In its first whale hunt since an international court ordered its annual expedition in the Antarctic to be halted, Japan has caught 30 minke whales off its northern coast, officials with the country's fisheries agency have reported.

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said in a statement that a coastal whaling fleet had killed 30 of the whales during the April-June season, as part of what Japanese leaders have described as research expeditions in the northwestern Pacific, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Ministry officials have indicated another group of whalers is still currently working in a more remote area of the ocean.

The northwestern Pacific hunt is one of two research whaling programs that Japan has conducted since an international ban on commercial whaling was enacted in 1986.

The International Court of Justice in March ruled Japan's Antarctic whaling program was in actuality not scientific in nature and, as such, violated international law and needed to stop.

The court said the so-named research program produced little actual research and failed to prove why it needed to kill so many whales for the study.

The ruling gave Japan the option of retooling the program, so the country is indeed hoping to revise and then resume it -- after suspending the Antarctic hunt originally scheduled for next season.

Then again, any revisions to the program will assuredly face intense scrutiny from the world community.

During the 2013-14 season, Japan caught 251 minke whales in the Antarctic, just a quarter of its overall goal, along with 224 others through its program in the in the northern Pacific.

Japan nearly halved the Pacific catch target for this year to 210 whales.