Sea Shepherd harassing and chasing Japanese whaling fleet

Sea Shepherd deck crew members ready a fast boat aboard the M/V Steve Irwin to pursue Japan's harpoon whaling vessel the Yushin Maru No. 2. photo credit: Adam Lau/Sea Shepherd

All the following information was supplied by the The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

December 2008. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Steve Irwin is pursuing the Japanese whaling fleet across the Antarctic.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ship Steve Irwin has chased the Japanese whaling fleet out of the Australian Economic Exclusion Zone, where they had found the Japanese harpoon vessel Yushin Maru #2 at 64°26 South and 132° 40' East. The encounter took place in dense fog and in dangerous ice conditions. The Steve Irwin launched a Delta boat with a crew to attack the Yushin Maru #2 with rotten butter bombs. The Sea Shepherd crew pursued and delivered 10 bottles of rotten butter and 15 bottles of a methyl cellulose and indelible dye mixture. Unfortunately the wind increased to fifty knots with blizzard conditions. Captain Paul Watson called the small boat crew back for safety reasons when they were halfway to their target some three miles away.

"That is one stinky slippery ship," said Sea Shepherd 2nd Officer Peter Hammarstedt of Sweden.

800 mile chase
"We have chased the whalers for over 800 miles since last Saturday through bad weather and heavy ice conditions," said Captain Paul Watson. "They have fled eastward, but we are on their tail and we will keep on their tail."

Since finding the Japanese whaling fleet on December 20th, the Steve Irwin has had close encounters with the harpoon vessel Yushin Maru #2 and the spotting vessel Kaiko Maru and has observed and tracked the Nisshin Maru from the air. The Steve Irwin has not been able to close with the main body of the fleet. They have not been whaling since Sea Shepherd located them and they are not whaling now. They continue to flee.

The good news is that they are no longer whaling in Australian waters and they only managed to hunt in the waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory for about a week before being spotted. They are now in the waters of the Ross Dependency and the Steve Irwin is following.

Illegal whaling
"What is now good news for the whales in Australian waters is now bad news for the whales in the waters south of New Zealand," said Captain Watson. "The Japanese whalers are still targeting whales in the waters of an established international whale sanctuary and thus they are still in violation of international conservation law and acting under the principles of the United Nations World Charter for Nature, we will continue to pursue, harass and intervene against their blatantly illegal lethal assaults on the whales."

As the Steve Irwin came alongside the starboard side of the Kaiko Maru, the whaler steered hard to starboard and struck the Steve Irwin lightly crushing part of the aft port helicopter deck guard rails on the Sea Shepherd ship. There was no serious damage to either ship." Copyright Sea Shepherd Society.

International crew plus film crew
The Steve Irwin has a crew of 40 international volunteers plus an Animal Planet film crew onboard producing the 2nd year of the series Whale Wars. Last year the Sea Shepherd crew pursued the Japanese whaling fleet from early December until mid-March. That intervention cost the whalers over $70 million in lost profits and saved almost 500 whales.

The Yushin Maru #2 was the same vessel that the Steve Irwin crew boarded in January 2007. This year the crew observed that the Yushin Maru #2 has set up large netting to be run along the side of the ship to prevent boarding parties from going over the side. When the whalers realized that the Steve Irwin was onto them, they immediately ran on deck to deploy the netting.