Greenpeace confronts whalers
A Greenpeace ship found the Japanese whaling fleet off Antarctica today, the environmental group said – setting off this year’s round of a cat-and-mouse contest that has become a sometimes dangerous feature of the hunting debate.
Greenpeace’s Esperanza confronted the Japanese whalers in the Antarctic Ocean after a 10-day search, and the hunting ships immediately steamed off with the activists in pursuit, the environmentalists said.
Japan dispatched its whaling fleet to Antarctica in November to kill about 1,000 whales “for scientific purposes”. Anti-whaling nations and activists say that is a front for commercial whaling.
Karli Thomas, a Greenpeace spokeswoman aboard Esperanza, said: “The first thing they did when we approached them was to scatter and run. We stayed with the factory ship the Nisshin Maru, which is always the major target.”
