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Activists from Greenpeace Japan meet the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru with a banner saying "FAILED" as it arrives in Tokyo, Japan to unload whale meat for sale.
Enlarge imageThe annual assault on the whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is over for another year with a final tally of 551 whales dying for the sake of fake and discredited research.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific whales campaigner Rob Nicoll said that Greenpeace played a significant part in nearly halving the amount of whales killed this season. "However, 551 whales is still over a hundred more than Japan took three years ago, in what is an internationally recognised whale sanctuary. This blatantly commercial whale hunt must end immediately."
The whale hunt was disrupted for 15 days during the height of the southern summer when our ship the Esperanza chased the Nisshin Maru across 4,300 miles of the whale sanctuary, shutting down the whole whaling operation for the entirety of the epic chase.
As well as minke whales, the whalers also intending to take endangered fin and humpback whales too. They decided to cancel the humpback hunt this year after fierce protests around the world but the fin whales were still in the crosshairs of the whalers.
In recent years, the Japanese Fisheries Agency has been telling the world that there had been a 'rapid increase' in the number of fin whales in the southern ocean and this justified the killing of 50 of the world's second largest whale.
Despite spending three months of the year scouring the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, the six ships of the whaling fleet didn't see a single one of the 'plentiful' fin whales.
The battle to defend the whales now switches to Santiago in Chile where the next meeting of the International Whaling Commission will be held. Japan will again try to overturn decades of whale conservation and enforce a return to the destructive days of commercial whaling in the southern ocean.
In a whale sanctuary, the only acceptable number of whales to be killed is zero. If the Japanese are serious about whale research – rather than a commercial hunt disguised as research – they should return to the Southern Ocean next year with cameras, not harpoons.
Latest press release: Greenpeace action saved over 400 whales.
