The international association Sea Shepherd, best known for their fight against intensive fishing and whale hunting, just announced that it is putting an end to its yearly campaign of 'harassing' Japanese whale hunters in the Southern Ocean.
Source: Sea Shepherd
The organization, which has been active for around 40 years, has been involved in more recent years in the fight against Asian whaling boats to stop them from hunting these vulnerable creatures, or at least to slow them down. Several thousand whales, orcas, and dolphins have been saved as a result of their work.However, the program will not take place in 2017 due to a lack of funds. Paul Watson, the founder of Sea Shepherd, explains in a statement:
The Japanese whalers have been exposed, humiliated and most importantly have been denied thousands of lives that we have spared from their deadly harpoons. Thousands of whales are now swimming and reproducing that would now be dead if not for our interventions. [...] What we discovered is that Japan is now employing military surveillance to watch Sea Shepherd ship movements in real time by satellite and if they know where our ships are at any given moment, they can easily avoid us. [...] We cannot compete with their military grade technology. This year Japan escalated their resistance with the passing of new anti-terrorism laws, some of which are specifically designed to condemn Sea Shepherd tactics. For the first time ever, they have stated they may send their military to defend their illegal whaling activities.
Source: Kyodo/AP
While the association will not be continuing their program this year, this does not signify an end in their fight against whaling. They plan on using all the resources available to them to improve their programand establish new and better strategies.Paul Watkinson and his team have announced that they will continue to track and punish Japanese, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic whalers:
We will never quit until the abomination of whaling is abolished forever by anyone, anywhere, for any reason.
[caption id="attachment_39541" align="alignnone" width="757"]
Paul Watson and Peter Hammarstedt during the Musashi mission in 2008. Source: Sea Shepherd[/caption]
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