Posted on 20/12/2001

Japanese Shoot To Kill

SOUTHERN OCEAN, December 17, 2001 (ENS) - Greenpeace has released photos of
Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean attempting to drive their whale hunt
protesters away with high powered water cannons.

Today, as the activists drove their inflatable boats between a Japanese
whaling boat and its factory ship Nisshin Maru to slow the transfer of a
harpooned minke whale, the whalers shot them with powerful water cannons,
targeting the boat drivers. The activists from the Greenpeace ship, MV
Arctic Sunrise were in danger

One Greenpeace crewmember, a Canadian called Mississippi Jesse, was hit in
the face with spray from the water cannon as he piloted an inflatable near
the Nisshin Maru. He described the incident, "The pressure against the side
of my face was intense, as a fire hose was positioned half a meter away. I
tried to steer the boat with only the corner of one eye, and managed to get
us next to the whale that was now about to be freed from the catcher and
brought aboard the Nisshin Maru. "They let go the line fastening the
whale," he said, "and this graceful leviathan was hauled in seconds through
the sea, and up the ramp to a miserable fate. It may be frustrating, but
for every whale caught, it only instills more resolve in our crew to do
whatever we can to stop the illegal hunt of whales in the Southern Ocean."

The Japanese hunt minke whales in the Southern Ocean each year under a
self-imposed annual quota of 440 whales. While Greenpeace and other whale
conservation organizations call the hunt illegal, the Japanese government
maintains the minke whale hunt is done legally for research purposes under
a regulation of the International Whaling Commission. Shortly after the
water cannon was used against the activists piloting inflatables, the
Greenpeace helicopter located another catcher boat in the act of chasing a
whale and took unique footage of a whale being hit with the harpoon, "the
first time such a hit has been witnessed in more than a decade," the
organization said. "We watched the whalers chase the whale for more than 40
minutes, repeatedly firing its harpoon and missing up to five times.
Finally they hit it with the sixth harpoon," said Phil Robinson, New
Zealand helicopter pilot. The Arctic Sunrise intercepted the whalers at
63°S, 52°E after tracking them through 11 miles of pack ice. The
inflatables were recalled when the weather began to close in.
Crew members on board the inflatables were from Argentina, Japan, the
Netherlands, Tunisia, Canada, Turkey, France, the UK, Australia and Greece.

Speaking from the Arctic Sunrise, after returning from the inflatable,
Japanese campaigner Yuko Hirono said, "There is nothing scientific about
this whaling. Once the whalers found open water they set to with a
determination to catch every whale in the area. This is commercial whaling,
purely for profit." She called on Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
to stop allowing the Fisheries Agency to misrepresent commercial whaling as
legitimate research.