Dale Mills
Protesters and Japanese whaling vessels clashed on January 15 when a grenade-tipped harpoon was fired near Greenpeace activists off Mawson Coast, part of the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Japan insists on pursuing its policy of "scientific research" by hunting minke whales. Critics, including Greenpeace, say that no new knowledge is gained by killing whales, and that the "research" is an excuse for commercial whaling as whale meat fetches a high price.
The harpoon from a Japanese whaling ship landed just ahead of a Greenpeace inflatable boat, killing its target. Canadian activist Texas Joe Constantine became entangled in the harpoon line and was thrown into the bloodied waters near the freshly killed minke whale. The incident occurred in polar waters about 2000 nautical miles south-west of the Australian city of Perth. Constantine's polar survival suit saved him, according to Greenpeace expedition leader Shane Rattenbury.
"We had prevented [the Japanese] from killing this whale for about an hour", said Rattenbury. "I think tensions have been rising the last few weeks and the fleet is frustrated at not getting clear shots at their targets [because of our intervention]."
At the time of writing, the Greenpeace protest had entered its 25th day of direct contact with the whaling fleet. This is an enormous success given that the larger and faster Japanese ships have previously been able to outrun protest ships after just a few days.
The January 15 harpooning incident follows an earlier ramming by the whaling fleet. According to the Greenpeace International website, its ship Arctic Sunrise was rammed and damaged by the factory ship of the Japanese whaling fleet, Nisshin Maru, on January 8. Nisshin Maru is at least twice as long and six times heavier than Arctic Sunrise.
"This is a deliberate ramming which placed the safety of our ship and the lives of our crew in severe danger", Rattenbury said.
Apparently, the ramming was in retaliation to the protesters' adorning graffiti to Nisshin Maru from small inflatables. The ship then turned hard and sailed for more than a kilometre before hitting the Greenpeace vessel.
Last December 21, the Japanese whaling vessel Kyo Maru collided with the Greenpeace ship, Esperanza. The Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research dismissed the incident saying "the same thing occurred in 1999 when another collision occurred between Japan's research vessels and a Greenpeace vessel".
The benign wording disguises the fact that the 1999 collision was later found to be the fault of the Japanese, and was officially recorded as such in the Lloyd's Maritime database.
Greenpeace is campaigning for a network of marine reserves or parks covering 40% of the world's oceans to protect ocean life and allow oceans to recover from past exploitation.
Another anti-whaling group, Sea Shepherd, which is also campaigning in the contentious area announced that it intends to escalate its campaign against the Japanese fleet. On January 13, Sea Shepherd's founder Paul Watson demanded that the Australian and New Zealand governments take legal action to stop Japan's "scientific" whale haul. If legal action was taken, he said, Sea Shepherd would withdraw from the Antarctic waters. Watson has been involved in the sinking of eight whaling ships over the past 30 years, and the attempt two weeks ago to foul the propellers of the Japanese ship Nisshin Maru.
Watson has accused the Australian and New Zealand governments of "kissing the rear end" of Japan which, he says, is violating international law including the laws of the International Whaling Commission, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the Antarctic Treaty. The Japanese government denies it is breaking any law.
The official English-language website of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been silent on the confrontations.
The Greenpeace vessels currently dogging the Japanese whaling fleet include 70 crew from 19 countries including from the UK, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Ghana, Russia, Norway, Denmark, USA, France, Italy, Japan, Ireland, India, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Austria and Argentina.
A weblog (with photos and video) of crew members on board ships belonging to Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd recording their contact with the Japanese whaling fleet can be found at <http://weblog.greenpeace.org/oceandefenders> and
<http://www.seashepherd.org/whales/blog/whales_blog_001.html>.
From Green Left Weekly, January 25, 2006.
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