Greenpeace battles Japan whalers in Antarctic waters AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
SYDNEY, DECEMBER 21: A Greenpeace campaigner dived into icy Antarctic waters early today in a vain attempt to prevent a Japanese factory ship from loading a harpooned whale, the environmental group said. The incident happened as the crews of two inflatable boats from the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise harassed ships of a Japanese whaling fleet hunting minke whales in the Southern Ocean. The Greenpeace campaign is aimed at focusing global attention on the Japanese vessels it says are illegally hunting minke whales inside the internationally recognised whale sanctuary that surrounds Antarctica. The inflatables launched from the Arctic Sunrise in the early morning drove two hours across heaving seas to try to prevent the factory ship Nisshin-maru loading the harpooned whale from a catcher ship. Greenpeace spokesman Dima Litvinov told AFP that at one stage during the incident the two Japanese ships were spraying the crews of the inflatables with six high-powered water guns. ``One of our people dived intothe ocean and swam towards the harpooned whale, but unfortunately failed to stop it being loaded before he was picked up,'' said Litvinov. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica was formally declared a whale sanctuary by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1994 to put the region off limits to commercial whaling. Despite repeated requests by the IWC to cancel its whaling program Japan began hunting in the sanctuary last month, intending to kill 440 minke whales (up from 389 last year) as part of a so-called ``scientific research program'', Greenpeace said. ``By ignoring the IWC's requests to stop whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary Japan is in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which requires countries to co-operate with the IWC in the conservation of whales.'' Greenpeace also called on national governments to follow the lead of Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand in demanding that Japan cancel its Antarctic whaling program. Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.