This just in from the Sydney Morning Herald. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s two ships, the Farley Mowat and the Robert Hunter, have found the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters after six weeks of searching and attacked them.
Sea Shepherd’s president, Paul Watson, told the SMH online that his ships evaded satellite surveillance in order to pounce on the fleet near the Balleny Islands, far south-west of Tasmania. “I ran the ships through the ice fields south of the Balleny Islands and came up on them from the other side,” Captain Watson said. “We took a pounding in the ice, but the satellite cannot track a ship and wake through ice nor would they be looking there. “The Robert Hunter is easily keeping up with the factory ship. The Nisshin Maru was fleeing the Robert Hunter and came directly towards the Farley Mowat. At two miles, they turned and fled in the other direction.”
In their first attack, Captain Watson said his crew cleared the whale-flensing deck of the Nisshin Maru, when they threw a non-toxic “butter acid” on it from an inflatable dinghy. Activists in inflatables armed with nail guns were also fixing steel plates over drain outlets in the side of the fleeing factory ship, preventing the escape of whale blood from the flensing deck. He said the fleet had scattered and the Robert Hunter was still in contact with Nisshin Maru, which was steaming away at high speed and attempting to use its water cannon on the activists. “They are easily avoided,” he said.
The attack came almost five weeks after Sea Shepherd began searching for the fleet in the Ross Sea, and with their vessels beginning to run low on fuel. The group has begun negotiations to enter Australia or New Zealand ports, a decision complicated by their status as “pirate” whalers.
Well, the SMH’s got it wrong there. The Japanese ships are the only pirate whalers in the Antarctic just now, since their claim of “scientific whaling” is laughably bogus if it weren’t so frackin’ tragic. Watson’s fleet is made up of pirate ships, flying without a flag, as Reuters via the Alaska Report reports.
“We haven’t broken any law or regulation, but now we’re not registered anywhere — we’re technically a pirate ship without a flag,” said Captain Paul Watson from the Farley Mowat. “It means that we could be attacked and confiscated at will by any nation including the Japanese,” he said.
All this righteousness from that pirating-nation-of olde, Britain, over butter acid? Back to the SMH:
The Farley Mowat has been stripped of its Belizean registration, and Britain is to de-register the Robert Hunter in 10 days’ time. Talks are under way with both the Australian and New Zealand Governments in a bid to avoid arrest.
Greenpeace’s ship Esperanza, which had hoped to be first to reach the whalers, was about a day’s sailing away from the position where Sea Shepherd found them, and approaching from the west, a Greenpeace spokesman said. The Japanese Government’s Institute for Cetacean Research, which owns the fleet, is harpooning up to 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales under its program of “scientific research”.
Meanwhile, Watson delivered this message to the Japanese pirate whalers:
Nisshin Maru, this is Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd vessel Farley Mowat. Please be advised that you are killing whales in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. You are targeting endangered species of whales in violation of international conservation law. You are killing whales in violation of the IWC global moratorium on commercial whaling. Please cease and desist your illegal whaling operations and leave the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. We are acting in accordance with the principles of the United Nations World Charter for Nature. The Charter authorizes non-governmental organizations and individuals to uphold international conservation law.
Aye aye.
