Short of fuel, the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin is on its way back to Australia with just over a week left of the three-month Japanese whaling season.
The activist group says it has made a 'significant impact' on Japan's catch quota, with an estimated 500 or more whales saved by its harassment of the whaling fleet.
But as the Steve Irwin heads for port, a big issue of a different kind is brewing over Sea Shepherd's claim that the ship's captain, Paul Watson, escaped narrowly with his life after being shot on 7 March, while the Steve Irwin was close to and in parallel with the factory ship Nisshin Maru.
'Captain Paul Watson was struck by a bullet in the chest. Fortunately the bullet was stopped by his Kevlar vest,' stated Sea Shepherd.
'The bullet struck just above the heart and mangled Captain Watson's anti-poaching badge, which was worn on his sweater underneath the Kevlar vest.'
The Steve Irwin's doctor was, said Sea Shepherd, 'emphatic that without protection, the shot would have been lethal'.
Sea Shepherd stated that the shot was fired 'by what must have been an expert marksman at Paul's chest'. The ships' 'high level of movement' in 'stormy seas' indicated further that the shot 'must have been fired by an expert'.
The claimed shooting was accompanied, said Sea Shepherd, by 'at least seven flash grenades' lobbed aboard the Steve Irwin by Japanese Coastguard officers, causing minor injuries to two Steve Irwin crew members.
Four days earlier, Steve Irwin crew tossed on to the Nisshin Maru's decks some two dozen bottles of rancid butter, as well as a hard-to-remove, slippery liquid intended to complicate the work of cutting up whale carcasses.
The Japanese government, while acknowledging that thunder flashes were launched, has denied that shots were fired. According to ABC News, Tomohiko Taniguchi, Japan's Foreign Ministry Spokesman, said: 'Paul Watson may say what he wants to say, but this is not what happened.'
Glenn Inwood, speaking for Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, accused Sea Shepherd of dishonest fabrication.
According to Australian Associated Press (AAA), he said that Captain Watson had 'bought a Kevlar jacket, shot it at close range and took it with him to the Antarctic just to pull it from his bag of public relations tricks at the right time'.
'We challenge them to go to the Australian Federal Police and let them examine the bullet...They [the police] would get a sense pretty quickly of what [type of] gun it came from,' said Inwood.
In response Paul Watson is reported to have told AAA that he would be happy to co-operate with the federal police and provide the bullet for analysis if required. |
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