Japanese ships ram protesters

[LSDeep]

22dec05

JAPANESE ships have rammed protesters attempting to stop the slaughter of whales in Australian territorial waters in the Antarctic.

Greenpeace activists hunted down the six-boat Japanese fleet in the Southern Ocean early yesterday.

The fleet was in Australia's territorial waters and had killed at least three minke whales that morning.

As a helicopter captured graphic images of the killing and butchering of a minke whale, a Japanese whaler crashed into a Greenpeace ship in a dramatic high-seas confrontation.

Greenpeace expedition leader Shane Rattenbury, speaking from the Arctic Sunrise in the Southern Ocean, described the confrontation after a month's search for the whaling fleet.

As the protesters radioed a message in Japanese to the whalers demanding they leave the protected waters of the Southern Whale Sanctuary, they saw one boat hunt down and kill a whale with an explosive harthingy.

"We sent the helicopter ahead and witnessed a minke whale being harthingyed from one of the catcher ships, then they tied it to the side to bring it back to the factory ship," he said.

As crewmen began butchering the whale on deck, two more catcher boats approached with harthingyed whales.

Mr Rattenbury said the Arctic Sunrise and its sister ship the Esperanza moved to block the catchers from reaching the ship's loading ramp.

"That worked for a while but they got more and more aggravated - they turned water cannons on our ship, then this catcher ship turned into the Esperanza and crashed into it to try to push it out of the way," he said.

[LSDeep]

By Darren Ennis

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU member states must do more to protect their dolphins, whales and porpoises from dangers like pollution and illegal fishing or face legal action, the European Commission said on Tuesday.

Brussels has taken the first legal steps against eight countries after receiving numerous complaints from marine life campaigners that they are not doing enough to monitor and protect their marine mammals.

"We cannot discuss specific complaints, but many of the well-known groups have contacted us," a Commission official told Reuters.

"These nations have all failed to establish effective surveillance systems and need to take corrective action to ensure full protection of their marine mammals."

The countries facing legal action are Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

They could end up before the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice (ECJ) if they fail to tighten up their monitoring.

"All these species require strict protection," the commission official said.

Under EU law, whales, dolphins and porpoises are classed as "species of community interest," obliging governments to look after them.

According to the UK-based Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), 28 such species have been sighted in European waters in the last 25 years, including more than 100,000 minke whales at certain times of year.

Member states must designate special conservation areas for the bottlenose dolphin and harbor porpoise and must monitor the conservation status of each species.

The Commission says Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK are not monitoring dolphin populations often enough while France, Spain and Portugal monitor only some species, and Greece and Italy have no national strategy at all.


© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

[LSDeep]

Canberra, Australia (December 22, 2005 ) A Japanese whaling fleet and Greenpeace environmental activists are involved in a stand-off in the remote Southern Ocean near the coast of Antarctica with the two sides accusing each other of ramming their vessels.

Greenpeace said that after a month-long search it had tracked down six Japanese ships -- which set out on November 8 to conduct what Tokyo says is a scientific whaling program -- several thousand kilometers (miles) south of Perth.

Two Greenpeace ships Esperanza and Arctic Sunrise launched inflatable boats on Wednesday to harass Japanese "catcher boats", positioning them between the whale and harpoon gun.

Then several more "catcher boats", which had been whaling further away, returned with their load to the mother ship where the whales are cut up.

"So the Esperanza positioned itself immediately behind the mother ship so the catcher boats couldn't offload their whale carcasses. Some of the catcher boats tried to push the Esperanza out of the way by colliding with it," Greenpeace Australia Pacific Chief Executive Steve Shallhorn told Reuters on Thursday.

Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1986 in line with an international moratorium and began what it calls a research program the following year. Critics said the program was a disguised commercial hunt for meat for upscale restaurants.

Despite international disapproval, Japan announced in June plans to nearly double its annual catch of minke whales to 850 and add fin whales and eventually humpbacks -- two types of whales conservationists say whose survival is threatened.

"GET IN THE WAY"

Australia is a staunch critic of Japan's whaling program and Prime Minister John Howard reiterated his opposition in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on the margins of a regional summit in Malaysia last week.

Howard warned both Greenpeace and the Japanese whalers on Thursday against any dangerous behavior.

"I do not support action which endangers lives or breaks the law," he told reporters in Sydney

The Japanese Fisheries Agency said it was the Greenpeace ship that had rammed the Japanese vessel and that it was considering filing criminal charges against some Greenpeace members who tried to make their way onto the Japanese ships.

"Our research whaling is in line with an international treaty and is perfectly legitimate," said Hideki Moronuki, head of the whaling section at the agency.

"We repeatedly announced this to the Greenpeace boats and sprayed water from our water cannons as a warning, but they ignored it all and rammed into our ship," he told Reuters.

Greenpeace said it planned to continue its action against the Japanese fleet for at least another month.

"As long we can maintain fuel supply in our vessels we think we can be down here for many, many weeks yet. The season goes right through until March and we are hoping to get in the way as much as we can," Greenpeace activist Shane Rattenbury told Australian radio via satellite phone from the Arctic Sunrise.

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