Greenpeace 'to turn up heat'
2006-02-02 14:07
Cape Town - Greenpeace activists who have just completed a 73-day anti-whaling cruise in the Southern Ocean said on Thursday the organisation would now turn up the heat on companies with whaling links.
They were speaking at a media briefing at Cape Town harbour where the two Greenpeace vessels Esperanza and Arctic Sunrise arrived on Wednesday after their confrontation with the Japanese whaling fleet.
"We are carrying the fight to the boardrooms," said Greenpeace whaling project leader John Bowler. "To really spread the campaign, we are taking it from the high seas to the high streets, because whaling does not happen on its own. There are companies behind it."
Contracts cancelled
Leader of the Southern Ocean expedition Shane Rattenbury said Japan's second largest seafood company, Nissui, owned a one third share in the company operating the whaling fleet, and had links with seafood businesses across the world.
Nissui fully owned Gortons in the United States and Blue Water Seafoods in Canada, and had a half share in Sealords, a key supplier to Heinz, Nestle and McDonald's in Europe.
"We are determined to let consumers know that the money they are spending on brands they trust is fuelling the whaling industry in the Southern Ocean," he said.
He said one Argentinian seafood company had already cancelled contracts with Nissui because of pressure from Greenpeace supporters.
The publicity that the Southern Ocean expedition had enjoyed would give new impetus to the corporate campaign, he said.
The expedition's first goal had been to secure photographic and video images of the hunt to tell the world what was "really happening", which it had done.
"The second thing we wanted to do was to harass the whalers, to slow down their hunting process and to stop them catching whales," he said.
Fleet slowed down
"We didn't stop them completely. Clearly they did still catch whales. While we were there we saw at least 123 Minke whales being harpooned, and that was a minimum number, because we didn't see them all.
"But we did slow the fleet down by putting ourselves on the line, by being out there in the small inflatable boats between the whale and the harpoon... and we were able to ensure that some whales did continue to swim free."
Rattenbury said the Arctic Sunrise would undergo drydock repairs in Cape Town to repair damage sustained in a collision with the mother vessel of the Japanese fleet.
The vessels would then head up the West African coast to confront pirate fishing fleets from other parts of the world who were stealing fish there and driving local fish populations to the edge of extinction.
- SAPA