A fast new anti-whaling ship will pursue Japanese vessels on their annual Antarctic whale hunt, raising the chance of violent clashes in the Southern Ocean.
Two Japanese whaling ships have just departed on their annual hunt with a plan of killing 333 minke whales. They will join two other vessels and a mother ship for a hunt lasting several months.
An international moratorium on whale hunting has been in force since 1986, but Japan uses a loophole that it says permits killing whales for scientific research.
Sea Shepherd Global, the anti-whaling campaign group, has confronted the whalers many times in the past but with limited effect because its ships were generally slower.
Now it plans to pursue the Japanese fleet using the Ocean Warrior,