Monday, December 26, 2011

Sea Shepherd Finds the Japanese Whaling Fleet

Using drone aircraft, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has located the Japanese Factory Ship that travels with other vessels that supply it with whale carcasses to process. The contact was reported by a Reuters article at Yahoo.com titled "Sea Shepherd says drones find, photograph Japan's whaling fleet"

The Japanese ship was located west of Perth, far from the waters nearer Antarctica in which they usually do their hunting and I don't remember drones being used before.

Hopefully the planes will enable more frequent contact with the fleet and a shorter to non-existent whaling season at least in the waters off the southern continent.

Contributors have helped the society to be more effective in the last few years via the use of newer boats and now the planes.

Reduced catches and time in the Southern Ocean by the whalers seem to be the result.

Hopefully, this trend keeps up. Please see the Reuters report linked above for their more detailed report on what transpired in the last few days.