Greenpeace wages war on Antarctic whaling by Japan
The Times
31 January 1989
David Rowan
After a weekend of high-speed chases involving a Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic, Greenpeace yesterday failed to stop a further slaughtered minke whale being loaded on to the fleet's factory ship.
"We were seconds too late," Mr Peter Wilkinson, leader of the environmental group's campaign, said by radio telephone. "The rough weather has hampered us, but we hope soon to deploy our inflatable craft to make it as difficult as possible for the Japanese whalers to continue their operations in anything like the peace that they'd like."
Last week the 1,435-tonne Greenpeace ship, Gondwana, prevented whaling for four days. On the fifth Greenpeace dinghies sailed for three hours between the factory ship and its three catcher boats, facing jets of water from Japanese fire hoses before the Gondwana was sent in to cut access to the school of minke whales.
Late on Saturday, after a 300-mile chase, a catcher harpooned a whale 100 yards from the Gondwana. Mr Wilkinson said: "The whale was thrashing about bleeding, and two electronic probes were used to electrocute it, one on its head and the other on its tail. It was still twitching while being tied." By dusk around 10 whales had been killed, bringing the fleet's total to about 50 in the past fortnight.
On Sunday the campaigners adopted a new tactic, involving positioning the ship very close to the factory ship to stop whales being loaded. This brought a safety warning from a Japanese identifying himself as a scientist.
The ships remain about 180 nautical miles north-west of Cape Adare, on the coast of Victoria Land.
Japan plans to kill 300 minke whales this year in a scientific research programme although the International Whaling Commission has imposed a moratorium.
Neither Greenpeace nor the Ministry of Agriculture accepts the research motives of the Japanese, believing the whaling to be for solely commercial purposes.
