JAPAN plans to resume Antarctic whaling next year but with fewer killings and involving only minke whale, a government agency has announced.

The move involves revising a research programme that was rejected by the UN's top court which found it was not for the research purposes Japan claimed .

The Antarctic whale hunt is one of two research whaling programmes that Japan has conducted since a 1986 international ban on commercial whaling.

In March, the International Court of Justice ruled the Antarctic programme was not scientific as Japan claimed and must stop.

Japan's Fisheries Agency said officials were working on a new programme for submission to the International Whaling Commission's scientific committee around November.

Japan will go to the Antarctic later this year, but only for non-lethal research.

Opponents, who have often tried to disrupt the whaling programme on protest ships, say Japan's research hunt is a cover for commercial whaling.