Japanese Whaling Fleet Is On the Run

Fri­day, Decem­ber 19, 2008
The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin now has the entire Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on the run.

At 2345 G.M.T. the Steve Irwin inter­cept­ed the Japan­ese har­poon ves­sel Yushin Maru #2 inside the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone at 64°26 South and 132° 40′ East.

Sea Shepherd give chaseFri­day, Decem­ber 19, 2008
The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin now has the entire Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on the run.

At 2345 G.M.T. the Steve Irwin inter­cept­ed the Japan­ese har­poon ves­sel Yushin Maru #2 inside the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone at 64°26 South and 132° 40′ East.

The encounter took place in dense fog and in dan­ger­ous ice con­di­tions. The Steve Irwin launched a Delta boat with a crew to attack the Yushin Maru #2 with rot­ten but­ter bombs. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the wind increased to fifty knots with bliz­zard con­di­tions. Cap­tain Paul Wat­son called the small boat crew back for safe­ty rea­sons when they were halfway to their tar­get some three miles away.

The Yushin Maru #2 then head­ed due North to lead the Steve Irwin away from the whal­ing fleet. The decoy did not work. The Steve Irwin is now in pur­suit of the whal­ing fleet.

They have ceased whal­ing oper­a­tions and they are now run­ning from the Sea Shep­herd crew.

The Yushin Maru #2 was the same ves­sel that the Steve Irwin crew board­ed in Jan­u­ary 2007. This year the crew observed that the Yushin Maru #2 has set up large net­ting to be run along the side of the ship to pre­vent board­ing par­ties from going over the side. When the whalers real­ized that the Steve Irwin was onto them, they imme­di­ate­ly ran on deck to deploy the net­ting.

“It looks like Whale Wars, sea­son #2 is offi­cial­ly under­way,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “We’ve got them on the run. They are not in the Ross Sea where they said they would be. They are in Aus­tralian waters. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety is offi­cial­ly call­ing on Aus­tralian Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Peter Gar­rett and For­eign Min­is­ter Stephen Smith to order the Japan­ese fleet to com­ply with the orders of the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court and to cease and desist from killing to whales in Aus­tralian waters.”