14 DAY TRIAL // As previously reported, green-oriented group Sea Shepherd are now busy trying to keep the whales inhabiting the waters of the Antarctica safe from several Japanese whalers whose crew are very much interested in hunting them.
Recent news on this topic says that, while trying to block the Japanese whalers' access to a Korean fuel tanker, i.e. the Sun Laurel, two of Sea Shepherd's vessel got rammed.
Thus, it seems that Japanese ship Nisshin Maru simply approached the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker, and smashed into them deliberately, looking to cause as much damage as possible.
Sources report that, as Paul Watson later explained, the exact course of events was as follows:
“They hit the Steve Irwin twice in the stern and then moved in on the Bob Barker, hitting it multiple times and slamming it into the side of the tanker. Then they lost control and slammed into the back side of their own tanker, causing some structural damage and destroying their lifeboat.”
“I looked out my bridge window to starboard and all I could see was Nisshin Maru’s anchor, a vessel five times my size. As they started pushing us, my biggest fear was that they would push us over - and we have 35 souls on board,” argued Peter Hammarstedt, Bob Barker's skipper.
Interestingly enough, it seems that the crew aboard the Nisshin Maru did not settle for simply ramming their own vessel into the ships owned by the Sea Shepherd organization.
Thus, they went as far as to make use of stun grenades and high-powered water cannons, hopping that this might lead to the environmentalists' giving up on their plans to protect the whales and their returning to their homes.
Luckily, nobody was injured and soon after carrying out this assault on Sea Shepherd's vessel, the Japanese whaling fleet decided to move north.
Needless to say, the environmentalists are still trailing it.