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Japan plans to hunt another whale species. This year it will take 50 sei whales from the North Pacific, where only 900 of the animals are thought to remain. The International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling 16 years ago, but allows a limited catch for scientific research. The director-general of the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo, Seiji Ohsumi, defended his plan, saying it is “based on an urgent scientific need to collect data on the competition between whales and fisheries”. But Stuart Chapman of wildlife campaign group WWF says the sei has still not recovered from…