Group hits out whalers
2009-02-07 17:04
Sydney - Anti-whaling activists involved in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship near Antarctica accused whalers of using water cannon and acoustic weapons against them and vowed on Saturday to further obstruct the hunt.
The US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which Tokyo sharply rebuked after Friday's collision, also said whalers had thrown golf balls and chunks of metal at its ship the Steve Irwin.
"The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin continues to stand guard behind the Japanese floating abattoir called the Nisshin Maru, despite repeated assaults by frustrated and increasingly violent Japanese whalers," Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said.
"The three Japanese harpoon boats are not in the area but the Sea Shepherd crew is prepared to obstruct them should they return," he said in a statement.
On Friday Tokyo blamed the group for the collision with the harpoon ship Yushin Maru 2, accusing it of violence. The protest ship collided with the vessel in an attempt to block the transfer of a dead whale up the slipway of the factory ship Nisshin Maru.
Watson said Japan's claims the group used "acid" against its fleet, in fact referred to rotten butter.
"They are accusing the Sea Shepherd crew of throwing rotten butter (which the Japanese refer to as 'acid') at them yet the whalers are throwing golf balls and chunks of metal at the Steve Irwin crew.
"In addition, the Japanese are blasting the Sea Shepherd crew with water cannons and long range acoustical weapons - a sonic gun that causes disorientation, nausea and deafness."
Japan's whaling fleet is in Antarctic waters for an annual hunt aimed at catching about 900 whales. Although Japan officially stopped whaling under a 1986 global moratorium, it continues to take hundreds of whales under a loophole allowing whaling for research purposes.
Much of the meat ends up on supermarket shelves and dinner tables.