Activists who believe that Japan's whaling tradition is cruel have been harassing Japanese ships, which are on an annual hunt that skirts an international moratorium.

Japan's main whaling body put a video on its website that showed Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise moving steadily forward before hitting the whaling ship Nisshin Maru, whose movement was impeded by another whaling vessel nearby.

"It was a deliberate action to get media coverage," Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research said in a statement.

"The Arctic Sunrise could have avoided this collision. Instead the skipper turned the boat into the path of the Nisshin Maru and rammed us at our weakest point," it said.

"This cannot be called a peaceful protest," it said in the statement accompanying the video at www.icrwhale.org/gpandsea.htm.

Greenpeace has blamed the Japanese for the collision on Sunday which caused no injuries.

Greenpeace has also distanced itself from the more militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has been hounding the whalers in its own ship and vowed confrontation to stop "the illegal and ruthless slaughter of defenseless whales".

The International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 but Japan has continued hunting for what it calls scientific research.

Japan, however, makes no secret that the meat from the hunt winds up on dinner plates.

Despite international protests, Japan has this year more than doubled its planned catch of minke whales to 935 and added 10 endangered fin whales, with plans to eventually lift the number to 50, along with 50 rare humpback whales.

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