A group of Australian environmental campaigners were yesterday forced to withdraw from their high-seas pursuit of Japanese whalers to refuel, giving the harpooners a fortnight to hunt freely.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel has been tailing the Japanese whaling fleet for the past two weeks, chasing them some 2,000 nautical miles (3,200km) through ice, rough seas and fog off Antarctica.
UNDER PRESSURE
Captain Paul Watson says the pursuit has prevented the Japanese from spearing any of the giant sea mammals, by keeping the fleet under pressure and driving them east.
But Watson was forced to abort his campaign yesterday, as dwindling fuel supplies drove the vessel, the Steve Irwin, back to shore.
“We have engaged them, we have stopped their whaling activities for two weeks and we have successfully chased them out of the Australian Antarctic Territorial waters,” he said. “We now have to return to land to refuel. It will probably take us two weeks and then we’ll be back again.”
Watson expressed frustration that the Japanese would have two weeks to hunt at will, but said his crew had no choice.
LUXURY
“We don’t have the luxury of refueling at sea like the Japanese fleet has. We don’t have the resources to operate two ships down here and we don’t have the support of Greenpeace to relieve us,” he said.
“We are doing the best we can with the resources available to us and we are having a significant impact on their kills,” Watson said.
The conservation group is in its fifth year of trailing whaling ships in the Southern Ocean, where Japan kills hundreds of the mammals a year in the name of scientific research, bypassing an international commercial moratorium.
Whale meat is a delicacy in Japan and Tokyo accuses critics of insensitivity to its whaling culture.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS