A Peeved Australia Sends Boat to Fetch Anti-Whaling Activists
It probably wasn’t how certain members of the Australian government pictured spending their week. But since three Australian activists traveling with the anti-whaling Sea Shepherd Conservation Society illegally boarded a Japanese ship over the weekend, the government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard has spent the last few days trying to secure their freedom.
It worked, but Canberra isn’t pleased. On Tuesday, after days of trying to make contact with the Shonan Maru 2, Attorney General Nicola Roxon said Japan had agreed to release the three men, aged 47, 44, and 27. By Wednesday, an Australian government vessel was reportedly on its way to pick them up in a mission Roxon said could cost Australian taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. “I would very much like these three men to consider what contribution they would make, or the Sea Shepherd for that matter,” Roxon was quoted as saying in the Herald Sun. But, she added, “I’m not going to be holding my breath.”
The episode is the latest in a high-stakes eco-drama that has been playing out in Antarctic waters for the better part of the last decade. Each winter, Japan sends its whaling fleet deep into the southern hemisphere to hunt whales under its scientific whaling program, and each winter, a varying configuration of Sea Shepherd boats is right behind them, using sundry tactics - stink bombs, drones, bad press - to pressure Japan to call off the hunt. Sea Shepherd’s 2010-2011 campaign (Operation “No Compromise”) claimed a big success: After several run-ins with Sea Shepherd boats, Japan turned its vessels around early with a fraction of its intended catch. Though there has been a global moratorium on commercial whaling since 1986, Japan continues to hunt whales in a loophole in the laws that permits whaling for scientific purposes.