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whale sanctuary
Sea Shepherd Blasts Japan's Plan to Slaughter 4,000 Minke Whales
'If Sea Shepherd comes across criminal activity, then our history speaks for itself. We will, as always, directly intervene to prevent that crime from taking place'
Nov 29, 2015
Environmental activist group Sea Shepherd warned Japan against resuming "research" whaling in the Antarctic in defiance of an International Court of Justice ruling that it cease the practice and called on the Australian government to intervene.
After a decade of activism by Sea Shepherd and other groups, Japan was forced to abandon its 2014-15 Southern Ocean hunt after the International Court of Justice said the annual expedition was a commercial activity masquerading as research. But on Saturday, Japanese media reported it would start again soon, despite global regulators calling for more evidence that the expeditions have a scientific purpose. Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun and other media said the Japanese fleet could depart possibly by the end of December.
Despite international disapproval, Japan has hunted whales in the Southern Ocean under an exemption in the global whaling moratorium that allows for lethal research.
Japan's fisheries agency has told the International Whaling Commission that it would resume whaling in the Antarctic Ocean by killing 333 minke whales this season and kill almost 4,000 minke whales in the Antarctic over the next 12 years.
CEO of Sea Shepherd Global, Captain Alex Cornelissen, has condemned Japan's plans to return to the Southern Ocean to slaughter whales.
"The pristine waters of the Southern Ocean are once again under threat from poachers," said Cornelissen. "We would like to remind the Japanese government that the whales of the Southern Ocean are protected by international law, by Australian law and by Sea Shepherd. As such, any violation of the sanctity of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary or the Australian Whale Sanctuary will be regarded as a criminal act."
On Saturday, the Japanese Fisheries Agency officially notified the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that it is readying its whaling fleet's harpoons to return to Antarctica's waters.
Sea Shepherd has again called on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to intervene to ensure that the whale poachers do not depart from Japan and prevent whale poachers from departing
"Prime Minister Turnbull has a duty to ensure that the dire matter of Japan's whale poaching operations is at the top of the agenda when he visits Japan in December," said Sea Shepherd Australia Managing Director Jeff Hansen. "It must be made clear to Japan that whaling in the Australian Whale Sanctuary is a criminal act and that Australia has the international responsibility to intervene and arrest criminals operating in our waters," he continued.
On March 31, 2014, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared Japan's whaling program to be commercial and illegal and ordered that it immediately cease.
Initially, Japan's government said it would abide by the ruling. However, within months, Japan had unveiled its plans for a new whaling program titled NEWREP-A, under which a further 4,000 protected Minke whales would be slaughtered over a 12-year period.
The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin, currently docked in Melbourne, Australia, has been undergoing preparations for the organization's second campaign to target illegal toothfish operators in the Southern Ocean.
"Sea Shepherd is an anti-poaching organization. We are ready to find, document, report on, and, where possible, intervene against poaching operations that threaten the precious balance of life in the Southern Ocean; whatever form those poachers might take, whatever life they threaten," said Cornelissen. "If Sea Shepherd comes across criminal activity, then our history speaks for itself. We will, as always, directly intervene to prevent that crime from taking place," he concluded.
In April 2013, Japan announced its whaling haul from the Southern Ocean was at a record low because of "unforgivable sabotage" by activists from Sea Shepherd.
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Sea Shepherd Captures Video of 'Illegal' Japanese Whale Slaughter
Conservationists chase Japanese whaling fleet from protected Southern Ocean
Jan 06, 2014
Anti-whaling activists the Sea Shepherd published video evidence Sunday of Japanese whalers slaughtering protected whale species in marine preservation in the Southern Ocean.
The conservation group obtained footage of three dead minke whales, a protected species, on the deck of the Nisshin Maru, and a fourth whale, also believed to be a minke, being butchered on the ship, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Crew members are seen mopping up large pools of blood on the deck.
After documenting the slaughter, the three-vessel Sea Shepherd fleet--which includes the Steve Irwin, the Bob Barker and the Sam Simon--drove the five Japanese whaling ships from the New Zealand maritime sanctuary in the first encounter of the current whaling season.
The Guardian reports:
The whaling boats were operating within the whale sanctuary in New Zealand's territorial waters, located in the Ross Sea in Antarctica, according to Sea Shepherd.
Conservationists argue that Australia should enforce its own Antarctic territory by cracking down on whaling, which has been deemed unlawful by the federal court. However, only four nations - which do not include Japan - recognise Australia's claim to Antarctic land and sea territory.
Though condemning the actions of the Japanese whalers, neighboring governments have thus far done little to deter the practice.
According to the Sea Shepherd crew, "There was no sign of either the HMNZS Otago, which patrols New Zealand's southern waters during the whaling season or an Australian government aircraft, which was proposed by the country's environment minister, Greg Hunt, instead of the customs vessel he promised before the election."
"The Australian government have effectively said to its fleet, 'Don't intervene on this crime.' That's the problem here," said Bob Brown, Sea Shepherd Australia chairman. "They're Australian whales, effectively, and they've been slaughtered illegally."
"The pictures speak for themselves. It's a bloody outrage," he added.
Though agreeing on the Japanese operation is "pointless and offensive," New Zealand foreign affairs minister Murray McCully added that the area of the slaughter constituted "international waters and not within New Zealand's maritime jurisdiction."
Following a season of intense confrontation during which the whalers reportedly rammed into Sea Shepherd vessels and fired both water cannons and stun grenades, this initial episode ended without violent confrontation.
"We are keeping on their tail and they aren't whaling at the moment so we're happy about that, at least," Jeff Hansen, the managing director of Sea Shepherd Australia, told Guardian Australia. "There is no need for confrontation; the number one priority is the protection of whales."
Below is the video evidence obtained by the Sea Shepherd crew. The footage contains both graphic and disturbing images.
Exposed: Japan kills whales inside sanctuary - Sea Shepherd videoEnvironmental campaign group Sea Shepherd says it has video of the Japanese fleet killing protected whales inside an ...
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US Judge Labels Anti-Whaling Activists 'Pirates'
Ruling allows the Japanese whalers to pursue legal action against Sea Shepherd’s activism
Feb 27, 2013
A US federal court of appeals on Monday has branded the anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd as "pirates," ordering them to cease interfering with Japanese whaling operations in the Southern Ocean and clearing the way for whalers to pursue legal actions against the animal rights group.
"You don't need a peg leg or an eye patch" to be a pirate, declared Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals, as he overturned a lower court's ruling against Japanese whalers, adding, "No matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be."
Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson responded to the ruling, saying it was "entirely devoid of real evidence."
"We are called many names," he said, "but the real question is whether Sea Shepherd is breaking the law." Watson emphasized that the Sea Shepherd crew has not "nor do they intend to injure Japanese whalers."
"[The judge] didn't mention anything in there about the fact that the Japanese have destroyed one of our ships (the Ady Gil in 2010), they've thrown concussion grenades at us, hit us with water cannons and laser beams," he told AAP.
Watson added that the group has "fully complied with the injunction" and that the US Court has no jurisdiction over Australians and other non-U.S. citizens currently manning the fleet on internationally flagged vessels operating in Australian waters.
The Shepherds are trying to prevent the slaughter of whales off the coast of Antarctica, an area which the International Whaling Commission considers a sanctuary for the large mammals. Australia is currently taking legal action against the country for its whaling activities.
According to AFP, the ruling allows the Japanese whalers to pursue legal action in the US against the Sea Shepherd's activism.
Upholding a false designation that excuses the illegal hunting practice, Kozinski declared the plaintiffs "Japanese researchers who hunt whales in the Southern Ocean."
Previously, Japanese whalers, under the guise of the Institute of Cetacean Research, filed legal action in the US to prevent the Sea Shepherds from interfering with their hunts. District Judge Richard Jones sided with the activists, but the 9th Circuit's three-judge panel reversed that decision on Monday.
The ruling comes weeks into a high-sea standoff between the Japanse whaling vessel, the Nisshin Maru, and the Sea Shepherd's fleet--the Bob Barker and the Steve Irwin--during which, the Shepherds report, the whalers have rammed both their vessels and have been using water cannons and stun grenades against them, even going to so far as to threaten them with a military icebreaker.
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Sea Shepherd: Defending the Integrity of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary
Our Antarctic campaign has become stronger and more efficient – but the Japanese whalers are getting recklessly aggressive
Feb 18, 2013
I don't think there is a more isolated, remote, or forbidding place on this planet than where we find ourselves now.
Draw a line due south from Sri Lanka for 4,404 nautical miles, bringing you to Prdyz Bay, deep in the Cooperation Sea, close to the massive Amory ice shelf.
Perth, Western Australia, is 2,632 nautical miles northeast, and Cape Town, South Africa, is 2,632 nautical miles northwest.
In contrast, we are only 1,380 miles from the South Pole.
It is summertime in Antarctica and outside on the deck, the wind is blowing at 30 knots and the temperature has dropped to -10C.
On our port beam at a quarter of a kilometer, and just barely discernible through the misty swirling snow is the Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker. I can see her taking white water over her bow and hoar frost clinging like bleached algae on her blue, grey, and black-mottled hull.
Ahead of us, another quarter of a kilometer, a massive black hull plunges and bucks in a frothing sea. And as if the sea spray was not enough, the ship fires six high-powered streams of sea water in different directions. Briny icicles hang from her rails.
I can see the stern slipway, that awful maw that literally swallows whales whole, wasting nothing, they say, except for the whales themselves.
The beautiful creatures get dragged onto the flensing deck to be mutilated and cut into pieces, to be frozen and boxed below deck as streams of steaming blood pour into the sea from the scuppers.
The Sea Shepherd Crew calls that floating mechanized abattoir the cetacean Death Star. It is the Japanese whale-processing factory ship the Nisshin Maru, and for nine long years we have hunted her down in these waters with the single objective of interfering with her primary activity - the slaughtering of whales.
I suppose in a way, I am the mirror image of the fictional Captain Ahab. Instead of a white whale, it is a whale-killing death ship that I have been obsessed with stopping.
Nine voyages I have spent in these hellish cold waters, totaling near 30 months. This voyage is now in its 105th day, a voyage that began in Melbourne, went north to American Samoa, then south again to New Zealand, and further south still, to the Ross Sea; and for the last 18 days a pursuit of some 2,500 miles westward to this forsaken place.
Forsaken yet incredibly beautiful. The seas are bejeweled with thousands of icebergs, ranging in size from that of a small building to massive tabletops larger than major cities. And it is not all white on blue, the icebergs boast a spectrum of blues, indigos, and greens; and the ever-present sun splatters the horizon twice a day with the spectrum of reds, orange and yellows.
In the sea and flying through the air are the great living treasures of these waters - the birds, whales, seals, and penguins; and beneath the surface the great schools of fishes and the vast plumes of plankton and krill.
What brings us down here year after year is the simple fact that the international community of nations has designated these waters as the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, and we are here to defend the integrity and the sanctity of this legal sanctuary for whales.
The Japanese whalers are slaughtering protected, threatened, and endangered species of whales within this sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium on commercial whaling. They are also in contempt of an Australian federal court ruling from 2008 that specifically forbade them from killing whales in the waters of the Australian Antarctic territory.
Three days ago the Japanese harpoon vessel Yushin Maru #2 killed a minke whale within the Australian Antarctic Territory, only 50 miles from the Australian Davis Research base on the Antarctic coast.
This is the first time since 2009 that they have killed a whale in front of us and they did so deliberately to test our resolve.
In December 2012, the US 9th District Court granted a temporary injunction to the Japanese whalers that ordered the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society USA not to approach within 500 yards of the whaling vessels.
Sea Shepherd USA immediately complied with the injunction. Since its founding in August 1977, Sea Shepherd USA has never broken an American law. In compliance, Sea Shepherd USA stopped funding Operation Zero Tolerance and withdrew all support, leaving the campaign in the hands of Sea Shepherd Australia, led by Bob Brown, the former Australian Federal Senator and Leader of the Greens.
Bob Brown had previously led a Sea Shepherd campaign with Steve Irwin to protect whales in Western Australia. Since 2005, the Southern Ocean campaigns have been staged outside Australia.
The Japanese whalers, however, mistakenly thought that the US courts could exercise jurisdiction over Dutch- and Australian-flagged and owned vessels under the command of Australian, French, Indian and Swedish captains operating out of Australian and New Zealand ports into international and Australian territorial waters.
Thus we had the strange situation of Japanese whalers operating in contempt of an Australian federal court ruling, killing a whale inside the Australian Antarctic Territorial waters, and warning a Swedish captain of a Dutch-flagged ship that they would be in contempt of a US court should they interfere with their unlawful activities in an internationally established sanctuary for whales.
Captain Peter Hammarstedt was not about to watch the poachers transfer a dead whale to the factory ship without interference. He blocked the transfer. The factory ship and the harpoon vessels deployed prop fouling lines to stop him, but the Bob Barker crew took him to small boats and cut the lines.
It took 12 attempts and most of the day before they could transfer the poached whale.
They finally managed to do so by making an extremely dangerous lunge at the Bob Barker with the Nisshin Maru. Five times the size of the Bob Barker, the ramming would have breached the hull. Thus, Captain Hammarstedt had no choice but to dodge the collision. The move allowed the harpoon vessel to dash in front of the Bob Barker and behind the Nisshin Maru. A cable was quickly attached to the whale's corpse, and it was hoisted up the slipway onto the flensing deck.
The next morning the Steve Irwin arrived, and with two ships on the stern of the Nisshin Maru, the whaling operations were shut down.
Three days later, whaling operations had not resumed. The harpoon vessels had all disappeared, leaving the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker chasing the Nisshin Maru ever further west.
Since 2005, Sea Shepherd has returned to these waters, and the campaign has become stronger and more efficient each year. Last season, the whalers took only 26% of their kill quota, compared to 17% the previous season.
This season, with four ships, the campaign is stronger but facing more challenges. The injunction imposed on Sea Shepherd USA weakened the campaign's finances, but it did something even more threatening to the crews of these four ships. It has emboldened the Japanese whalers.
The Japanese whalers have never before been more recklessly aggressive. The Sea Shepherd ships have been forced to yield to uphold our primary operational concern and that is not to cause any injuries to either side.
The whalers destroyed the Ady Gil in 2010 and did not have to answer for it. They were not even questioned. They have interpreted the US court injunction as de facto permission to be more aggressive. They have the total support of the Japanese government, and although Australia and New Zealand are taking Japan to the international court in the Hague this year, both countries have not done anything actually to stop the slaughter of whales.
Thus it has been left to a small band of international volunteers to protect and defend the whale sanctuary, despite being marginalised and given labels ranging from extremists to eco-terrorists.
Yet after nine year of confrontations Sea Shepherd have not caused a single injury or inflicted any damage on the Japanese ships; whereas they have injured Sea Shepherd crew, damaged Sea Shepherd ships, and destroyed one vessel.
These whalers are poachers and no different than elephant and rhino poachers in Africa, except for the fact that the African poachers are generally black and poor and they are shot for their crimes.
The whale poachers on the other hand are encouraged by their own government to continue their crimes.
This is a strange battle down here in the Southern Seas. Within two days we expect that the three harpoon vessels, armed government vessel Shonan Maru #2 and the Korean tanker Sun Laurel, will catch up with the Nisshin Maru. That will pit a whaling fleet of six against three Sea Shepherd ships.
The Sea Shepherd crews are committed to blocking the illegal whaling operations, and it appears the whalers are under orders to kill as many whales as possible. This is gearing up for a major showdown, and the challenge for the Sea Shepherd volunteers is to save as many whales as possible while ensuring that no one is injured by an increasingly hostile and aggressive crew of whalers, made all the more dangerous by the extreme remoteness and intense weather and sea conditions.
The Japanese Fishery Agency issued themselves a permit to kill 935 protected minke whales, 50 endangered fin whales, and 50 endangered humpback whales.
The Sea Shepherd Crew is confident that the whalers will take only a small fraction of this list of condemned people, and they will once again lose millions of dollars in profits.
And if they return next year, so will the Sea Shepherd Crew, and the year after that if need be. What is the point of declaring and establishing a sanctuary for whales if whales can be allowed to be killed there?
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Interpol Issues 'Red Notice' for High-Seas Activist Paul Watson
Aug 08, 2012
Interpol issued an international arrest notice for Paul Watson, founder of marine conservation group Sea Shepherd, on Wednesday. Watson failed to meet bail conditions in Germany when he left the country for an 'unspecified destination' earlier in July, according to his lawyers. Watson's whereabouts are currently unknown.
Watson, known for his marine activism involving direct actions against illegal whaling ships, had been detained in Germany following an extradition request by Costa Rican authorities. Watson faces charges in Costa Rica stemming from a 2002 incident, when Watson's boat intercepted a Costa Rican illegal shark-finning boat off the coast of Guatemala.
Watson's Sea Shepherd organization denounced Interpol's 'red notice' on Wednesday, calling the international effort to detain Watson part of a "politically motivated" campaign to put an end to his high-seas activism. The organization has repeatedly accused Japan of orchestrating his arrest. Watson's actions most often target the Japanese whaling industry, and the group claims its activism has cost Japan tens of millions of dollars throughout the years.
"Today's elevation of the attack against our organization and our founder, Captain Watson, is not unexpected," Sea Shepherd's administrative director, Susan Hartland, stated Wednesday.
"Japan is driving this effort in retaliation for our successful campaigns to stop them from whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary," she said.
"We've cost them millions of dollars and exposed their shame to the world because of their refusal to stop the slaughter of whales in an established sanctuary under the lie and loophole of 'research.'"
The group claims Costa Rica's charges of "causing a danger of drowning or of an air disaster", are bogus.
Watson released a statement last week from an anonymous location accusing Japan of conspiring with Germany and Costa Rica, calling them "pawns in the Japanese quest to silence Sea Shepherd".
"The German government said I betrayed their trust by leaving Germany, yet they had already betrayed my trust. The German politicians had made up their minds politically before the German court had made a decision, and during the time I was held in Germany, the Japanese negotiated with Germany to file for an extradition order to Japan on fabricated evidence..."
"I am presently in a place on this planet where I feel comfortable, a safe place far away from the scheming nations who have turned a blind eye to the exploitation of our oceans," he said.
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