A group of conservationists threw bottles of butyric acid at Japanese whalers and blasted their ship with paint balls, while the Japanese fired water cannons in their latest Antarctic Ocean clash, both sides said yesterday.
No one was injured in Wednesday’s confrontation, the most recent in a string of increasingly aggressive clashes between US-based activist group Sea Shepherd and the whaling fleet. Japan condemned the conservationists’ actions as dangerous and violent. Sea Shepherd said they are simply doing what is necessary to protect whales.
Sea Shepherd has long used butyric acid, produced from rancid butter, in their annual fight to stop the whalers and maintains that the substance is nontoxic.
Earlier this month, Japan said three crew members on one of its whaling vessels suffered face and eye injuries from an acid attack.
“We don’t throw acid on them — we throw rotten butter, which technically is butyric acid,” Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said by satellite phone from the Antarctic yesterday. “We’ve been throwing rotten butter at them for five years.”
Watson said his crew also shot paint balls at the Nisshin Maru to cover up a sign that said “research.” Japan hunts hundreds of mostly minke whales — which are not an endangered species — in Antarctic waters each year under its whaling research program, an allowed exception to the International Whaling Commission’s 1986 ban on commercial whaling. Whale meat not used for study is sold for consumption in Japan, which critics say is the real reason for the hunts.
Glenn Inwood, spokesman for Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, which sponsors the whale hunt, called Sea Shepherd’s use of paint projectiles dangerous.
“If they hit somebody on the boats, they could easily kill them,” Inwood said.
On Monday, Sea Shepherd activist Peter Bethune jumped aboard the Shonan Maru 2 from a Jet Ski with the stated goal of making a citizen’s arrest of the ship’s captain and presenting him with a US$3 million bill for the destruction of the Ady Gil.
He was taken into custody by the whalers and will face charges in Japan of trespassing and assault.
Earlier this month, Sea Shepherd’s ship the Bob Barker and a Japanese harpoon boat collided, causing minor damage to both vessels. On Jan. 6, a Japanese whaler struck Sea Shepherd’s high-tech speedboat Ady Gil, which sank a day later.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS