14 DAY TRIAL // In a press release issued yesterday, green group Sea Shepherd announced that the three vessels taking part in the organization's latest anti-whaling campaign, i.e. Operation Relentless, had located all the Japanese whalers that entered the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary earlier this year.
As previously reported, the Japanese whale poaching fleet sailed to these waters looking to kill over 1,000 marine mammals, supposedly for research purposes.
In its press release, Sea Shepherd details that The Steve Irwin, The Bob Barker and The Sam Simon are currently trailing the whalers, and are doing their best to keep them from slaughtering whales.
“The Sea Shepherd Fleet has located all five vessels of the Japanese whale poaching fleet, including the Japanese factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, inside the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,” the organization writes on its website.
“The Steve Irwin, The Bob Barker and The Sam Simon are now in pursuit of the whaling fleet, driving them away from their intended poaching grounds, disrupting their illegal hunt, and preparing to shut down their whale-killing operations,” it adds.
The bad news is that, by the time the Sea Shepherd vessels intercepted the whaling fleet, four whales had already been killed by the Japanese crew.
A video released by the organization and made available to you below this article shows the bodies of three minke whales lying on the deck of the Nisshin Maru.
According to the organization, one other whale was being butchered at the time when the footage was shot. Hence, the Nisshin Maru's deck is covered in blood.
The Sea Shepherd conservationists promise that, now that they have located the whalers, no more such slaughters will take place.
“When ‘science’ requires you to grotesquely bloat up the bodies of protected whales, stroll across a deck smeared with their blood, hauling their body parts with hooks and chains, and discarding their remains over the side, then that ‘science’ has no place in the 21st Century,” reads a statement made by Sid Chakravarty, the captain of The Steve Irwin.
Furthermore, “The Nisshin Maru is an out-and-out butcher ship and a floating butchery has no place in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Sea Shepherd will remain relentless in driving these fake, desperate and subverting ‘scientists’ back to Tokyo.”
