Hardline whaling opponents attempting to stop Japan’s annual whale hunt in the Antarctic yesterday said they had intercepted and photographed its whaling fleet using long-range, pilotless drone aircraft.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said it located the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru off Australia’s western coast on Saturday using the drones, the first time this season it has made contact with the whalers.
However, other Japanese security ships shielded the vessel “to allow it to escape,” Sea Shepherd said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters/Sea Shepherd,Barbara Veiga
“We caught them due west of Perth,” founder Paul Watson told Reuters by satellite phone from the ship Steve Irwin. “For the next few days we will be chasing them. We are heading south.”
Watson said Sea Shepherd had caught up with the fleet at 37° south, 1,600km above Antarctic waters.
The Sea Shepherd waited for the Nisshin Maru after hearing from fishermen it had sailed through the Lombok Strait in Indonesia on its voyage to Antarctic waters.
The two drones are equipped with cameras and detection equipment and allow Sea Shepherd to monitor the whaling fleet from a distance, he said.
Watson said sympathizers from a US port security firm in New Jersey contributed to the cost of the two drones.
No whales had been killed so far, he added.
“This is going to be a long hard pursuit from here to the coast of Antarctica,” Watson said. “But thanks to these drones, we now have an advantage we have never had before — eyes in the sky.”
“We can cover hundreds of miles with these drones and they have proven to be valuable assets for this campaign,” he said.
While the Steve Irwin was being tailed by the harpooners’ security detail, Watson said Sea Shepherd’s other vessels, the Bob Barker and Brigitte Bardot — which can travel faster than the whalers — were free to chase the Japanese south.
Commercial whaling is banned under an international treaty, but Japan has since 1987 used a loophole to carry out “lethal research” in the name of science — a practice condemned by environmentalists and anti-whaling nations.
Confrontations with the increasingly sophisticated Sea Shepherd group have escalated in recent years, with one clash sinking an activist powerboat and a protester arrested for boarding a Japanese ship.
Japan’s coast guard has deployed an unspecified number of vessels to protect the whaling ships.
REBUILDING: A researcher said that it might seem counterintuitive to start talking about reconstruction amid the war with Russia, but it is ‘actually an urgent priority’ Italy is hosting the fourth annual conference on rebuilding Ukraine even as Russia escalates its war, inviting political and business leaders to Rome to promote public-private partnerships on defense, mining, energy and other projects as uncertainty grows about the US’ commitment to Kyiv’s defense. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were opening the meeting yesterday, which gets under way as Russia accelerated its aerial and ground attacks against Ukraine with another night of pounding missile and drone attacks on Kyiv. Italian organizers said that 100 official delegations were attending, as were 40 international organizations and development banks. There are
TARIFF ACTION: The US embassy said that the ‘political persecution’ against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro disrespects the democratic traditions of the nation The US and Brazil on Wednesday escalated their row over US President Donald Trump’s support for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, with Washington slapping a 50 percent tariff on one of its main steel suppliers. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva threatened to reciprocate. Trump has criticized the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to cling on to power after losing 2022 elections to Lula. Brasilia on Wednesday summoned Washington’s top envoy to the country to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s description of the treatment of Bolsonaro as
Pakistani police yesterday said a father shot dead his daughter after she refused to delete her TikTok account. In the Muslim-majority country, women can be subjected to violence by family members for not following strict rules on how to behave in public, including in online spaces. “The girl’s father had asked her to delete her TikTok account. On refusal, he killed her,” a police spokesperson said. Investigators said the father killed his 16-year-old daughter on Tuesday “for honor,” the police report said. The man was subsequently arrested. The girl’s family initially tried to “portray the murder as a suicide” said police in
The military is to begin conscripting civilians next year, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said yesterday, citing rising tensions with Thailand as the reason for activating a long-dormant mandatory enlistment law. The Cambodian parliament in 2006 approved a law that would require all Cambodians aged 18 to 30 to serve in the military for 18 months, although it has never been enforced. Relations with Thailand have been tense since May, when a long-standing territorial dispute boiled over into cross-border clashes, killing one Cambodian soldier. “This episode of confrontation is a lesson for us and is an opportunity for us to review, assess and
RSS