Japan’s whaling fleet arrived back at the port of Shimonoseki on the weekend with a barbaric tally of 333 dead whales that are no longer swimming freely in the Southern Ocean.

If the work of the Japanese whalers is anything like last year, more than 100 pregnant females and 50 or so juveniles will have been killed. But from now on, things are different.

Japan’s announcement on Boxing Day last year that it would be leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) means those whalers will likely never return to the Southern Ocean. Now they will only hunt whales in their own waters.