Anti-whalers vow to continue campaign

Japanese whalers and the activists who have vowed to stop them pledged to continue their activities in Antarctica today.

The declarations by both sides comes after an Australian customs ship picked up two Sea Shepherd Conservation Society activists – including one Briton – who leapt aboard a harpoon ship on Tuesday, and took them back to the group’s vessel.

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said he and his volunteer crew aboard the ship Steve Irwin would immediately resume their campaign of harassment to stop the whalers.

Their usual tactics include throwing bottles of greasy, stinking fluid on to the decks of the whaling ships and sailing dinghies into the space between harpoonists and their prey.

Japan said it was preparing to resume its hunt within days, which this season aims to kill almost 1,000 minke and fin whales for what it says are scientific purposes.

Opponents say the scientific programme is a front for commercial whale killing that is banned by an international moratorium.

“We will continue to intervene, harass, block and obstruct the whalers at every opportunity,” Mr Watson said in a statement that welcomed his crew members’ safe return yesterday but vowed to give no quarter to Japan’s fleet.

The whalers paused their hunting after the activists, Giles Lane, 35, originally from Fulking, near Brighton, East Sussex, and Benjamin Potts, 28, of Australia, leapt aboard the Yushin Maru 2 on Tuesday from a rubber boat after a chase through the waters off Antarctica.

After the two sides argued over safety conditions for returning the pair to their home vessel, Australia offered the customs ship, the Oceanic Viking, as a way to end the stalemate.

Customs officials picked up the activists from the Japanese ship in a speedboat before dawn yesterday and later delivered them to the Steve Irwin, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said.

Staunchly anti-whaling, Australia last month sent the Oceanic Viking to Antarctica to collect video and photo evidence that could be used to challenge the Japanese programme in international courts. It will resume that work following yesterday’s operation, Mr Smith said.

Japanese officials said the whalers were prepared for more attempts by Sea Shepherd to interrupt the whaling.

“The Sea Shepherd attacked our ship, then the two forcibly came on board,” whaling spokesman Gabriel Gomez said of Tuesday’s events. “Our crew was terrified. They were carrying backpacks and who knows, they could have been bombs.”

Searchers found a change of clothes, toothbrushes and a flask of rum in the activists’ backpacks, indicating they expected to spend some time aboard the Japanese ship and casting doubt on Mr Watson’s claim that the pair wanted to leave as soon as they had delivered an anti-whaling letter, Mr Gomez said.

Greenpeace, which also has a ship in the region to battle the whalers but which shuns Sea Shepherd’s more extreme tactics, claimed yesterday to have hounded the Japanese whale processing ship out of the hunting grounds.