Sea Shepherd Ploy Leaves Two Frustrated Japanese Whaling Captains Looking Silly at Sea

28.2.12

Since Feb­ru­ary 22nd, The Sea Shep­herd ship, Steve Irwin, has led a Japan­ese har­poon ves­sel and the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet secu­ri­ty ves­sel on a mer­ry wild goose chase away from the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet.

With the Sea Shep­herd ship, Bob Bark­er, ful­ly refu­eled and head­ing back to the South­ern Ocean to hunt down the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet, the Sea Shep­herd ship, Steve Irwin, head­ed north for Mac­quar­ie Island under the ruse of a fuel trans­fer with the Bob Bark­er.

Sea Shep­herd had declared that the Bob Bark­er would refu­el the Steve Irwin and that both ships would return to chase the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet until the end of the sea­son. The inten­tion, how­ev­er, was for the ful­ly fueled Bob Bark­er to return to the South­ern Ocean alone. The Steve Irwin’s job was to decoy the two Japan­ese ships away from the Bob Bark­er.

The two Japan­ese ships fol­lowed and ille­gal­ly entered the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone where they have been pro­hib­it­ed by order of the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court and the Gov­ern­ment of Aus­tralia.

The Yushin Maru No. 3’s hull oblit­er­at­ed with black and red paint. After a day at Mac­quar­ie Island, the Steve Irwin made the move north­ward to Auck­land Island, New Zealand as a change of plans to refu­el with the Bob Bark­er. The Yushin Maru No. 3 and the Shonan Maru No. 2 fol­lowed.

Mean­while, the Bob Bark­er was putting hun­dreds of miles between them and the two ships wait­ing for the refu­el­ing oper­a­tion that we nev­er intend­ed to actu­al­ly hap­pen.

The Bob Bark­er will con­tin­ue to chase the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet for the remain­der of the sea­son, to the end of March if need be, while the Steve Irwin returns to Aus­tralia.

“We have placed the Japan­ese secu­ri­ty ship, the Shonan Maru No. 2, and the har­poon ves­sel, the Yushin Maru No. 3, a great dis­tance from the whal­ing oper­a­tions and the fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru. It could take them more than a week to return. It was a very suc­cess­ful ploy that has allowed the Bob Bark­er to be free of its tail and to knock out two of the Japan­ese ships from the game for more than two weeks,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

Cap­tain Peter Ham­marst­edt, of Swe­den, is now in com­mand of the Bob Bark­er. He replaced Cap­tain Alex Cor­nelis­sen who need­ed to return to his duties as Sea Shep­herd direc­tor of oper­a­tions for the Gala­pa­gos.

“The Japan­ese ships fell for the bait, fol­low­ing hard on our heels first to Mac­quar­ie Island and then onto Auck­land Island. They have wast­ed tons of fuel and weeks of time to accom­plish noth­ing more than to escort the Steve Irwin back north. Now they have no one to fol­low any­more and the Bob Bark­er is free to con­tin­ue the chase,” said Cap­tain Wat­son.

With only three weeks left in the sea­son, the whalers are run­ning out of time fast. They have not had much time, or the har­poon ves­sels, avail­able to real­ize their quo­ta.

“Because we lost our scout ves­sel, the Brigitte Bar­dot, we have been hand­i­capped this sea­son. But despite that, we have chased this out­law fleet more than 16,000 miles from west to east and from north to south. I am con­fi­dent that we have severe­ly impact­ed their kill quo­ta once again.”