Greenpeace chasing whaling ship

Greenpeace campaigners are continuing their confrontation with a Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean.

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza is now chasing the Japanese whaling fleet north away from Antarctica after successfully frustrating much of yesterday's hunt, spokesman New Zealander Phil Lloyd said from onboard the ship.

The whaling fleet's mother ship, the Nisshin Maru, started heading north yesterday evening, Mr Lloyd said.

"In previous years they've been able to out run us and lose us, but our new ship Esperanza is fast enough to keep up with them."

Mr Lloyd said both ships were steaming north at about 15 knots.

"We don't know where they're going, but the good news is they're not whaling," he said.

The New Zealand Government yesterday released a damning report on Japan's whaling programme, saying it lacked scientific credibility.

Conservation Minister Chris Carter said under the programme now underway in the Southern Ocean, known as JARPA II, Japan was going to more than double the number of whales it killed.

"Those whales will be killed inside the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary and well outside Japan's own territorial waters," he said in a statement.

"For any nation to contemplate this kind of programme, it should at the very least have a robust scientific justification. Japan does not."

On Wednesday two Greenpeace boats tracked down the Nisshin Maru off the Antarctic coast and watched a whale being harpooned. They then attempted to stop the boat loading the dead whale.

One of the smaller Japanese capture boats later rammed one of the Greenpeace ships to try and push it clear of the whale loading process.

Mr Lloyd said that the stricken whale took a long time to die.

It was the first time he and many other crew members had witnessed a whale being killed, and it was difficult to come to terms with, he said.

"We know that's why we're here, but when you see it it's another story," he said. "We are in a place of such incredible beauty, full of the most amazing marine life -- a whale sanctuary -- and alongside that you witness the most brutal and unnecessary slaughter. Usually they are doing this with no-one to watch them."

The Fisheries Agency of Japan announced earlier this year that it intended doubling its whale take to 1000, including the threatened fin whales -- the second largest whales in the world.

The agency describes its whaling operation as scientific, which allows it to exploit an International Whaling Commission loophole, but the meat from the whales will end up on the shelves of Japanese markets as an expensive luxury item.

This anti-whaling campaign -- one of Greenpeace's biggest -- comes following a meeting last month of 13 southern hemisphere countries, including New Zealand, to strengthen promotion of whale sanctuaries in the South Atlantic and Pacific.

- NZPA