Anti-whaling activists cheered yesterday as Japan called its harpoon ships home early from their annual Antarctic hunt, citing high-seas harassment by environmentalist group Sea Shepherd.
Japan, which hunts the giant ocean mammals under a loophole to a global ban that permits lethal “scientific research,” has killed 172 whales this season, only about a fifth of its target, the fisheries agency said.
Activists from the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society had pursued the Japanese fleet for months in the icy waters near Antarctica, seeking to stop the slaughter, as they had also done for the previous six years. The group, which says its tactics are non-violent, but aggressive, harasses whalers with paint and stink bombs, snares their ship propellers with rope and moves their own boats between the harpoon ships and their prey.
Japanese Minister of Farm and Fisheries Michihiko Kano said yesterday the Japanese flotilla would come home, about a month before the usual end of the hunting season in mid-March, citing Sea Shepherd’s campaign.
“To ensure the safety of crew members’ lives, of assets and of the research fleet, the government is compelled to end the research,” Kano told a Tokyo news conference, two days after officials said they had temporarily suspended whaling. “It’s regrettable that such obstructions have taken place. We will have to find ways to prevent such harassment.”
Sea Shepherd hailed the -announcement, the first time their activism has cut short the annual hunt, but pledged to keep shadowing the vessels.
“It’s great news,” group founder Paul Watson said by satellite phone. “We will, however, stay with the Japanese ships until they return north and make sure that they’re out of the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary.”
However, the Japanese Foreign Ministry called in the ambassadors of Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands yesterday and asked their countries to take action against Sea Shepherd. The group operates Dutch and Australian-registered ships and uses ports in Australia and New Zealand for its campaigns.
“It is extremely regrettable that the obstructionist activities by Sea Shepherd were not prevented,” Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said.
He said the ministry had “conveyed a sense of regret and reiterated a strong request to take effective measures to avoid the recurrence of Sea Shepherd’s obstructionist activities.”
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, the chief government spokesman, called the actions by Sea Shepherd “extremely deplorable.”
“We can’t help but feel outrage because the lives of the crew were endangered,” he told a press briefing. “We will work out definite measures to ensure we can continue research whaling without giving in to sabotage.”
Australia — which last year launched legal action against Japan’s whaling program at the International Court of Justice — and New Zealand yesterday said they hoped Japan had given up whaling for good.
The US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) also voiced cautious optimism that Japan would end the state-funded whaling program, which it said had cost the country in both diplomatic and financial terms.
“It’s not the end of Japanese whaling and it’s not the beginning, but it might be the beginning of the end of commercial whaling in an international sanctuary,” said Patrick Ramage, director IFAW’s Global Whale Program.
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