The Nisshin Maru, Japan’s factory whaling ship, returned to Tokyo harbour on April 15th, after a five-month hunt in the Antarctic Ocean.

One month later, Greenpeace Japan has filed a complaint against 12 crew members. The environmental watchdog suspects them of smuggling whale meat. Its evidence: a box containing 23,5 kilograms of salted meat.

"This whale meat box was due to be shipped to a crew member's home, and we found out that four other boxes were delivered to the homes of other crew members", says Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan’s Ocean Project Director. "We believe this is a proof of the kind of big amounts of whale meat that are stolen from the southern-ocean whaling activities".

The box contains whale bacon worth some 2,000 euros. Yet, Kyodo Senpaku, the company that operates the whale research vessels, says it is a tradition to give some meat to the crew.

However, a Greenpeace informant claims this practice is different from the regular "post-hunt present". He agreed to testify on condition of anonymity.

"On the Nisshin Maru, if there’s 150 crew, around 120 to 130 persons are involved in the process", he says. "Everyone takes home about 200 to 300 kilos of whale meat or bacon. This is meat that doesn’t appear in the production figures. There was even one who said he’d sold enough, just with bacon, to build a house".

An investigation is expected to find out whether the meat was meant to be sold on the black market. The issue is very sensitive.

The last hunt was subjected to one of the most spirited anti-whaling campaigns by environmental NGOs. Officially, Japan says it hunts purely for scientific reasons, but authorities conceed that about 4,000 tons of whale meat is eaten annually.

"The Cetacean Research Institute calls upon the services of a third company who is in charge of selling the meat to distributors, school’s cafeterias, restaurants and hospitals", explains Tsuyoshi Iwata, Assistant Director of the Far Seas Fisheries Division at Japan's Fisheries Agency.

The meat is also sold commercially in supermarkets, fresh or dried. Restaurants buy the meat at Tsukiji’s fish market. They then sell it as steak or sashimi, or sell whale bacon or tongue. On the menu of one of Tokyo’s most famous Whale meat restaurants, each course costs around 10 euros.

But demand is now on the decline, says Manabu Tanaka, a food critic. "Until the 50s or 60s, whale was a common meal. You could find it in school canteens, and people from these generations are used to it. But after that, there were some hunting restrictions and the next generation stopped eating it".

A survey conducted earlier this year by Greenpeace shows only 31% of Japanese people support whaling. Furthermore, 87% of the respondents were suprised to learn that their taxes were partly used to finance whaling activities.