Update | Japan agrees to call off Antarctic whale hunt after UN court judgement

Japan has said it will cancel its annual Antarctic whaling hunt for the first time in more than a quarter of a century in line with a UN court ruling that the programme was a commercial activity disguised as science.

A “deeply disappointed” Tokyo earlier this week said it would honour Monday’s judgement by the United Nations’ Hague-based International Court of Justice but did not exclude the possibility of future whaling programmes.

On Thursday, officials said the next Antarctic hunt, which would have started in late 2014, had been scrapped, just weeks after the most recent one finished.

“We have decided to cancel research whaling (in the Antarctic) for the fiscal year starting in April because of the recent ruling,” a fisheries agency official said.

But he added that “we plan to go ahead with research whaling in other areas as scheduled”, including the northern Pacific. Japan also has a coastal whaling programme that is not covered by a commercial whaling ban.

Watch: Japan says will honour ICJ whaling decision