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Southern Ocean, January 8, 2000: After tracking the Japanese whaling fleet through the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary during a week of bleak weather conditions Greenpeace has today again launched inflatable boats to disrupt their illegal activities.

Greenpeace has been tracking the fleet since December 20, 1999, throughout the Christmas/New Year holiday period, and has since then successfully disrupted illegal whaling on seven occasions.

Today three inflatable boats were launched and interfered with the transfer of whales from the hunting vessels Yusshin Maru and Toshin Maru, to the factory ship Nisshin Maru. As hunting ships can only carry a limited number of harpooned whales at one time, disrupting the transfer is an effective way to prevent further hunting.

By hunting whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, Japan is in violation of articles 65 and 120 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, (UNCLOS =96 adopted in 1982) which requires all states to cooperate with the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the matter of whale protection. Each year the IWC passes a resolution condemning Japan for whaling in the Sanctuary and calls on it to stop its whaling program.

The IWC formally declared the Southern Ocean around Antarctica a whale sanctuary in 1994, and the area has been off limits to commercial whaling ever since. Despite this, Japan has a target to kill 440 Minke whales inside the Sanctuary this year, and the whale meat produced during the hunt will be sold on the open market in Japan.

The activists currently inside the inflatables are: Daniel Rizzotti (Argentina), Andrew Davies (USA) Jaume Espina (Spain), Zeger Zel (Netherlands), Frank Kamp (Netherlands) and Richard Pearson (Australia), Deb McIntyre (Australia) and David De Jong (Netherlands).