Japanese Whaling Fleet Confronted By Sea Shepherd + Interview With Nottingham Activist On Board

3.03.2008 — Aboard the M/Y Steve Irwin South­ern Oceans —The crew on the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru this morn­ing between 0800 and 1000 Hours. The Nis­shin Maru can­not out­run the Steve Irwin. After a 12 hour chase the Sea Shep­herd ship closed the gap and passed along­side the Nis­shin Maru. The crew deployed over two dozen bot­tles of rot­ten but­ter send­ing a stench through­out the whale killing ship that will remain for days. The crew also threw pack­ets of a slip­pery chem­i­cal onto the deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This will make it very dif­fi­cult to cut up whales. The sub­stance becomes even more slip­pery with water so it will be dif­fi­cult to wash it off the decks.

“I guess we can call this non-vio­lent chem­i­cal war­fare,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “We only use organ­ic, non-tox­ic mate­ri­als designed to harass and obstruct ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions.” Four armed Japan­ese Coast Guard offi­cers clear­ly iden­ti­fied in their uni­forms video­taped the con­fronta­tion.

The Cap­tain of the Nis­shin Maru played a tape over and over again with a wom­an’s voice say­ing “Warn­ing, warn­ing, this is the Nis­shin Maru cap­tain. Stop your destruc­tive actions imme­di­ate­ly. If you dare to board this ves­sel you will be tak­en into cus­tody and restrained as ille­gal intrud­ers under Japan­ese law.”

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son radioed the Nis­shin Maru to inform them that they had no author­i­ty in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry. Cap­tain Wat­son ordered the Japan­ese cap­tain to cease all whal­ing oper­a­tions and to com­ply with the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court rul­ing that pro­hibits the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet from killing whales in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

The con­fronta­tion took place at 63 Degrees 17 Min­utes South and 126 Degrees and 20 min­utes east. This is 175 miles off the Ban­zare Coast inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. The Steve Irwin has fall­en half a mile off to the star­board side of the Nis­shin Maru. “It stinks too bad to remain any clos­er,” said Todd Emko 32, of New York City.

Not a sin­gle whale has been killed since the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin returned to harass the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the Aus­tralian Whale Sanc­tu­ary. “They will not be get­ting their quo­ta this year and that is a cer­tain­ty,” said Jeff Han­son 35, from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “In fact I don’t think they will be get­ting half their quo­ta.” In total the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety has shut down ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing oper­a­tions for over four and a half weeks.

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Inter­view With Not­ting­ham Activist In South­ern Ocean On Board Sea Shep­herd Ship

Dan is an activist from Not­ting­ham who has joined the crew on board the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Steve Irwin in a bid to stop the ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties of the Japan­ese near Antar­ti­ca. The mis­sion, named Miga­loo, start­ed last Decem­ber and after refu­elling in Mel­bourne last month, the Sea Shep­herd crew is back in the oceans, have man­aged to track down the whal­ing fleet and have been in hot per­suit of its main ves­sel, the Yushin Maru No. 2 for the last week. Accor­ing to one of the crew onboard the ship “the weath­er is get­ting cold­er and we are get­ting many hours of dark­ness now. The Antarc­tic win­ter is creep­ing up on us. The seas are get­ting rougher and we are get­ting bliz­zards.” We joined Dan via sat­telite phone to ask him about his adven­tures..

Inter­view 28/02/08

Dan: Hel­lo?

Q: Hel­lo?

Dan: Eh up, how is it going?

Q: Yeah, I’m fine, how are you?

Dan: Good mate.

Q: And you thought you’d get away with not doing an inter­view with us? 🙂 (Dan left ear­li­er than antic­i­pat­ed)

Dan: I knew you’d catch up with me even­tu­al­ly..

Q: So how is it going?

Dan: Yeah, I’m alright. We’re in the mid­dle of the south­ern ocean right now. In a big storm at the moment with things fly­ing around every­where..

Q: I read some stuff about the seas being real­ly rough, var­ied at times it would be like sun­ny and then bliz­zards and things..

Dan: Yeah, I mean we’ve got about 4 meter waves and I’m not sure what the wind­speed is..

Q: But you’re all cop­ing with it?

Dan: Yeah, we did­n’t expect it to be this bad, from the weath­er reports we were get­ting. But its here now..

Q: Could you explain a lit­tle bit about what it is that you guys are doing there at the moment?

Dan: Right now we are chas­ing the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet around the coast of Antar­ti­ca. We’d like to catch up with them and stop them. By con­stant­ly chas­ing them we’re hop­ing to reduce their abil­i­ty to whale. […] They’re cer­tain­ly not whal­ing in this weath­er. The last cou­ple of days they haven’t killed any whales at all.

Q: You’ve been on the chase for a num­ber of days. Is there an end in sight? How long is this gonna go on for?

Dan: I mean depend­ing on the weath­er and stuff we will car­ry on until our fuel runs out. Thats still a good few weeks yet, which should bring us to the end of the whal­ing sea­son actu­al­ly. We should be leav­ing the same time as the [whal­ing] fleet.

Q: Whats your job on the ship?

Dan: Every­one has their set role on the ship. I’m in charge of the deck depart­ment. I am also in charge of all the ships clean­ing duties, mak­ing sure the toi­lets are clean. Also look­ing after all the equip­ment on deck, like the crane and the anchors. I’m also in charge of the inflat­able boats which we use on our actions. Mak­ing sure they are in good work­ing order and get­ting peo­ple trained up to use them. So thats my job. We’ve got nav­i­ga­tors, we’ve got peo­ple in the gal­ly cook­ing, we got peo­ple in the engine room mak­ing sure we have the pow­er and [there is] also a com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer, who keeps us in touch with email etc, lots of dif­fer­ent jobs.

Q: Why did you decide to join the Sea Shep­herd more than any oth­er organ­i­sa­tion, for exam­ple Green­peace?

Dan: I’m inter­est­ed in the Sea Shep­herd because of its direct action angle. We don’t do any protest­ing. We actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly try­ing to stop [the whal­ing fleet]. Not real­ly inter­est­ed in just protest­ing, done that before.. I’m con­cerned with sav­ing [ani­mals] from the seas and end­ing whal­ing for­ev­er. Its the Sea Shep­herd direct angle I’m attract­ed to..

Q: Because at the moment there are a lot of laws pro­tect­ing whales.. A lot of laws have been passed, inter­na­tion­al treaties and all sorts which basi­cal­ly pro­hib­it the whal­ing, but no one to enforce them and that that is the task that the Sea Shep­herd has tak­en on.

Dan: In this sit­u­a­tion the Sea Shep­herd is actu­al­ly play­ing the role of the Aus­tralian navy or coast­guard. We’re in Aus­tralian waters and Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­ry. The Aus­tralian [Fed­er­al] Court ruled [recent­ly] that the Japan­ese whal­ing [oper­a­tions] inside their ter­ri­to­ry is ille­gal and that it should be restrained. There just isn’t the polit­i­cal will to do that. Japan and Aus­tralia are impor­tant trad­ing part­ners. There are numer­ous laws which are pro­tect­ing the whales down here, I’m not an expert on all of them, but there is the Con­ven­tion Inter­na­tion­al Trade In Endan­gered Species, the UN World Char­ter for Nature, which is actu­al­ly empow­eres [ordi­nary] peo­ple to enforce these laws, the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ings Com­mis­sion Mora­to­ri­um on Com­mer­cial Whal­ing, and the Antarc­tic Treaty pro­tects whales. So they are real­ly bla­tent­ly break­ing a whole bunch of laws. So it is a case of law enforce­ment, more so that protest­ing.

Q: Yeah, because I guess there could be a whole load of laws, but if there is no one to enforce them..

Dan: Yeah, its only worth as much as the piece of paper its writ­ten on.. These treaties should either not be agreed on or be enforced.

Q: You’re obvi­ous­ly doing a great job down there, is there any­thing peo­ple can do on land to sup­port the stuff you’re doing down there?

Dan: When you go to the Sea Shep­herd web­site there are numer­ous peo­ple you can con­tact to [con­front] them about their inac­tion. There is Sea Shep­herd UK who are con­stant­ly rais­ing funds. This ship con­sumes huge amounts of diesel and then the main­te­nance and repair. Peo­ple can be sure that any mon­ey they donate will be used direct­ly to [con­front] the whalers.

Q: Is there any­thing you’d like to say to the peo­ple in Not­ting­ham, some who you know and will be read­ing this?

Dan: Hel­lo to every­one I know. Take care of your­selves back there. I’m a bit cold and wet, but yeah, safe so far and I’ll see you all in a few weeks.

Q: Well we wish you all the best, you’re doing a great job down there and there are tonnes of peo­ple who real­ly sup­port the stuff you’re doing and we all know its very impor­tant so keep up the good work!

Dan: Yeah, cheers mate, take care.

Sea Shep­herd Aussie Crew Pre­pared to Be Tak­en as Pris­on­ers to Japan