Japanese whalers and the anti-whaling activists are preparing for the next standoff.
An Australian customs ship conducting surveillance of Japan's controversial hunt intervened at Tokyo's request on Friday and picked up two Sea Shepherd Conservation Society activists who leaped 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 onto the decks of the whaling ships and riding rubber boats 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 minke and fin whales for what it says are scientific purposes. Opponents say the scientific program 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," Watson said in a statement that welcomed his crew members' safe return but vowed to give no quarter to Japan's fleet.
The whalers paused their hunting after the activists, Benjamin Potts, 28, of Australia and Briton Giles Lane, 35, leaped aboard the Yushin Maru 2 on Tuesday from a rubber boat after a chase through the frigid waters near Antarctica.
Strongly 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 program in international courts. It will resume that work following Friday's operation, Smith said.
Greenpeace, which also has a ship in the region to battle the whalers but which shuns Sea Shepherd's more extreme tactics, claimed Friday to have hounded the Japanese whale processing ship out of the hunting grounds.
Source: Xinhua/agencies
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