The Sea Shepherd flagship, the Steve Irwin, docked in Brisbane late last month for an extensive refit.

High fuel costs to 'kill off' Japanese whaling

They've been pursued by environmental activists through the Southern Ocean for years, but in an ironic twist, the rising cost of fuel could just be the undoing of Japanese whalers, the head of the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling foundation believes.
"The entire Antarctic campaign will cost us a couple million dollars but our biggest expense isfuel as fuel prices increase," Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd's flagship Steve Irwin vessel, told brisbanetimes.com.au in an exclusive interview yesterday.
"It's sort of a good thing though, because it increases the fuel prices for the whalers and they are paying a lot more than we are.
"As long as we can keep the Japanese whaling fleet on the run, we will continue to cost them money and we will continue to save whales.''
Captain Watson, who co-founded Greenpeace, said Japanese whalers had only taken half their quota of the sea giants for the last two seasons, and the company behind the controversial practice was now in debt to the Japanese government to the tune of more than $US50 million.
"I don't think they can go three years in a row with these kinds of losses. All we need to do is get down there keep chasing them and prevent them from killing whales," he said.
"We're not going to surrender, we're not going to retreat they're going to have to pull out.
"I think we've beaten them."
The Steve Irwin has been docked in Brisbane since late last month and will be undergoing a significant refit at the Forcgas Cairncross dockyard at Morningside over the next four months ahead of another planned departure to the Southern Ocean to protect endangered whales in December.

"We've come to Brisbane to complete refit work on the Steve Irwin, put on a new helicopter deck and get everything ready to leave in four months to return to the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary." Captain Watson said.

He said that the group would act aggressively to protect whales and would not rule out a repeat of the dramatic scenes early this year, when two activists boarded a Japanese vessel.

"It's quite possible we will have those kind of interception tactics, we don't go there to protest we go there to uphold international conservation law..

"We're simply going down there to enforce what the governments of the world won't do - enforce the law - and if that means boarding them that is one of the tactics we will use."