Whalers still scattered and fleeing, Sea Shepherd still pursuing

Update from the Far­ley Mowat —  Some­where Off the Coast of Antarc­ti­ca

Whalers still scat­tered and flee­ing, the Far­ley Mowat still pur­su­ing, a dead whale is found, and the crew take a plunge with the pen­guins. The crew of the Far­ley Mowat wel­comed the New Year in with a tru­ly unique style.

While the Far­ley Mowat’s heli­copter was away on a three-hour recon­nais­sance flight, the ship parked along­side a beau­ti­ful ice­berg. On small floes around the berg were numer­ous Adelie pen­guins. A large sperm whale swam near­by while a moth­er hump­back and her calf cir­cled the ice­berg dur­ing the entire time.

Many of the crew earned their Pen­guin Swim Club sta­tus by div­ing into the zero degree Cel­sius water to swim with the pen­guins.

To qual­i­fy for the cer­tifi­cate, the swim­mers must go in with a bathing suit only or nude, whichev­er they pre­fer. The only two nude swim­mers were Geert Jan Vons from the Nether­lands and Jon Batch­e­lor from the Unit­ed States. The only female crewmem­ber to take the plunge was young Emi­ly Hunter from Cana­da, eh. The oth­er cer­tifi­cates award­ed were to Wes­sel Jacob­sz of South Africa, Peter Heller, Lin­coln Shaw, Cas­son Trenor, Jeff Watkins, Joel Capo­lon­go, Den­nis Marks, Jim Pacheco, Dan Vil­la, and Chris Price of the Unit­ed States, Dar­ren Cullis and Luke West­head of Great Britain and Sime­on Hout­man of New Zealand.

When the heli­copter returned from recon­ning the ice edge west­ward and north­ward, the Far­ley Mowat resumed her course west­ward.

The heli­copter had spot­ted a dead young sperm whale float­ing on the sur­face at a dis­tance of thir­ty-five miles. The Far­ley Mowat inves­ti­gat­ed the sit­u­a­tion and found a sperm whale of approx­i­mate­ly eight meters in length. There were no vis­i­ble wounds and the body was attract­ing dozens of seabirds. Cause of death is unknown.

Dozens of fin whales were also spot­ted from the heli­copter. A search of an area one hun­dred and fifty miles long and six­ty miles wide failed to spot any whal­ing ves­sels. We will send the heli­copter up again tomor­row to con­tin­ue the search.

The Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship and one har­poon ves­sel con­tin­ues to flee west­ward at top speed and Jan­u­ary 1st was anoth­er day that no whales were killed.

The where­abouts of the three har­poon ves­sels and the spot­ting ves­sel remain unknown and as the Esper­an­za keeps dog­ging the Nis­shin Maru, it is our job to search for these four miss­ing ves­sels.

Could the three har­poon­ers be whal­ing? Not like­ly with­out the fac­to­ry ship. The har­poon­ers have no facil­i­ties to process the slain whales. Could the Kyo Maru, the spot­ting ves­sel be act­ing as a pro­cess­ing ship? There is a small pos­si­bil­i­ty, but it is unlike­ly con­sid­er­ing that the ves­sel does not have the deck space for cut­ting up a live whale.

Eight days since Christ­mas with­out a whale being killed, the fleet scat­tered and run­ning aim­less­ly. Are they wait­ing for mil­i­tary assis­tance from Japan? Their objec­tives remain a mys­tery but every­day that whales are not killed costs them mon­ey and spares the lives of whales.

One report we received is that the Japan­ese whalers are afraid of being “attackedâ€? by the Sea Shep­herd crew. We hope they keep think­ing that way.

More news at
http://www.seashepherd.org/news.html