The japanese have the biggest whale hunt yearly hands down. They kill something like 600 mink whales and a dozen fin whales each year. This doesnt even come close to other whaling countries like Norway. It's pretty messed up, they say it's for scientific purposes, but 600 mink whales? They turn around and sell the meat and make a dandy profit.
This year though, they only got like half their quota because their processing ship caught on fire, you guys probably saw it in the news. I was checking that out and I came upon this group called Sea Sheppard, they are pretty much sea pirates that attack whaling ships these guys have balls. They pretty much harassed the japanese whalers like all winter . Their ship rammed one of the japanese ships, they sealed the ports on the processing ship so that the blood couldnt escape, etc, etc making the japanese lives' horrible.
Check out the news category on their website, it's pretty entertaining.
http://www.seashepherd.org/ 
