Anti-whaling activists accused Japanese whalers of ramming and sinking a high-tech protest boat in the frigid Southern Ocean yesterday, as tensions mounted over accusations of “spy flights” mounted from Australia.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said its futuristic powerboat Ady Gil was cut in half by the Japanese security ship Shonan Maru No. 2 as it loitered near the whaling fleet. Whalers said the boat was launching projectiles.
All six crew were rescued, but the A$1.5 million (US$1.37 million) carbon-fiber trimaran was sinking, Sea Shepherd said.
PHOTO: AFP/SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY
“We believe it was deliberate. Our ship had come to a complete stop and they basically came straight down on top of them. They cleaned them up,” the group’s Australian director Jeff Hansen said.
Hansen said the incident occurred after two activist vessels intercepted the Japanese fleet near Antarctica’s Commonwealth Bay. Japan’s government-backed Institute of Cetacean Research said the activists were trying to tangle propellers.
A Japanese Fisheries Ministry official declined to comment on the incident, saying it was still getting information.
Tensions flared as Australia’s government came under pressure from lawmakers to block “spy flights” launched by Japan from Australian airports to foil the activists, who were involved in a ramming incident with the whalers two years ago.
The Sea Shepherd group also unveiled a third “secret” ship to help them pursue and block the Japanese fleet, as influential Australian lawmakers said reconnaissance flights were helping Tokyo breach international anti-whaling conventions.
Japan’s government-backed whaling fleet aims to harpoon up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales, classified as endangered, in the Southern Ocean during the current Southern Hemisphere summer.
Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 treaty. But the Japanese continue to cull whales on grounds that this is for research purposes and to monitor their impact on fish stocks, deflecting criticism from anti-whaling nations like Australia, Britain and New Zealand.
The Ady Gil, a 24m carbon-fiber wave-piercing trimaran that runs on low-emission, renewable fuels, was the latest addition to the Sea Shepherd protest fleet.
The materials and paint on the boat made it difficult for radars to detect, enabling it to sneak up on whaling vessels and disrupt the hunt.
A third vessel, a 1,200 tonne former Norwegian harpoon ship refitted in secret, joined Sea Shepherd yesterday.
A public relations firm based in New Zealand and linked to Japan’s cetacean institute chartered aircraft in Hobart and Western Australia state last month to track the Sea Shepherd flagship Steve Irwin, the Age newspaper said.
“Instead of Australia sending a surveillance vessel to watch the whalers, the Japanese are using Australian soil to watch the whale defenders,” said Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown, whose party wields five key swing votes needed by the government.
The Greens would try to introduce legislation banning whalers’ access to support services when parliament resumed in February, he said, though support in the chamber was uncertain.
“The lawless Japanese whale killers are doing what they want in Australia’s Antarctic Territory waters,” Brown said.
Environmentalists accuse Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of backpedaling on threats of an International Court of Justice whaling challenge to avoid damaging Canberra’s trade ties with Tokyo and slow-moving talks on a free trade pact.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema