International Whaling Committee experts did not find enough information in Japan's revised program of resuming its whale hunt in the Southern Ocean. The experts said that the plan, Newrep-A, did not provide scientific justification for the whale hunts.

The IWC panel said that after going through the plan, they are not able to determine whether Japan required to kill whales to accomplish two important objectives. The objectives are calculating the size of populations in order to return to sustainable commercial hunting and having more knowledge of the Antarctic marine ecosystem.

"With the information presented in the proposal, the panel was not able to determine whether lethal sampling is necessary to achieve the two major objectives", affirmed the IWC experts. It could be a setback for Japan.

Since last year, Japan has been working on its revised whale program. They have been working on it since the time the international court of justice in The Hague ruled out immediate stop on Japan's Antarctic hunts after it found that the hunts are not being carried as the nation has claimed, being carried out for scientific research.

The ruling came in response to challenge posed by Australia. Australia claimed that Japan is covering its act of commercial whaling using science. A decline has been witnessed in the consumption of whale meat.

Tokyo expected that its revised plan will allow the resumption of the Antarctic hunts by the end of this year. In the reworked plan, Japan proposed to kill up to 333 minke whales in one year, which was down from more than 900 a year earlier.

Japanese officials affirmed that they would be having a meeting with the IWC's scientific committee in May. Before that they would have more information to present them.