Operation Leviathan podcast 6: Confrontation part 1
On 9 February, Neptune’s Navy located the Japanese whaling fleet’s factory ship, the Nisshin Maru (”the Death Star for the whales”- Captain Paul Watson). The Sea Shepherd crew successfully delivered six liters of butyric acid (a harmless, horrid-smelling substance found in rancid butter) onto the ship’s flensing deck. The scent cleared the flensing deck and stopped all work of cutting up whales. Sea Shepherd crew in Zodiacs also nailed plates to the drain outlets on the Nisshin Maru that spill blood from the flensing deck into the ocean. This forces the blood back up onto the flensing decks. The plates were secured by Hilt nail guns that drive nails through solid steel.
There was a pod of whales in the area who fled during the confrontation and are now safe from the whalers.
Sea Shepherd was able to evade the Japanese satellite tracking system by taking its ships through heavy ice, where a ship’s wake cannot be traced.
Operation Leviathan is a campaign underway by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to physically intervene with Japanese pirate whaling operations in the Southern Ocean. Sea Shepherd is using two ships, the Farley Mowat and the Robert Hunter (previously codenamed “Leviathan”), over 60 international volunteer crewmembers, a helicopter (”Kookaburra”), and fast zodiac inflatable boats. The whalers murder quota for the winter of early 2007(which is actually summer in Antarctica) altogether consists of up to a thousand Minke, fin and humpback whales.
The Sea Shepherd crews are risking their lives to protect the sentient, extremely intelligent mammals who share the planet with us.
The podcasts can also be downloaded at:
www.whalesafebeer.com
For more information about Operation Leviathan, visit the Sea Shepherd website:
www.seashepherd.org
Duration : 0:3:2
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