MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Japan sets off whaling season; ignores Australia

Japan's whaling fleet mother ship, Nisshin Maru, has slipped out of port on the way to a full-scale Antarctic hunt, despite repeated attempts by the Australian Government to curtail the killing.

Instead of departing with the usual high ceremony, the world's last factory whaling ship steamed out of Innoshima in southern Japan Monday, Greenpeace activists said. "Constant pressure on Japan's whaling industry by both Greenpeace and the international community has reduced the fleet to sneaking out of port in a fog of crisis and scandal, desperate to avoid attention" said Greenpeace International Whales Coordinator Sara Holden. Greenpeace will not send out a ship to trail the Japanese fleet, but rival conservation group Sea Shepherd plans to. A spokesman for Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, Glenn Inwood, said he could neither confirm nor deny the departure, to ensure the whaling fleet's security from illegal protests. Nisshin Maru is central to Japan's plans, reconfirmed by Mr Inwood, for a hunt of up to 935 minke and 50 fin whales from polar waters south-east of Australia. The departure is a blow to reconciliation talks in the International Whaling Commission. With the talks under way, the Australian Government has called on Japan to suspend the hunt. Increased bilateral diplomacy led by a special Australian ministerial envoy, Sandy Hollway, also has been rebuffed. Pressure is now mounting on Australia to make good its threat of international legal action, and to send the customs patrol ship Oceanic Viking south again to monitor the whaling. "Australia could apply for an injunction to stop the whaling within 14 days if it went to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea," said Darren Kindleysides, campaigns manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. This week also Australia unveiled a multi million dollar scientific research programme aimed at persuading Japan that it is not necessary to kill the mammals in order to study them. "Australia does not believe that we need to kill whales to understand them" said Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett on unveiling the 3 million USD program. "Modern-day research uses genetic and molecular techniques as well as satellite tags, acoustic methods and aerial surveys rather than grenade-tipped harpoons" he added. The funding for the Australian program, part of a 6.15 million USD package of measures, will be used for research and scientific partnerships with other nations -- including Japan -- which will be invited to join the non-lethal research programme. The package also includes money to develop commercial whale watching in the Pacific and an independent assessment of Japan's whaling programme. Garrett said the Southern Ocean Research Partnership would be an international, multi-disciplinary research collaboration that would focus on using sophisticated scientific techniques to research whales. "We want to see a scientifically driven engagement with these beautiful animals, not the large-scale targeting of these animals for killing so-called in the name of science," he said.