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A small
boat from the Sea Shepherd vessel, Steve Irwin, makes a
reconnaissance trip
past the Japanese whaling ship the Shonan Maru #2
near Freemantle in this
handout picture released to Reuters on January 8, 2012.
(Credit:
Reuters/Sea Shepherd/Handout)
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(Reuters) -
Three Australian environmental activists were detained on board a Japanese
whaling ship on Sunday after boarding in protest at Japan's annual whale cull
in the Antarctic, anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said.
The three
activists from Forest Rescue, an Australian group specializing in direct action
to prevent logging, boarded the ship early on Sunday with assistance from the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Sea Shepherd said in a statement.
U.S.-based
Sea Shepherd is tailing Japan's whaling fleet as it heads towards the Southern
Ocean to try to prevent the cull.
The
statement described the activists as "prisoners now detained on a Japanese
whaler."
Speaking
while en route to the Antarctic, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson told Reuters
by satellite phone that the activists were still on board the Shonan Maru 2. He
said the Japanese vessel had been sent to disrupt Sea Shepherd's longstanding
campaign to stop the cull.
There had
been no contact from the Japanese and the activists' radios appeared to have
been seized, Watson said from aboard the Steve Irwin, one of two ships heading
south with the aim of preventing the hunt from taking place.
"The
Shonan Maru won't talk to us. They don't respond to our radio calls,"
Watson said. "They are chasing us."
A New
Zealand-based spokesman for Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, which
coordinates the annual hunt, confirmed the three men were on the Japanese boat
and uninjured. He did not rule out that they might be taken to Japan.
"The
three men are on board," spokesman Glenn Inwood told Reuters. "They
are being questioned now and they remain on the vessel."
The
Japanese boat, he said, was 40 km off the Australian coast when the trio
boarded it.
Forest
Rescue spokesman Michael Montgomery had earlier said the action was to protest
at inaction by the Australian government to stop the hunt and to demand the
departure of the whalers from Australian waters.
"We
don't need to kill these beautiful creatures any more," he told Reuters.
Sea
Shepherd said the three activists came in a boat from Australia's western coast
and approached the Shonan Maru 2 in the dark, with assistance from two Sea
Shepherd boats.
"The
three negotiated their way past the razor wire and spikes and over the rails of
the Japanese whaling vessel," the statement said. "They are being
held in Australian territorial waters by an invading Japanese vessel containing
armed Japanese military personnel."
They
carried with them a message reading: "Return us to shore in Australia and
then remove yourself from our waters."
Whaling was
banned under a 1986 moratorium, but Japan continues to hunt hundreds of whales
annually under a loophole that allows whaling for "scientific"
purposes.
(Editing by Ron Popeski)
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An undated handout photograph released by Sea Shepherd Conservation
showing Japanese fishermen slaughtering dolphins in blood-soaked water in
Taiji, Japan. Though Dophins were herded into the cove made famous by an
Oscar-winning documentary, none were killed this year.
(EPA/Sea Shepherd Conservation)
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Cove cover-up ... tarpaulins hide the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan
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Cruel ... filming shows spike rammed into animal
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