Greenpeace Announces Plans to Continue Anti-Whaling Expedition All the Way to Japan

Media release - March 9, 2007

Greenpeace has announced that its ship M/Y Esperanza will head to Tokyo after re-fueling and taking on new supplies in Australia following 42 days in the frigid Southern Ocean waters surrounding Antarctica, where the international activist group was campaigning for an end to whaling in the global whale sanctuary there. Esperanza and her crew spent over seven days on standby to assist the Japanese whaling fleet’s factory ship, Nisshin Maru, following a fire that claimed the life of one crewmember. She then escorted the entire Japanese whaling fleet out of Antarctic waters. The anti-whaling expedition was slated to come to an end upon the ship’s arrival in Sydney yesterday, but growing public support in Japan for an end to commercial whaling in the Sanctuary convinced Greenpeace to head to Tokyo.

"Whaling on the high seas will only stop when the Japanese government commits to ending it," said Greenpeace USA Project Leader Karen Sack. "What the Esperanza and her crew saw in the Southern Ocean should be a clear signal to the government and people of Japan that this must be the last season that a whaling fleet goes to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary."

It is reported that the government of Japan intends to repair the Nisshin Maru and continue to hunt for whales later this year in the North Pacific before returning to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. These include plans to increase to fifty the number of endangered fin whales hunted and add fifty threatened humpback whales to the quota of 935 minke whales for the Southern Ocean in nine months time.

According to a recent survey, two-thirds of Japanese people do not support what their government is doing in the Southern Ocean.

"While we were with the disabled fleet we generated a level of debate on this issue in Japan that has been unprecedented, questioning the validity of the government's whaling program. However, it has become obvious that the Japanese government wants to give the incident as low a profile as possible," said Junichi Sato, Greenpeace Japan whales campaign coordinator.

This is the second time the Nisshin Maru had a fire on board in the last nine years. The cause of the blaze has not been disclosed, despite the fact that it resulted in the death of one of the crew.

"We began a positive dialogue from ship to ship in the Southern Ocean during the emergency with the Nisshin Maru and we plan to continue and broaden that dialogue from ship to shore when the Esperanza comes to Japan." Sato added.

Greenpeace has invited representatives of the Fisheries Agency of Japan and the Institute for Cetacean Research, the main Japanese government institutions that sponsor the whaling expeditions, onboard the Esperanza when she arrives in Tokyo. They have yet to respond.

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