Sea Shepherd's Operation Relentless Prepares to Launch

Greetings once again everyone. Tonight I'll be looking at the upcoming Sea Shepherd Antarctic Whale Defense Campaign entitled Operation Relentless. For those of you who do not know what Sea Shepherd is, check out this history of them on their webpage http://www.seashepherd.org/who-we-are/our-history.html. Operation Relentless will be Sea Shepherd's 10th whale defense campaign in the Southern Ocean. All of Sea Shepherd's vessels are arriving at their home ports in preparation for the campaign. The known ships that will be heading down to the Southern Ocean are...


The Steve Irwin


The Bob Barker


The Brigitte Bardot


The Sam Simon

These four vessels will, later this month make their way down to the Southern Ocean in an attempt to prevent the Japanese Whaling Fleet from killing whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Prior to the campaign, there will be a major court ruling coming from the International Court of Justice that will state whether or not they find Japan's whaling activity to be commercial or not. If the court does rule in favor of Australia, who claims that the whaling vessels are using a loophole in a moratorium on commercial whaling that allows whales to be killed for scientific research, then all eyes will shift to Japan to see if they decide to break international law. The loophole the Japanese are using allows the meat from killed whales to be sold as opposed to being wasted. Even if the International Court rules in favor of Japan a serious issue still stands. How can anyone legally kill whales in a whale sanctuary. It is illegal to kill sharks in shark sanctuaries. It's illegal to kill birds in bird sanctuaries, so why is it okay for Japan to kill whales in a whale sanctuary controlled by Australia?

Last year the Japanese set out to kill
935 Minke whales
50 Endangered Fin whales
50 Humpback whales
A total of 1,035 whales.

Personally my question is why in the world do so many whales have to be killed for research? I highly doubt 935 minke whales need to die to get any kind of real research.... Anyway. Last year, due to Sea Shepherd's intervention, the Japanese whaling fleet managed to kill.

266 Minke whales
1 Endangered Fin whale
0 Humpback whales
A total of 267 whales or 26% of their quota. 768 whales saved by Sea Shepherd.

In order for the whaling fleet to profit they need to achieve 80% of their quota, which they missed by a long shot. Currently the whaling fleet is roughly 200 million dollars in debt.

If the whaling fleet returns to the Southern Ocean this year, you can rest assure that Sea Shepherd will be on their tails. Operation Relentless is set to launch in just a few short weeks. As I did for the past two years, I will be following along and bringing you guys any news I can find about the mission in the Southern Ocean. We will not stop till the killing stops!