Eureka! The Whaling Fleet Has Been Found and Shut Down!

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son received a Sat phone call from Cap­tain Peter Ham­marst­edt, on the Bob Bark­er, at 2200 Hours (AEST) on March 5th.

“Eure­ka, Paul, we have the Nis­shin Maru in our sights!”

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son received a Sat phone call from Cap­tain Peter Ham­marst­edt, on the Bob Bark­er, at 2200 Hours (AEST) on March 5th.

“Eure­ka, Paul, we have the Nis­shin Maru in our sights!”

The Nis­shin Maru and her three dead­ly har­poon boats were found at 64 Degrees 59 Min­utes South and 130 Degrees 51 Min­utes East at Com­mon­wealth Bay, six­ty miles off the Antarc­tic Coast, inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone.

The Yushin Maru No. 3 had just arrived from tail­ing the Steve Irwin. Despite the three har­poon ves­sels deployed to inter­cept the Bob Bark­er, Cap­tain Ham­marst­edt slipped through their web and gained a visu­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion on the pri­ma­ry tar­get.

Two of the har­poon ves­sels were in pur­suit of whales. All whal­ing activ­i­ty stopped as the Nis­shin Maru began run­ning but the Bob Bark­er is faster and is gain­ing steadi­ly on the hat­ed fac­to­ry ship.

“We have her in our sights and she will not be able to out­run us,” said Bob Bark­er third mate, Vin­cent Burke, of Mel­bourne.

“We have kept them run­ning for two months and that has dis­rupt­ed their oper­a­tions con­sid­er­ably but now with the Bob Bark­er on their stern slip­way, whal­ing is effec­tive­ly shut down for 2012,” said Cap­tain Ham­marst­edt (27) from Swe­den.

The Japan­ese secu­ri­ty ship, Shonan Maru No. 2, is still tail­ing the Steve Irwin present­ly one day from the Bass Strait and is now 1600 nau­ti­cal miles away from the whal­ing fleet. The Steve Irwin suc­cess­ful­ly led the Shonan Maru No. 2 and the Yushin Maru No. 3 away from the Bob Bark­er to allow the Bob Bark­er to lose a tail­ing ves­sel. The key to find­ing the Nis­shin Maru was los­ing the tail­ing ship, and it worked.

“This has been a long and tough cam­paign, with the worst weath­er and ice con­di­tions that we have expe­ri­enced in the entire eight sea­sons we have ven­tured into the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “But despite the tem­po­rary loss of our scout ship, the Brigitte Bar­dot, and our con­stant dogged pur­suit of the Nis­shin Maru, we have kept them on the run, tak­en two of their three har­poon ves­sels off the hunt for two months, severe­ly crip­pled their killing capa­bil­i­ties and now once again we have shut them down 100%. Oper­a­tion Divine Wind has been enor­mous­ly suc­cess­ful.”