Greenpeace activists have made contact with a Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean and confronted the whalers in inflatable boats, the environmental group said yesterday.
The organization launched eight inflatables from two of its ships, the Esperanza and the Arctic Sunrise, carrying banners calling for an end to whaling and declaring the intention to block the hunt, Greenpeace said in a statement received in Sydney.
"While the Greenpeace ships were relaying their message, two `catcher ships' arrived on the scene with dead minke whales hung from their hulls, ready to be transferred to the fleet's factory ship, the Nisshin Maru," it said.
"However, the Esperanza was blocking access to the Nisshin Maru's stern ramp and one `catcher', the Kyo Maru Number One, twice tried to push the Esperanza out of the way. In the interest of safety the Esperanza pulled back," it said.
The confrontation took place off the coast of Antarctica and directly south of Tasmania, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
"Very shortly now our small inflatable boats will take off after the hunting boats and they will follow them until the hunting boats find a whale," expedition leader Shane Rattenbury said.
"Then they will move between the harpoon and the whale to try to enable the whale to escape. This is of course quite a dangerous process," he said.
Japan says it conducts whale hunts for scientific research, but "no one is fooled by the giant new `Research' sign which has been painted on the side of the fleet's factory ship, the Nisshin Maru," Rattenbury said.
"Once the whales have been measured and weighed by the `scientists' the onboard butchers get to work and the whales are cut up and boxed for market. This is all about money and not science," he added.
Despite international protests, Japan has this year more than doubled its planned catch of minke whales to 935 and added 10 endangered fin whales, Greenpeace said.
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
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
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
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS