Japan Confirms Sea Shepherd Success in the Southern Ocean

Operation Zero Tolerance has been Sea Shepherd’s most effective campaign to date.

The Japan­ese Insti­tute for Cetacean Research, the front organ­i­sa­tion for Japan­ese ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties has released their kill records for 2012/2013.

They want­ed 50 Hump­backs. They took none.

They want­ed 50 Fin whales. They took none.

They want­ed 935 Minke whales. They killed 103.

832 Minke whales not slain! 50 Hump­backs and 50 Fins not slaugh­tered!

Dur­ing the 2010–2011 Oper­a­tion No Com­pro­mise, the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet took 17% of their ille­gal self-allo­cat­ed quo­ta. Dur­ing the 2011–2012 Oper­a­tion Divine Wind, the Japan­ese whalers took 26% of their ille­gal self-allo­cat­ed quo­ta.

 103 Minke whales and zero Fin whales and zero Hump­back whales trans­lates into 9.96% of their com­bined quo­ta. The whalers took only 11% of their Minke whale quo­ta and zero per­cent of their Fin and Hump­back quo­ta.

These per­cent­ages trans­late into a finan­cial dis­as­ter for the Japan­ese whalers. The over­haul of Nis­shin Maru alone cost $24 mil­lion dol­lars. Out­fit­ting, fuelling and oper­at­ing costs added an addi­tion­al esti­mat­ed $11 mil­lion dol­lars. That fig­ure may be much high­er. Going on the con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate of $35 mil­lion dol­lars, means that it cost the whalers a min­i­mum of $340,000 per whale. There are only two words to describe this, “eco­nom­ic luna­cy”. In addi­tion there is the loss of pres­tige and the anger of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty direct­ed at the Japan­ese peo­ple.

Sea Shep­herd would have reduced the killing much low­er if not for the suck­er punch deliv­ered at the eleventh hour by the Ninth Dis­trict Court of the Unit­ed States that effec­tive­ly knocked Sea Shep­herd USA out of Oper­a­tion Zero Tol­er­ance by grant­i­ng the Japan­ese whalers an injunc­tion against inter­ven­tion by Sea Shep­herd USA.

Sea Shep­herd Aus­tralia imme­di­ate­ly swept up the ban­ner, car­ried it down to the South­ern Ocean and deliv­ered the most deter­mined cam­paign ever mount­ed to shut down the unlaw­ful poach­ing activ­i­ties of the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary. Sea Shep­herd Aus­tralia pre­dict­ed that the take would not exceed 10% and the over­all take was indeed just under 10%.

“Sea Shep­herd Aus­tralia is elat­ed that we have deliv­ered the worst sea­son to date to these whale poach­ers from Japan. These poach­ers have shown a com­plete dis­re­gard for cetacean life, human life and Aus­tralian and Inter­na­tion­al law. By tar­get­ing pro­tect­ed and endan­gered whales in a whale sanc­tu­ary and risk­ing mas­sive oil spills in the pris­tine Antarc­tic wilder­ness, they are show­ing the world their con­tempt for ocean life and for the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty who has con­sis­tent­ly called for an end to whal­ing,” said Jeff Hansen, Sea Shep­herd Aus­tralia Direc­tor.

“One whale killed is still one whale killed too many. How­ev­er, today we cel­e­brate the fact that with courage and con­vic­tion in the face of great dan­ger and adver­si­ty, the brave crews of the four Sea Shep­herd ships were able to suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet from reach­ing more than nine­ty per­cent of their self-allo­cat­ed quo­ta. This has meant sav­ing the lives of 932 threat­ened, endan­gered and pro­tect­ed whales,” said Cap­tain Peter Ham­marst­edt.

“Nine years ago on Sea Shep­herd’s first Whale Defense cam­paign the lives of 85 whales were saved. At the con­clu­sion of the 9th Antarc­tic cam­paign, that num­ber has increased 11-fold to 932. Oper­a­tion Zero Tol­er­ance is by far Sea Shep­herd’s most suc­cess­ful cam­paign with the kill num­bers being the low­est since the ille­gal research-whal­ing pro­gram start­ed. It is a def­i­nite­ly an epic moment in Sea Shep­herd’s his­to­ry, how­ev­er it is an even big­ger one for the whales. Nev­er has the sanc­tu­ary been more peace­ful. While the crews and the ships bore the brunt of the vio­lence at the hands of the Japan­ese Whal­ing Fleet, the whales were spared the har­poons,” said Cap­tain Sid­dharth Chakravar­ty.