14 DAY TRIAL // This past Sunday, a Sea Shepherd ship collided with a Japanese whaling vessel in the Southern Ocean. More precisely, the organization's The Bob Barker and the Yushin Maru 3 crashed into one another, and both sustained minor damage as a result of this incident.
On its website, the organization maintains that this vessel, together with The Steve Irwin, was attacked by the Japanese whaling ships whose crew tried to damage them to such an extent that they would no longer be able to follow them around and stop them from killing whales.
Sea Shepherd goes on to say that, although just one collision between its ships and the Japanese whalers occurred this past February 2, The Bob Barker and The Steve Irwin came dangerously close to getting hit on several occasions.
Thus, it was only through some extreme maneuvers that the conservationists managed to keep both themselves and their vessels safe, the organization adds.
“At approximately 0650 AEDT today, The Bob Barker, was hit by the Japanese whaling fleet’s harpoon vessel, the Yushin Maru No. 3 as the harpoon vessel crossed in front of the bow of the Sea Shepherd ship,” Sea Shepherd writes in a press release issued yesterday.
Furthermore, “Prior to that collision, Captain Peter Hammarstedt of The Bob Barker and Captain Siddarth Chakravarty of The Steve Irwin had been able to steer out of the path of the encroaching harpoon vessels, only narrowly avoiding numerous potential collisions as the vessels moved in a circuit, weaving through and around the Sea Shepherd ships.”
Footage of the collision was shared with the public, and is made available in the video below.
According to the conservationists, the Japanese whalers also attempted using steel cables to damage the Sea Shepherd ships' propellers, and tried to use both projectiles and water cannons to keep The Steve Irwin's and The Bob Barker's small boat crews from cutting said cables.
Interestingly enough, ABC News tells us that, as far as the Japanese government is concerned, the conservationists were the ones who attacked the Japanese whalers and not the other way around.
Thus, high officials in Japan maintain that The Bob Barker and The Steve Irwin were the ones that deliberately tried to crash into the Japanese ships in order to sabotage their whaling activity.
