Japan to start whale hunt again

[macgardener]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...19/2123390.htm

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Looks like we're going after them.

An Australian customs vessel heads south to Antarctica to monitor activities of the Japanese whaling fleet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/7178257.stm

Kind of.

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BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Greenpeace activists claimed Sunday they had chased Japanese whaling ships Nisshin Maru and Yushin Maru through dense fog and over hundreds of miles, driving them out of the whaling grounds off Antarctica.

"We came here to stop the fleet from whaling and we have done that. Now they are out of the hunting grounds they should stay out," said Greenpeace Japan campaigner Sakyo Noda.

But Greenpeace added that it expects the ships to refuel and offload whale meat onto a tanker outside the whale grounds, raising the possibility that the ships might try to return.

Greenpeace's ship Esperanza confronted the Japanese whalers in the Antarctic Ocean early Saturday after a 10-day search, and the hunting ships immediately steamed off with the activists in pursuit, the environmentalists said in a statement.

They warned they would take non-violent action to try to stop the ships from killing whales — a promise that in the past has led to activists in speed boats trying to put themselves between whales and Japanese harpoons, and once to a collision of ships.

A spokesman for Japan's whale hunt called Greenpeace's actions illegal and demanded it stop its disruptive actions.

"Greenpeace actions are illegal under international law (and) it's time the public stopped treating Greenpeace as heroes," Glenn Inwood, spokesman for the Institute of Cetacean Research, in Tokyo, Japan, said Monday. "It's time the public saw this fringe group for what they really are: environmental imperialists who are trying to dictate their morals to the world."

Japan dispatched its whaling fleet to the icy water of Antarctica in November to kill about 1,000 whales under a program that Tokyo says is for scientific purposes, but which anti-whaling nations and activists scoff at as a front for commercial whaling.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_7421433.htm

Greenpeace is like PETA: Shrewd media whores with little substance beneath. But this initiative is something I can support. Japan really ought to stop weaseling out of it's international agreements and adhere to the ban on whaling of certain species that they signed. Whale populations have such a slow reproductive rate that a whaling ban for 2 or 3 human generations may be needed to restore their numbers to support a whaling industry again. For many species they will actually never recover.

Some Greenpeace guys have been taken hostage on the whaling ship havn't the?

[forfi]

Originally Posted by addict

Some Greenpeace guys have been taken hostage on the whaling ship havn't the?

No ,they are from Sea Sheppard.I have to say that as an ex-navy chap that they are idiots.I am as you know against whaling but I am even more against idiots putting life at risk like this.Remember that these guys were throwing acid about when they boarded the ship.They should have been thrown overboard and left for their idiot mates to rescue.The ends do not justify the means.

[bruce]

Originally Posted by forfi

No ,they are from Sea Sheppard.I have to say that as an ex-navy chap that they are idiots.I am as you know against whaling but I am even more against idiots putting life at risk like this.Remember that these guys were throwing acid about when they boarded the ship.They should have been thrown overboard and left for their idiot mates to rescue.The ends do not justify the means.

Here, here.

[forfi]

On the other hand this speaks volumes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/c...&bbram=1&asb=1

Terrible. I really dont understand what 'science' is being conducted here.