Japanese Whaling Ship Rams, Sinks Activists' Boat

Activists from the anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) announce that one of their boats patrolling the Antarctic Ocean has been rammed by a Japanese whaling ship. The group was using the Ady Gil, an alternative fuel-powered, wave-piercing, high-tech trimaran, when a whaling ship, from the same Japanese fleet that breaks a UN set of laws each year, struck it, destroying its bow, and threatening the lives of all six crew members. The sailors were eventually saved, the BBC News reports.

The anti-whaling campaigners said that, just before the incident, they were throwing chemicals on the deck of the illegal Japanese ship, in an attempt to render it useless in the sense that it could no longer process captured and brutally killed whales. In addition, they also tried to use a rope to entangle the factory ship's propellers, so as to make it immobile. The illegal sailors apparently did not take kindly to this, and decided to take everything a little further, by ramming into the protesters' boat, which was significantly smaller than their own.

The Japanese did not try this last year, when the SSCS was using its Steve Irwin flagship, which is comparable in size to all Japanese ships. However, they seem to have picked up quite a bit of nerve since dealing with a smaller watercraft. Out of the six crew members, five were from New Zealand, and one from the Netherlands. An official statement on the SSCS website said that, “The Ady Gil is believed to be sinking and chances of salvage are very grim.” Since, the boat has been confirmed as sunken. Responsible for the heinous act is a ship that was accompanying the Nisshin Maru whaler at the time.

“The Sea Shepherd extremism is becoming more violent […] Their actions are nothing but felonious behavior,” the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), which manages the Asian nation's bogus scientific program, said in statement released a short time ago. The SSCS sends boats to the Antarctic every year, in an attempt to stop the Japanese from having their way in protected marine sanctuaries each year. Recently, New Zealand and Australia also joined the fight, but on a scientific level.