The Whalers Head Home!

March 8 2012

The Japan­ese Whal­ing Fleet Leaves the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary

Oper­a­tion Divine Wind is over! The Japan­ese whalers are going home!

The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has left the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary and they are head­ing home.  “Once Cap­tain Peter Ham­mer­st­edt and his crew on the Bob Bark­er closed in on the Nis­shin Maru on March 5th, the whal­ing sea­son was effec­tive­ly over for the sea­son,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son on the Sea Shep­herd flag­ship Steve Irwin recent­ly returned and now berthed in Williamstown, Vic­to­ria, Aus­tralia.

Since March 1st, the Bob Bark­er has fol­lowed the Nis­shin Maru as they head­ed steadi­ly north­west­ward. The Japan­ese har­poon ves­sels have stopped tail­ing the Bob Bark­er. The fleet has left the waters of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary, accord­ing to Cap­tain Peter Ham­marst­edt. The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment secu­ri­ty ves­sel, Shonan Maru #2, has been spot­ted by fish­ing ves­sels at thir­ty degrees South, which is due east of Bris­bane, Aus­tralia indi­cat­ing that the ves­sel is well on its way back to Japan.

It has been a long and dif­fi­cult cam­paign and although hand­i­capped by the tem­po­rary loss of the scout ves­sel the Brigitte Bar­dot, the Steve Irwin and the Bob Bark­er were able to chase the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet for more than 17,000 miles, giv­ing them lit­tle time to kill whales. In addi­tion, two of the three har­poon ves­sels spent more time tail­ing the two Sea Shep­herd ships than killing whales.

“The kill fig­ures will not be released by Japan until April, but in my opin­ion they will not get over 50% for cer­tain and my pre­dic­tion is it will not be above 30%. Not as good as last sea­son, but much bet­ter than all the pre­vi­ous years.”  Said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “It has been a suc­cess­ful cam­paign. There are hun­dreds of whales swim­ming free in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary that would now be dead if we had not been down there for the last three months. That makes us very hap­py indeed.”

The Bob Bark­er will return to Hobart, Tas­ma­nia, the Brigitte Bar­dot is com­plet­ing repairs in Fre­man­tle, and the Steve Irwin is now berthed in Williamstown.

In Decem­ber 2012, if the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet returns to the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety will launch Oper­a­tion Cetacean Jus­tice with four ships, two heli­copters, four UAV (drones), and 120 vol­un­teers.

“If the Japan­ese whalers return, Sea Shep­herd will return. We are com­mit­ted to the defense of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.” Said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “No mat­ter how long it takes, no mat­ter how risky or expen­sive. The word “sanc­tu­ary” actu­al­ly means some­thing to us and that some­thing is worth fight­ing for.”