Tokyo  - A Japanese whaling fleet left for the Antarctic on Thursday.

Greenpeace activists said they displayed a banner in front of the Nisshin Maru factory ship bearing the slogan "Yes We Can," from US President Barack Obama's election campaign, and called on Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to put an end to whaling.

The environment pressure group hopes Hatoyama will keep his promise to fight the waste of taxpayer money and stops "scientific" whaling.

However, the new Japanese government has not done its homework. That is embarrassing because who pays lip-service to stopping the waste of taxpayers' money and breaking up ultranationalist cronyism, cannot avoid the issue of whaling, said Greenpeace marine biologist Thilo Maack at the start of the Antarctic whaling season. The group hopes it will be the Japanese fleet's final journey.

Japan uses an exception in the 1986 whaling moratorium which allows whaling for scientific purposes, a stance that countries wanting to protect whales see as a front.

Japan argues that the ban on commercial whaling has led to a significant rise in the population of some types of whale, in particular minke whales.

According to Greenpeace, Japan has killed more than 9,000 minke whales in the last 22 years using the scientific argument. (dpa)