GREENPEACE FORCES JAPANESE WHALERS OUT OF SOUTHERN OCEAN WHALE HUNTING GROUNDS
WASHINGTON– Following a high speed chase through hundreds of miles of fog and increasingly rough seas near Antarctica, the Greenpeace ship Esperanza this morning drove the Japanese whaling fleet out of
the Southern Ocean hunting grounds.
Having confronted the fleet close to the icy edge of Antarctica, the Esperanza pursued the whaling factory processing ship Nisshin Maru over the 60 degrees latitude mark – the boundary of the whale hunting grounds, and both ships were followed by the whale catcher vessel Yushin Maru.
„Greenpeace came here to stop the fleet from whaling and we have done that,” said Sakyo Noda of Greenpeace Japan. „Now that they are out of the whale hunting grounds, they should stay out.”
It is suspected that the whaling fleet is planning to re-fuel soon and offload whale meat that has already been processed onto the Panamanian-registered tanker Oriental Bluebird, a ship not licensed to be part of the whaling fleet.
There are already around 4,000 tons of whale meat stockpiled in Japan from previous expeditions – clearly showing there is no appetite or demand for it.
„They are re-supplying a fleet that is not welcome in Antarctica and trafficking whale meat that is not wanted in Japan,” said expedition leader Karli Thomas. „In addition, we have seen the Oriental Bluebird re-fueling the whaling fleet within the Antarctic waters in the past, which is a major threat to the pristine environment. The
tanker is not registered as part of the whaling fleet, so should not be here.”
