Category: Global

22nd Jan­u­ary 2012

The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet are not where they should be this time of year.

Last year the fleet was oper­at­ing in the Ross Sea. This year their “sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey” was sup­posed to take place in the waters south and west of Tas­ma­nia, east and south of South Africa.

Every year they alter­nate. But not this year! Although the whalers attempt­ed to begin their killing oper­a­tions in the waters south­west of Aus­tralia, the Sea Shep­herd ships have chased the entire whal­ing fleet ever east­ward. At 1700 hours AEST, the Bob Bark­er encoun­tered the Yushin Maru No. 3 at 66 Degrees, 22 min­utes South and 179 Degrees, 05 min­utes West.

From being inter­cept­ed 500 miles west of Fre­man­tle, Aus­tralia, the Japan­ese fleet has run over 4,500 nau­ti­cal miles for the last 30 days, all the way into the Ross Sea, far to the East of Aus­tralia. This is an aver­age of 150 miles a day, leav­ing very lit­tle time to kill whales with only one har­poon ves­sel. The oth­er two har­poon ves­sels have either been tail­ing or search­ing for the Sea Shep­herd ships.

“You can say we chased the whale killers into yes­ter­day since we have crossed the Inter­na­tion­al Date Line,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son, of the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin. “This illus­trates that they real­ly have no sci­en­tif­ic agen­da at all since their so-called sur­vey requires them to “sam­ple” whales from the two dif­fer­ent areas alter­na­tive­ly each year. This is not about sci­ence and it nev­er has been. It’s not even about prof­it any­more because we have negat­ed their prof­its. It’s sim­ply about pride. Whal­ing in the South­ern Ocean has become a heav­i­ly sub­si­dized wel­fare project for an archa­ic indus­try that has no place in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.”

Sea Shepherd’s cam­paign, Oper­a­tion Divine Wind, has been chal­leng­ing this year due to the thir­ty mil­lion dol­lars allo­cat­ed to the whal­ing fleet for added secu­ri­ty. This mon­ey was tak­en from the tsuna­mi and earth­quake relief fund.

“They have ten mil­lion dol­lars for every one mil­lion dol­lars we have to finance our three ships,” said Cap­tain Alex Cor­nelis­sen of the Bob Bark­er. “They have the full sup­port of their gov­ern­ment and lit­er­al­ly have a license to kill because if any of us are injured or killed, their gov­ern­ment will back them and jus­ti­fy their actions. Our gov­ern­ments con­demn us just for toss­ing rot­ten but­ter on their decks.”

The chase across the bot­tom of the world involves five ships from the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet and two ships from Sea Shep­herd. The third Sea Shep­herd ship, the Brigitte Bar­dot, was dam­aged by heavy seas and had to return to Fre­man­tle, Aus­tralia for repairs.

Nev­er before has the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet aban­doned one des­ig­nat­ed whal­ing “sur­vey” area for anoth­er. Sea Shep­herd has appar­ent­ly seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing plan for this sea­son and has cost them a huge amount in fuel costs. In addi­tion, two of the three har­poon ves­sels have been tak­en away from killing whales in order to tail the Steve Irwin and the Bob Bark­er. The Yushin Maru No. 2 is tail­ing the Steve Irwin and the Yushin Maru No. 3 is tail­ing the Bob Bark­er. This has left only the Yushin Maru to hunt for whales.

Sea Shep­herd has been able to keep the whal­ing fleet on the move and con­tin­ues to track their move­ments by rely­ing on drone oper­a­tions and ten years of expe­ri­ence fol­low­ing the pre­dictable move­ments of the whalers.

Last sea­son the Bob Bark­er was able to chase the Nis­shin Maru all the way to the tip of South Amer­i­ca before they quit and returned to Japan in humil­i­a­tion after tak­ing only sev­en­teen per­cent of their kill quo­ta.

January 18^th, 2012

The Japanese whalers have escalated their aggression by throwing iron grappling hooks at Sea Shepherd boats.

Two Steve Irwin crew were struck in the shoul­der with iron grap­pling hooks and one crewmem­ber was struck twice in the face with a long bam­boo pole.

The Yushin Maru No. 2 con­tin­ues to tail the Steve Irwin. The inci­dent occurred at 0400 Hours AEST at 64 degrees 17 min­utes South and 155 degrees 41 min­utes East. This is about 300 miles north of Maw­son Penin­su­la off the George V Land coast of Antarc­ti­ca.

“Our small boats were attempt­ing to slow down the Japan­ese har­poon ves­sel Yushin Maru No. 2, which is aggres­sive­ly tail­ing the Steve Irwin,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

Yushin Maru sprays Delta boat with water can­nonAmer­i­can crewmem­ber Bri­an Race, (25) from New York, was jabbed twice in the face with a bam­boo pole receiv­ing lac­er­a­tions above his right eye and on his nose.

Rus­sell Bergh of South Africa, (35) a cam­era­man for Ani­mal Plan­et, was struck in the right arm and shoul­der with an iron grap­pling hook thrown from the har­poon ves­sel result­ing in deep bruis­ing.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Guil­laume Col­let of France, (27) was also struck in the right arm and shoul­der by an iron grap­pling hook result­ing in deep bruis­ing.

There were no injuries incurred by any of the crew on the Japan­ese ves­sel.

Two of the three har­poon ves­sels have been assigned to tail Sea Shep­herd ships, effec­tive­ly knock­ing out two of the three killing boats.

“We are almost at the lim­it of the east­ern bound­ary of their self assigned hunt­ing area,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “We should be get­ting close.”

10.1.12

An unsched­uled meet­ing between Japan’s whalers and envi­ron­men­tal activists on the high seas seems an unlike­ly back­drop to an out­break of détente.

But Aus­tralia was qui­et­ly cel­e­brat­ing a minor vic­to­ry for diplo­ma­cy on Tues­day after Japan agreed to release three anti-whal­ing activists who ille­gal­ly board­ed one of its whal­ing ships over the week­end. 

The trio, all Aus­tralian cit­i­zens, have been detained on the Shonan Maru 2, which is pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty to the fleet, after clam­ber­ing aboard ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing to protest Japan’s annu­al hunts in the Antarc­tic. The Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ing Com­mis­sion banned com­mer­cial whal­ing in 1986 but allows Japan to hunt a lim­it­ed num­ber of whales for “sci­en­tif­ic research.” The fleet left port last month with plans to kill some 900 whales this sea­son.

The inci­dent threat­ened to cause ten­sion between Aus­tralia and Japan, close trade and secu­ri­ty part­ners. Soon after the men were detained it seemed like­ly that they would be kept aboard the Shonan Maru 2 and tak­en to Japan, where they faced a tri­al and pos­si­ble impris­on­ment for tres­pass­ing.

By late Mon­day evening, how­ev­er, Japan had agreed to release the trio, a move wel­comed by Australia’s prime min­is­ter, Julia Gillard.

Prime Min­is­ter Gillard, who came under imme­di­ate pres­sure at home to secure the activists’ release, thanked Japan for its coop­er­a­tion, but sound­ed a warn­ing to cam­paign­ers think­ing of employ­ing sim­i­lar forms of direct action.

“No one should assume that because an agree­ment has been reached with the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment in this instance that indi­vid­u­als will not be charged and con­vict­ed in the future,” she said in a state­ment. “The best way to stop whal­ing once and for all is through our court action.

Aus­tralia has lodged a legal chal­lenge to the annu­al whale hunts with the inter­na­tion­al court of jus­tice in the Hague but a deci­sion is not expect­ed until 2013 at the ear­li­est.

Can­ber­ra’s del­i­cate task was to bal­ance an elec­tion pledge to end the whale hunts with a pub­lic show of respect for mar­itime law.

The release, which won’t hap­pen until an Aus­tralian coast­guard boat ren­dezvous­es with the Shona Maru 2 in sev­er­al days’ time, was wel­comed by Sea Shep­herd’s founder, Paul Wat­son.

But in an inter­view with Mac­quar­ie Radio, Mr. Wat­son said: “If the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment would do their job and ful­fill their elec­tion promis­es, these things wouldn’t be hap­pen­ing.”

Japan, mean­while, insist­ed the deci­sion to release the men did not mean it had gone soft on Sea Shep­herd.

The trio are not mem­bers of the group – they belong to anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion called For­est Res­cue – and had not injured any mem­bers of the Shonan Maru 2’s crew when they board­ed, Japan’s chief cab­i­net sec­re­tary, Osamu Fujimu­ra, told reporters.

“The three activists were not vio­lent dur­ing or after they board­ed the whal­ing ves­sel,” he said. “There was no evi­dence that they were part of Sea Shep­herd, which has been engaged in obstruct­ing the fleet.”

Japan may have also had in mind the neg­a­tive inter­na­tion­al pub­lic­i­ty it attract­ed in 2010, when it pros­e­cut­ed for­mer Sea Shep­herd mem­ber Pete Bethune, who had board­ed the Shonan Maru 2 to protest the sink­ing of the group’s high-tech speed­boat. Mr. Bethune, who had been car­ry­ing a knife, was giv­en a sus­pend­ed sen­tence and deport­ed.

Offi­cial sup­port for the whal­ing pro­gram was also put under the spot­light last month when it was revealed that the gov­ern­ment had used 2.28 bil­lion yen ($30 mil­lion) of tax­pay­er mon­ey intend­ed for the tsuna­mi recov­ery effort to fund this year’s hunt, on top an exist­ing $6 mil­lion annu­al sub­sidy. The fish­eries agency said the use of the fund was jus­ti­fied because one of the towns destroyed in the dis­as­ter was a whal­ing port.

11 Jan­u­ary 2012

The nau­ti­cal chess pieces con­tin­ue to move and the board keeps chang­ing in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

The Shonan Maru #2 is no longer chas­ing the Steve Irwin. The secu­ri­ty ves­sel has been replaced by the har­poon ves­sel Yushin Maru #2. It is assumed that the Shonan Maru #2 will now head west towards the Aus­tralian cus­toms ves­sel Ocean Pro­tec­tor to turn over the three Aus­tralian pris­on­ers onboard. With the Yushin Maru #2 now fol­low­ing the Steve Irwin, and the Yushin Maru #3 still at Mac­quar­ie Island, the Nis­shin Maru now has only one har­poon ves­sel left — the Yushin Maru.

Sea Shep­herd has tem­porar­i­ly lost drone con­tact with the Nis­shin Maru and can­not guar­an­tee that whal­ing has not begun. If so, it will pro­ceed with two of the three har­poon ves­sels not involved in killing oper­a­tions. “If we had one more ship, there would be no pos­si­bil­i­ty of any whales dying,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “In July I met with Green­peace rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the IWC and request­ed of them that they send one ship to sup­port us. I told them that one more ship would shut down this entire fleet. They refused, and that is deeply dis­ap­point­ing, and as a result whales may die.”

Sea Shep­herd is work­ing to secure a third large, fast, ice-strength­ened ves­sel to return next sea­son. The Sea Shep­herd fast scout ves­sel Brigitte Bar­dot remains in Fre­man­tle under­go­ing repairs from dam­age caused by the extreme weath­er con­di­tions of the South­ern Ocean.

“We have demon­strat­ed that we can shut these poach­ers down and every year we become more effec­tive than the year before. One more ship will give us the abil­i­ty to throw a blan­ket of inter­ven­tion over them that will com­plete­ly extin­guish their ille­gal oper­a­tions,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

The drop­ping away of the Shonan Maru #2 removes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the trans­fer of the three For­est Res­cue men to the Steve Irwin. The trans­fer of the men to the Steve Irwin would have saved the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. Mean­while despite being ordered out of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters of Australia’s Mac­Quar­ie Island, the Yushin Maru #3 con­tin­ues to ille­gal­ly remain inside the twelve mile ter­ri­to­r­i­al lim­it.

“The Japan­ese whalers act like they own the entire South­ern Ocean,” said Bob Bark­er Cap­tain Alex Cor­nelis­sen of the Nether­lands. “They go where they want, when they want, and do what they want, with com­plete con­tempt for Aus­tralian sov­er­eign­ty.”

24.12.11

Japanese Security Ships Move In On the Steve Irwin

The Sea Shep­herd crew has inter­cept­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on Christ­mas Day, a thou­sand miles north of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

The Sea Shep­herd ship, Steve Irwin, deployed a drone to suc­cess­ful­ly locate and pho­to­graph the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru on Decem­ber 24th. Once the pur­suit began, three Japan­ese harpoon/security ships moved in on the Steve Irwin to shield the Nis­shin Maru to allow it to escape.

This time how­ev­er the Japan­ese tac­tic of tail­ing the Steve Irwin and the Bob Bark­er will not work because the drones, one on the Steve Irwin and the oth­er on the Bob Bark­er, can track and fol­low the Nis­shin Maru and can relay the posi­tions back to the Sea Shep­herd ships.

“We can cov­er hun­dreds of miles with these drones and they have proven to be valu­able assets for this cam­paign,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son on board the Steve Irwin.

The drone named Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo was donat­ed to the Steve Irwin by Bayshore Recy­cling of New Jer­sey.

Cap­tain Wat­son hav­ing received reports from fish­er­men when the Japan­ese ship passed through the Lom­bok Strait wait­ed south of the strait at a dis­tance of 500 miles off the south­west coast of West­ern Aus­tralia. Sea Shep­herd caught the whalers at 37 degrees South, far above the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary

“The chase is on for the next 1000 miles,” said Deck­hand Eleanor Lis­ter of Jer­sey (U.K.).

With the Steve Irwin tak­ing up the resources of three of the Japan­ese ships the Bob Bark­er remains clear of a tail and the Brigitte Bar­dot is clear to scout out the fac­to­ry ship, hav­ing supe­ri­or speed to the har­poon ves­sels.

The Sea Shep­herd crew have found the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet before a sin­gle whale has been killed.

“This is going to be a long hard pur­suit from here to the coast of Antarc­ti­ca,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “But thanks to these drones, we now have an advan­tage we have nev­er had before – eyes in the sky.”

Back­ground on the Steve Irwin Drone:
Bayshore Recy­cling striv­ing to pro­tect and con­serve nature

Drone Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo aids Sea Shep­herd in pre­serv­ing ocean wildlife world­wide.

Wood­bridge NJ- Bayshore Recy­cling Corp (BRC) not only strives to pro­tect the planet’s nat­ur­al resources through recy­cling but also encour­ages every­one to help endan­gered wildlife. To pro­mote and encour­age this effort, BRC’s own­ers recent­ly donat­ed a long-range drone fit­ted with cam­eras and detec­tion equip­ment to the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety (SSCS). The SSCS is an inter­na­tion­al non-profit, direct action marine wildlife con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion. SSCS neces­si­tat­ed an addi­tion­al aer­i­al vehi­cle that could add to their fleet and expand their capa­bil­i­ties in order to scan hun­dreds of miles more with each flight in order to assist in find­ing and doc­u­ment­ing whal­ing ships and oth­er ille­gal poach­ing oper­a­tions. The drone will also assist in help­ing pro­tect the fleet, her crew and alert them to poten­tial dan­gers, when their heli­copter may not be avail­able for use.

A long-range drone is defined as an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle that does not require human oper­a­tion and can fly inde­pen­dent­ly or be oper­at­ed remote­ly. The drone named Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo has assist­ed in locat­ing Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the South­ern Ocean pre­vi­ous­ly has assist­ed in oper­a­tions against blue fin tuna poach­ing oper­a­tions off the coast of Libya. The drone Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo was deliv­ered on board the ves­sel Steve Irwin by the Ves­sel Secu­ri­ty Offi­cer dur­ing tran­sit to Antarc­ti­ca while in search of the Japan­ese flag­ship, Nis­shin Maru. BRC stress­es the impor­tance of con­serv­ing our planet’s nat­ur­al habi­tats. Whether it is sav­ing nat­ur­al resources, con­serv­ing ener­gy, pre­serv­ing endan­gered wildlife or recy­cling house­hold debris—Bayshore ris­es to the chal­lenge. Togeth­er, BRC and the SSCS will fight to save the ocean and its vul­ner­a­ble inhab­i­tants.