Japan’s Fisheries Agency said ships from the country’s whaling fleet returned to port from the Antarctic Ocean with a lower catch than planned after being harassed by anti-whaling campaigners.

A group of militant conservationists embroiled in a series of violent clashes with Japanese whalers in the Antarctic Ocean decided to end its campaign for the season.

A group of radical anti-whaling activists said they were pelted with bloody chunks of whale meat and blubber after their boat collided with a Japanese whaling vessel in a dramatic Antarctic Ocean clash.

JAPANESE whalers blasted water from a cannon at conservationists who hurled bottles of rancid butter and paint during a clash in frigid Antarctic waters yesterday.

Japanese whalers and conservationists clashed again in the Antarctic today.

A radical conservationist group said it lobbed 25 bottles of rotten butter at Japanese whalers in the remote and icy Antarctic Ocean, but denied claims that it rammed their vessel.

Australia’s environment minister has defended plans to slaughter 400 kangaroos in the national capital as protesters planned to prevent the cull.

Graphic pictures of Japanese hunters harpooning whales and dragging their carcasses aboard a ship near Antarctica were evidence of “indiscriminate” slaughter, Australia said today.

Two activists who jumped on board a Japanese whaling boat off Antarctica have been returned to their ship by Australian officials.

A Greenpeace ship found the Japanese whaling fleet off Antarctica today, the environmental group said – setting off this year’s round of a cat-and-mouse contest that has become a sometimes dangerous feature of the hunting debate.

British and Irish holidaymakers forced to abandon their cruise liner when it struck ice are expected to be flown to mainland South America today.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that there were four Irish people among 100 passengers forced to take to lifeboats today after their cruise liner hit ice and began taking on water in the Antarctic Ocean.

There are reports that four Irish people are among the 100 passengers that had to be rescued from a stricken cruise liner in the Antarctic Ocean today.

Around 100 passengers had to be rescued from a stricken cruise liner in the Antarctic Ocean today.

IN A WILDLIFE equivalent of the Olympic Games, Irish animals would win gold and silver medals. The gold would go to the blue whale, for being the largest mammal ever to have lived.

Japan proposed hunting nearly 3,000 minke whales a year in the Antarctic today, saying populations of the giant sea mammals in the southern oceans were healthy enough to sustain the losses.