and 40,000, about a third of the number before modern whaling.

The species is listed as "vulnerable" by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union.

With files from the Associated Press