As activists clash with Japanese whalers on their Antarctic hunt, other anti-whaling campaigners are doing the once unthinkable -- getting out chopsticks and tasting whale meat.
In a bid to reach out to the Japanese public to end the slaughter, the environmental movement Greenpeace is turning its back on confrontation to show it is respectful of Japanese culture.
For Valentine's Day, Greenpeace distributed cards worldwide, including by fax to a Japanese whaling boat, reading, "I love Japan, but whaling breaks my heart."
And some supporters of the group which has battled for years to protect the world's largest animals are doing what hardliners find abominable -- eating whale.
Greenpeace last month introduced an online travelogue -- the Whale-Love Wagon -- of Japan's whaling towns. In one episode, a Spaniard visits a grandmotherly woman's home to eat whale for the first time and politely tells her in Japanese it was delicious.
"We are making it very clear that we have no problem with Japanese culture or eating whale. We have never been anti-Japanese like the Japanese government always tries to portray us," said Emiliano Ezcurra, an Argentine Greenpeace activist who helped design the campaign.
"But whaling in Antarctica has nothing to do with Japanese culture," he said.
Greenpeace, he said, had no problem with "subsistence whaling" on Japan's coasts and instead targeted the Antarctic Ocean hunt, which each year infuriates Australians and New Zealanders.
The 10-week "Whale-Love Wagon" travelogue is targeting trendsetting young Japanese women. The idea came after years of failure to change whaling policy in Japan.
Japan, which uses a loophole in the global moratorium that allows whaling for "research," in 2005 defiantly doubled its catch in the Antarctic to some 1,000 of the giant mammals a year.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society says previous attempts to go soft on Japan have failed.
Sea Shepherd activists have clashed repeatedly with Japanese whalers in icy waters and dropped threats to ram a boat into the Japanese fleet only after intervention by New Zealand.
"We can wait for Japanese opinion to change, but by that time there won't be any whales left," Captain Paul Watson, the founder of Sea Shepherd, said by satellite phone in Antarctic waters.
"The trouble with Greenpeace is it's just one big feel-good organization. Sometimes I feel like Doctor Frankenstein," he said.
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