Japan seizes on Aus expert in whaling case Japan has seized on comments by an expert witness for Australia at the UN's top court to argue its whaling program isn't a threat to minke stocks and therefore conforms to the 1946 whaling convention. Tokyo could have been trumpeting the fact two judges from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) compared its controversial JARPA whaling program with the human genome project (HGP) and Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. But instead Japanese government spokesman Noriyuki Shikata latched onto remarks by US mathematics professor Marc Mangel. During Thursday's hearings at The Hague Professor Mangel admitted Japan's target of catching 850 minke whales in the Southern Ocean each year "will not in any way endanger the stock." "As Professor Mangel - the Australian-appointed scientist - states today there is no worry about these small numbers," Mr Shikata told AAP afterwards. We are talking about a bit over 500,000 minke whales (overall) and as Professor Mangel mentioned a very small take will not endanger minke whales. Australia wants the 16-judge panel to rule that Japan's whaling program isn't science-based and therefore breaches the 1946 whaling convention which only allows harpooning "for purposes of scientific research." But Tokyo points to the convention's preamble which states its aim is "the proper conservation of whale stocks." Indeed Japan is so confident the convention provides a solid basis for its view that media officers carry copies to hand out to the press. Nevertheless, Australian lawyer James Crawford SC on Thursday hammered home Canberra's argument that JARPA isn't a program of science but rather "a parody of science." "It's an accepted tenet of scientific practice that lethal methods should only be used if no non-lethal methods are available to achieve the research objectives," he said. This is not a question of emotion, or custom or distaste at the sight of blood. It's because scientifically you don't intervene unless you have to. Tokyo, however, believes the case is about emotion and custom. "When I read Australian papers the treatment of this issue is very much different from what I find in Japan or Europe," Mr Shikata said. I get the sense the Australian people have a very strong attachment to whales - maybe because of whale watching. There are also political dimensions which could be affecting the debates surrounding this case. Then opposition leader Kevin Rudd first pledged to take Tokyo to court while campaigning to become prime minister in 2007. The human genome project and Darwin were raised on Thursday after Australia argued Japan's whaling wasn't scientific because it lacked a clear objective. Judge Joan Donoghue noted the HGP's purpose was to identify all the genes in human DNA "and as far as I can tell there's no hypothesis there." Judge Kenneth Keith pondered what Charles Darwin had in mind when he started collecting samples. But Philippe Sands QC, acting for Australia, was quick to point out their error. The human genome project was built upon work started in the 1950s and tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers testing hypotheses, he said. Darwin was also seeking answers to questions. "We didn't want you to leave this hearing imagining there was somehow any analogy," Professor Sands told the court. Japan will present its opening submissions on Tuesday.