The last ship of Japan’s Antarctic whaling fleet returned home yesterday, ending an annual expedition that saw tense high-seas clashes with militant environmental group Sea Shepherd.
The Nisshin Maru, the mother ship of the five-vessel fleet that carries most of the whale carcasses, sailed into Tokyo Harbor in the morning, the last of the harpoon ships that set sail in November.
The tense confrontations in icy Antarctic waters saw the sinking of a Sea Shepherd vessel and the arrest of one of its activists, a New Zealander who now faces trial in Japan for assault, trespass and three other charges.
Whalers and their opponents also blasted each other with water cannons, while activists hurled rancid butter and stink bombs, and the whalers targeted the environmentalists with a sonic crowd control device.
Sea Shepherd said early last month that they had managed to block harpooning entirely for more than a month, reducing the Japanese kill by up to half and costing the whalers an estimated between US$70 million and US$80 million.
During the hunt from 2008 to last year, six Japanese ships killed 680 mostly minke whales, below their target of 765 to 935 whales, a shortfall authorities blamed on 16 days of harassment by activists.
Commercial whaling has been banned worldwide since 1986, but Japan justifies its annual hunts as lethal “scientific research,” while not hiding the fact that the meat is later sold in shops and restaurants.
Tensions have risen between whaling nations, also including Iceland and Norway, and anti-whaling nations such as Australia, which has threatened to take Japan to the International Court of Justice over the issue.
The International Whaling Commission, which meets in June in Morocco, is considering a plan to allow whaling nations to hunt the ocean giants openly if they agree to reduce their catch “significantly” over 10 years.
However, so far Japan, Australia and other key nations have rejected the plan, while New Zealand has voiced support for the compromise.
In Japan, meanwhile, two cases involving anti-whaling activists are now moving though the criminal justice system.
Sea Shepherd’s Peter Bethune was indicted on April 2 for trespass, injuring a person, carrying a weapon, vandalism and obstructing commercial activities — charges that could see him jailed for up to 15 years.
Bethune, 45, was the captain of the Sea Shepherd’s Ady Gil, a futuristic powerboat that sank after it was sliced in two in a collision with the whaling fleet’s security ship Shonan Maru II in early January.
On Feb. 15, Bethune scaled the the Shonan Maru II from a jet ski before dawn with the stated intent of making a citizen’s arrest of its captain Hiroyuki Komiya for the attempted murder of his six crew.
Bethune had also planned to present the captain with a bill for the Ady Gil, a carbon-and-kevlar trimaran that broke the round-the-world record for a powerboat in 2008 under its former name Earthrace.
Instead he was detained, taken to Japan and formally arrested.
Prosecutors also allege he earlier caused a chemical burn on a whaler’s face by hurling a bottle of butyric acid that smashed on the Shonan Maru II.
In another case involving anti-whaling activists, two Japanese members of Greenpeace face theft and trespass charges that stem from their investigation of alleged embezzlement in the state-subsidized industry.
Greenpeace said its probe showed that parcels of salted whale meat were being sent to crew members for personal consumption or sale.
The “Tokyo Two,” as the environmental group calls its activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, face up to 10 years in prison if convicted in the trial, with a verdict expected some time in June.
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