Anti-whaling protesters lost for hours in Antarctic waters

Searchers in freezing Antarctic waters found two anti-whaling activists today after their inflatable dinghy became lost in heavy fog, the international conservation group Sea Shepherd said.

A Sea Shepherd protest ship, the Farley Mowat, plucked the pair – a US citizen and an Australian – from the sea more than seven hours after they went missing while confronting Japanese whaling craft, the ship’s skipper said.

Watson Karl Neilsen from Perth, Australia, and John Gravois from Los Angeles were picked up in good condition from their Zodiac dinghy, whose fibreglass hull had cracked during the melee, skipper Paul Watson said.

The pair had been wearing survival suits and were carrying a GPS navigation system.

“They hunkered down, kept hydrated and waited to be found,” said Sea Shepherd’s international director, Jonny Vasic.

The pair had last been seen near a Japanese whale processing ship as protesters in three Zodiacs confronted the Japanese whalers, causing them to abandon a chase for a pod of whales.

Watson said the two activists got lost after fog, mist and drizzle blanketed the area.

The Japanese whale processing ship Nisshin Maru responded to call from the Sea Shepherd for help and joined in the search for the pair, Watson said.

Glen Inwood, a spokesman for Japan’s Institute for Cetacean Research, said the Japanese whaling ships had turned back toward the protest vessels to help find the missing crew.

Watson said when he thanked the crew of the Nisshin Maru for their help, “they were very professional. They just said they’d wait for us (to resume the protest).

“I said, ’I guess we’re back on schedule, and we’ll be pursuing you again,”’ Watson said.

New Zealand conservation minister Chris Carter, a staunch whaling opponent, said the two activists were “very lucky to be alive.”

“What they are doing is putting their lives at risk and ... I feel, compromising a very strong conservation message because I think most fair-minded people would see it as extreme overreacting to put your life at risk,” he said.

“Do you kill yourself (in an environmental protest) – well I don’t think you do,” he told National Radio.

The Sea Shepherd’s website said the activists had “successfully delivered” 1.6 gallons of butyric acid onto the Nisshin Maru’s whale-butchering deck.

The nontoxic but foul-smelling acid “stopped all work of cutting up whales,” it said.

Activists in Zodiacs also used nail guns to fasten plates over the Nisshin Maru’s drain outlets, which spill whale blood into the sea.