By Chris Lischewski, Shue Wing Chan and In-Soo Cho

Over the past few years, Greenpeace has launched numerous crusades targeting our companies for what we do — fish for tuna. Each of its campaigns is more baffling than the one before.

In their latest campaign against tuna, Greenpeace activists have dressed up as bloodthirsty sharks to ask why a company would kill Disney’s Nemo, and they’ve produced a video featuring one of our brand icons being stabbed in the eye.

This might be attention-grabbing. But it’s not exactly constructive dialogue and it isn’t intellectually serious. No one comes away any more knowledgeable about tuna and sustainable fishing.

Unfortunately, this attack on canned tuna isn’t about science. It’s about fund raising, and Greenpeace has discovered a recipe for success: Target something that’s easily recognizable (like tuna), make some scary claims in the media, parade around in funny costumes — and start raking in the donations. It’s a recipe that Greenpeace has perfected over the past two decades.

But Greenpeace isn’t helping to conserve the world’s tuna stocks. In fact, the campaign against tuna fishing is doing just the opposite. It has become a sideshow that is trying to sabotage a serious sustainability partnership between dedicated conservationists and the fishing community.

Greenpeace has rejected numerous offers to discuss the future of tuna fishing by joining the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation’s (ISSF) Environmental Stakeholder Committee. This organization is made up of scientists, industry leaders and environmentalists who seek to undertake science-based initiatives for the long-term conservation and sustainable use of tuna stocks. The ISSF’s strategic plan (“Make the Commitment: A Global Improvement Plan for Better Practices in Tuna Fisheries”) outlines our commitment to:

– Control and reduce global tuna fishing capacity.

– Mitigate bycatch (or accidental netting of other species) through the development of cleaner fishing methods and gear technologies.

– Eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing for tuna.

– Expand data support to ensure that everything caught by fishers is accurately reported.

– Improve compliance with monitoring, control and surveillance mechanisms that are transparent and timely.

– Improve the health of all tuna stocks.

Our companies have joined with tuna companies around the globe to invest millions of dollars on ISSF-directed research and technologies to limit fishing’s impact on sensitive marine ecosystems. And ISSF is working with expert representatives from various stakeholder groups and scientific bodies — biodiversity advocates, ichthyologists, marine fisheries scientists, turtle management preservationists, seafood supply-chain experts, seabird campaigners, and sustainable seafood advisers.

Greenpeace activists, meanwhile, are spending their time — and donors’ money — producing violent cartoons and dressing up in Halloween costumes.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the American Heart Association stress that consuming a wide variety of seafood is integral to a healthy diet. But Americans eat less than half of the eight to 12 ounces of seafood, two to three times a week, that the Agriculture Department recommends. Why? In part because Greenpeace fabricates and then perpetuates stories claiming that the seafood we love most is going extinct. While consumers might be led to think they’re saving the planet by forgoing tuna, they’re really just jeopardizing their health for no scientifically-sound reason.

Omega-3-rich fish lowers risks of cardiac, cardiovascular and eye diseases, and it is essential to the healthy neurological development of children in utero. Canned tuna is the least expensive and most readily available source of omega-3s in the U.S. According to 2007 research from the Nutritional Neuroscience division at the National Institutes of Health, children whose mothers eat no fish during pregnancy are 29% more likely to have abnormally low IQs.

Sustainable fisheries management is vital to our business, our employees, human nutrition and the planet’s ecology. No one has more reason to keep tuna flourishing in the oceans than the people who depend on those tuna for their livelihoods. We are taking a principled stand against any organization that threatens this progress, derides our industry, or knowingly disregards public health.

—

Mr. Lischewski is president and CEO of Bumble Bee Foods. Mr. Chan is president and CEO of Chicken of the Sea. Mr. Cho is president and CEO of StarKist Co.

(c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company

By Adam Spangler, Dow Jones & Co, Image: © Louise Gubb/Greenpeace

At 0700 hours, June 17, 100 Miles off the coast of Greenland, a black inflatable speedboat splashed into the icy water off the bow of a large, repurposed Russian fireboat. Kumi Naidoo, the charismatic leader of Greenpeace International, climbed down into it. As the engine revved up and the high-speed Zodiac started pounding through the waves, Naidoo recalled clutching a bow rope tightly with one hand, and with the other holding a banner demanding, “Stop Arctic Destruction.”

Speeding past Danish naval patrol boats, the inflatable reached its target, a towering 53,000-ton oil rig. As Naidoo and his Nordic action coordinator, Ulvar Arnkvaern, started to climb a steel ladder that stretched 100 feet up to the platform, a high-pressure fire hose hammered freezing water down on their heads.

Soaked to the skin and shivering violently, Naidoo and Arnkvaern fought their way up, step by step. When they reached the deck of the oil rig, Naidoo announced to the crewmen who surrounded him that he was there to hand over a petition signed by 50,000 people online demanding that the rig operator, Cairn Energy, release its oil-spill response plan—if it even had one. The captain of the rig refused to see him and, while he waited to be arrested, Naidoo gave a short interview to a newspaper reporter patched in by walkie-talkie. When a police helicopter landed, the activists were flown off to four days in a Greenland jail, where Naidoo came down with a fever. The petition was left behind, unread. Both sides claimed victory though neither seemed to have won anything.

The Cairn Energy protest was the first time a Greenpeace executive director had been arrested and deported in a direct action in over a decade and it’s not a coincidence that Naidoo decided to lead the operation on the eve of the organization’s 40th anniversary. Greenpeace finds itself at a major crossroads. What began as a tiny grassroots group in Vancouver now has 2.8 million members and 2,500 employees in 40 countries. It is not just the international face of the environmental movement—it is a behemoth that rivals some of the companies it opposes. It has won battles in the wilderness and in the courts, but it also faces widespread criticism that it has not achieved major, world-changing results. As the organization struggles with middle age, a question flaps in the air like one of their tattered banners: What is Greenpeace’s role in the world today?

Naidoo, a 46-year-old human-rights activist from South Africa who has held the top job at Greenpeace for two years, has always shared with the organization a taste for direct action. But his willingness to negotiate with multinational corporations is a new and controversial direction for the organization. He has successfully pressed Unilever and Coca-Cola to agree to discontinue the use of HFC gases (which are more harmful to the atmosphere than CO2) in their refrigeration systems. He has gotten Nestlé to agree to stop buying palm oil from Sumatra, where forests in pristine tiger habitats bear continual clear-cutting. He is now pressuring Facebook to “unfriend” coal. “How appropriate for our time that the executive director of Greenpeace is in the absolute heart and soul of global business and politics,” says J. Carl Ganter, a leading environmentalist. “He’s positioned to lead the way.”

All of this is sacrilege, however, for many hard-core eco-warriors. “I lost some old grassroots friends on that one,” Naidoo admits about working with Coca-Cola. “But we don’t have to support everything they do in order to work with them.”

Paul Watson, the youngest founding member of Greenpeace and now leader of the smaller, more confrontational Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is perhaps the best-known detractor of his former NGO. He paints a picture of a once-great organization lost at sea. “It’s become nothing more than a bureaucratic money machine that rides on the backs of other NGOs,” Watson charges. He is especially contemptuous of Greenpeace’s philosophy of peacefully bearing witness in its direct actions, labeling the approach cowardice. “It sounds like he wants to move it in the direction of the Red Cross instead of Greenpeace,” Watson says.

The movement has gone mainstream in the past two decades, but as environmentalists save an old-growth rain forest here and protest the drilling for Arctic oil there, they feel the world is continuing to spiral further away from sustainability. “We’ve won significant battles,” Naidoo says. “But the environmental movement as a whole, Greenpeace included, are losing the war.”

The idea of saving the environment held little meaning for young Naidoo in his native South Africa. His mother committed suicide when he was 15. His father, a bookkeeper who ran local soccer and cricket associations from their home outside Durban, took care of Naidoo and his three siblings. As a young teen, he was drawn to anti-apartheid protests, for which he was expelled from school, reinstated and expelled again. By the time he was 18, Naidoo had been arrested, beaten, thrown in the back of a van with a can of tear gas. “One day we felt empowered,” he recalls. “Other days we were terrified. I felt like I was living on borrowed time. Too many friends died in the struggle to think I wouldn’t be next.”

In 1985, when he was 19, Naidoo heard a local group home for boys from broken families was about to close because they couldn’t afford to pay a social worker. With his father’s support, he volunteered to be a live-in counselor to the dozen or so boys. One afternoon, he turned on a small shortwave radio to Radio 702, one of only two independent radio channels in the country. The voice described a scene in faraway Auckland, New Zealand. Two bombs planted by divers working with the French Secret Service had ripped through the hull of Greenpeace’s flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, which was in the South Pacific to protest French nuclear tests in the area. Naidoo had never heard of Greenpeace, but the broadcast electrified his imagination. “That a nonprofit could constitute such a threat to a powerful government,” he recalls, “inspired me to believe that our efforts against the apartheid regime could succeed even as the state was becoming increasingly violent.”

A sympathetic professor at a local university recommended that the promising student apply for scholarships to get him out of the country. He interviewed to be a Rhodes Scholar, the only black South African candidate on the region’s short list of 12. He was awarded the spot and went to Oxford, England, where he followed the liberation of his homeland from afar. In 1990 Naidoo returned to South Africa and plunged into two decades of high-profile human-rights work. He led South Africa’s first national literacy program and became honorary president of the global civil society network Civicus. He was named a Young Global Leader and he sat on the board of Greenpeace Africa.

In January 2009, Naidoo helped lead a 21-day hunger strike to protest the South African government’s position on Zimbabwe’s despotic ruler, Robert Mugabe. Exhausted and emaciated, he saw his hair turn gray from malnutrition. On his 19th day without eating, a recruiting firm called to see whether he was interested in the top job at Greenpeace. He brushed off the offer—it wasn’t exactly the best timing—but his daughter convinced him to reconsider. (Naomi is now 19 and studying ethics, religion and philosophy at the University of London.)

The new consensus among eco-activists is that environmentalism is now a matter of life and death, especially for people of color living in poverty, who are bearing the brunt of climate change. “Climate apartheid” is a term Naidoo uses to connect environmentalism and human rights. “The old paradigm, where we can pretend you can either care about people or you care about the planet and don’t worry about both at the same time, is starting to break down,” says Van Jones, a former environmental-jobs adviser to the Obama administration. “Someone like Kumi, who has such impeccable human-rights credentials, says that protecting the people and the planet are twin duties. It showed a lot of foresight on Greenpeace’s part to hire someone with that background.”

What exactly to do about the daunting challenge of climate change, however, is still very much up in the air. After failing to strike an accord in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010, the next attempt comes in December at the Climate Summit South Africa—in Naidoo’s native Durban, where the spotlight will naturally fall on him. “The environmental movement is global now,” Jones says, “and you need someone who can speak to people in Asia, Latin America, Africa. That’s easier when you have a former anti-apartheid youth leader sitting across the table. With Nelson Mandela passing from the international scene soon, I wouldn’t be surprised if the South African that most kids will hear about and know about in their lifetime is Kumi Naidoo.”

For years he traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos to campaign about issues of poverty and climate and couldn’t get a single meeting with a CEO. In the past two years, Naidoo couldn’t accommodate all of their requests. One CEO told Naidoo, “My colleagues are very keen to get you to the table, so that they are not on your menu.” In a battery of informal half-hour meetings with companies across a range of industries, from energy to telecom to chemicals to electronics, executives asked how they could avoid Greenpeace’s wrath, whether it’s a ranking on a polluter’s list or being subjected to direct action.

In many ways, Naidoo’s life mirrors the growth of Greenpeace, a wild-eyed youth protesting injustice maturing to a grown-up negotiating on equal terms with the largest corporations in the world. It seems fitting, then, that Naidoo is now fund-raising to build a new Rainbow Warrior, a successor to the famous flagship sunk by the French government. Naidoo has to convince donors that the new boat is not just a headline-grabbing echo of an aging organization’s glory years but a cutting-edge weapon in environmentalism’s biggest fight.

Van Jones argues that Naidoo is the best possible person to do that. “Kumi’s such a compelling person,” Jones says. “He gives a speech to poor kids and gets them excited, and then he gives the same speech at the World Economic Forum to the richest people in the world, and they give him a standing ovation. I don’t know anyone else who could do that.”

Click HERE for the full story.

LONDON—The head of Greenpeace has scaled an oil rig offshore of Greenland operated by Cairn Energy PLC, defying a court order aimed at stopping activists from further disrupting the oil and gas explorer’s controversial Arctic drilling campaign, the environmental group said Friday.

“International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo has entered an exclusion zone to scale [the rig]. He is now demanding that the rig’s master orders an immediate halt to drilling, and is requesting a copy of the rig’s missing oil spill response plan,” said Greenpeace.

Cairn confirmed that members of the organization had breached the exclusion zone and scaled the Leiv Eriksson semi-submersible drilling vessel earlier

Friday, but said they had been removed by Greenland authorities and operations weren’t affected.

An injunction granted to Cairn by an Amsterdam court last week prohibits Greenpeace from coming within 500 meters of Cairn’s rigs for a period of six months. Having contravened the order, Greenpeace now faces paying the Edinburgh-based explorer damages of €50,000 a day.

Greenpeace says Cairn’s drilling campaign risks damaging the region’s fragile ecosystem. It argues an oil spill would be “all but impossible” to clean up and has demanded to see Cairn’s spill-response plans, which haven’t been made public.

“Cairn respects the rights of individuals and organizations to express their views in a safe and peaceful manner but is concerned with any action that presents a risk to the safety of people and/or equipment,” said Cairn.

By Alexis Flynn, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

AMSTERDAM — (Dow Jones & Co) Greenpeace activists have been barred from further disrupting oil company Cairn Energy PLC’s controversial Arctic drilling campaign offshore Greenland, after a Dutch court Thursday granted the Edinburgh-based firm a requested injunction.

Greenpeace, which said the campaign is damaging the region’s fragile ecosystem, can’t come within 500 meters of Cairn’s rigs for a period of six months, a sufficient length of time for the company to complete its exploratory drilling program this summer, the court said.

If Greenpeace defies the order, it will have to pay Cairn damages of 50,000 euros ($73,000) a day, but no more than 1 million euros in the case of multiple violations of the order. Cairn had asked the court to fineGreenpeace 2 million euros for each day its drilling activities were disrupted.

Greenpeace’s lawyer, Phon van den Biesen, said he was disappointed by the decision. However, he said the judge didn’t question whetherGreenpeace’s actions were reasonable in raising public interest and that the court had said it was remarkable that oil-spill response plans hadn’t been made public.

Cairn said in a written statement that “it respects the rights of individuals and organizations to express their views but cannot allow actions that might threaten the safety of its employees or the protesters involved.”

However, using legal action to stop Greenpeace from campaigning can backfire on energy companies, who run the risk of appearing draconian and heavy-handed. This was the experience of BP PLC in 1997 when it won an injunction stopping Greenpeace from disrupting its drilling off the west coast of Scotland.

BP ended up withdrawing a GBP 1.4 million ($2.3 million) damages claim after public opinion massed against the oil giant, which was perceived to be picking on a group of plucky activists exercising their right to protest.

Greenpeace has a long history of direct action to protest against what it regards as activities harmful to the environment.

In 1985, the organization generated international headlines when a trawler used by Greenpeace to protest nuclear-weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean was sunk by French intelligence operatives.

Oil companies have been a particular target of Greenpeace. In 1995, the group successfully forced Anglo-Dutch major Royal Dutch Shell PLC to dismantle its Brent Spar North Sea oil-storage facility on land rather than dumping it at sea.

The Arctic is regarded as one of the world’s largest untapped hydrocarbon resources, according to energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Cairn estimated its target reservoir could contain up to 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

The area is largely unexplored and Cairn put its chances of a commercial hydrocarbon discovery at 10% to 20%.

Cairn is the only company planning to drill in the region after disappointing results from a campaign last year. But Greenpeace has said that, if Cairn’s campaign is successful this summer, it will spark an oil rush that would devastate the fragile Arctic environment. The activist group also argued that a clean-up operation would be “all but impossible” in the region.

Cairn maintained that its drilling offshore Greenland is safe. It has the full permission of the Greenlandic authorities, who have also defended Cairn from Greenpeace’s accusations.

Prime Minister Kupik Kleist has said the drilling offshore Greenland is being carried out under Norwegian safety regulations, which he described as the strictest of any country.

Greenland’s potential oil and gas resources could also play a key part in the Arctic territory’s bid for full autonomy from Denmark, observers have said.

The region, which is still part of the Kingdom of Denmark, received self-rule status following a referendum in 2009 and signed an agreement with the Danes ceding it more control over its natural gas, gold and diamond reserves.

- By Flemming E. Hansen, Dow Jones & Company

EGYPT:

• A U.S.-flagged vessel experienced an attempted boarding 25 May at 0231 UTC while anchored in position 29:50.40N – 032:34.08E, at Anchorage Point 13, Port Suez, Egypt. A crewmember saw a man climbing the anchor chain and notified the bridge.  The man fled in a  blue wooden boat with four other men after being sighted.  Crew conducted a search and found that there was no breach of security. (Commercial Sources)

ATLANTIC OCEAN:

• A ship was boarded 28 May at 0245 UTC while anchored in position 05:52.55S – 013:01.78E, approximately 3NM southwest of Boma, Democratic Republic of the Congo.  The officer of the watch spotted two robbers on the forecastle and alerted the duty able seaman and sounded the ship’s whistle.  The robbers escaped.  Later it was discovered that the robbers had boarded the vessel using a rope and hook, and nothing was stolen. (IMB)

RED SEA:

• Bulk carrier (ATLAS) experienced an attempted boarding 31 May at 1303 UTC while underway in position 13:28.4N – 042:36.8E, approximately 28NM northwest of Assab, Eritrea. (Commercial Sources, Operator)
• Chemical/oil products tanker (ASTIR LADY) experienced an attempted boarding 31 May at 0403 UTC while underway in position 13:32N – 042:41E, approximately 31NM northwest of Assab, Eritrea.  Six pirates in a single skiff attempted to board the vessel three times with a ladder.  Weapons were spotted. (Commercial Sources, UKMTO)
• Bulk carrier (HAWK I) was fired upon by two skiffs 29 May at 1211 UTC while underway in position 14:44N – 042:06E, approximately 42NM southwest of Ras Isa, Yemen.  Each skiff had six pirates onboard.  Vessel’s security team returned fire. (Commercial Sources, UKMTO)

INDONESIA:

• A container ship was boarded 1 June at 2035 UTC while anchored in the Jakarta anchorage, Indonesia.  Eight robbers boarded the vessel.  The Master raised the alarm and the ship’s crew mustered.  After the alert was raised, the robbers jumped overboard and escaped.  A few padlocks were opened and damaged, but no stores were stolen. (IMB)
• A barge under tow was robbed 26 May at 0300 UTC while underway in position 01:11N – 103:56E, approximately 10NM southeast of Singapore.  Robbers stole the ship’s stores and escaped. (IMB)
• A bulk carrier was robbed 26 May at 1701 UTC while anchored in position 01:10S – 117:16E in the Samarinda anchorage, Indonesia.  Three robbers with knives boarded the vessel via the hawse pipe, broke the padlocks on the bosun store, and stole the ship’s stores.  The duty able seaman spotted the robbers and told the duty officer, who sounded the ship’s whistle.  The robbers then escaped. (IMB)
• A container vessel was boarded 21 May at 2242 UTC while anchored in the Jakarta Anchorage, Indonesia.  Robbers in a boat approached the vessel from its stern. The bosun and security watchmen saw that two robbers had boarded the vessel and informed the duty officer.  After the alert, the robbers jumped in the water and escaped.  Nothing was stolen. (IMB)

SINGAPORE STRAITS:

• A general cargo ship was robbed 1 June at 2130 UTC while underway in position 01:10N – 103:51E, approximately 10NM southwest of Singapore.  Five armed robbers boarded the vessel, stole the ship’s cash and personal belongings, and escaped. (IMB)

MYANMAR:

• A container ship was robbed 29 May at 1300 UTC while anchored in position 16:38N – 096:15E in the Yangon River NE anchorage, Myanmar.  The alert crew noticed three robbers with knives had boarded the vessel and attempted to approach them. The robbers threatened the crew with knives and escaped the vessel with the ship’s stores. Later at 1512 UTC, two more robbers attempted to board the vessel but aborted the attempt after seeing the alert crew. (IMB)

SINGAPORE:

• A tanker was robbed 29 May at 1730 UTC while underway in position 01:19N – 104:54E, approximately 62NM southeast of Singapore.  Six robbers boarded the vessel, stole cash and other valuables, and escaped. (Commercial Sources)

INDIA:

• A container vessel was robbed 25 May at 2015 UTC while anchored in position 09:55.4N – 076:04.9E in the Cochin anchorage, India.  Approximately ten robbers boarded the vessel.  After the Master spotted the robbers and shined a search light on them, the robbers jumped overboard and escaped with the ship’s stores (IMB).

ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC NON-STATE ACTIVIST GROUPS:

DAVIS STRAIT:

• A small team of Greenpeace activists boarded the Cairn Energy oil rig LEIV ERIKSSON on 29 May in the morning approximately 40NM north of Nuuk, Greenland.  The activists boarded the rig from semi-rigid boats, launched from their mothership ESPERANZA.  Two of the activists attached a small cabin/tent close to the drill-head to prevent its operation.  The Royal Danish Navy has a frigate in the area. (Commercial and Open Sources)

Indian Ocean Piracy Forecast for 2 – 4 JUN 2011

A. GULF OF ADEN: Moderate sea heights within the Gulf of Aden will continue through next 72 hours.  Expect winds from the southwest 18 – 22 knots with gusts of 30 knots through 5 June.  Fetch limitations will keep the seas in this region within 2 – 4 feet.  Conditions will be slightly less than conducive for piracy though 5 June.

EXTENDED FORECAST:  Increased winds and light to moderate seas will impact the Gulf of Aden through 8 June, slightly limiting piracy/small boat operations.

B. INDIAN OCEAN: Southwesterly winds of 25 – 30 knots with higher gusts will remain over the Somali Basin through the next 72 hours.  Expect conditions to not be conducive for small boat operations from central Somalia northeast to the Omani coast and extending through the North Arabian Sea and east to India, along 11N, as sea heights range from 7 – 11 feet within this region.  Conditions abate somewhat as you move into the Indian Ocean along the equator, areas southwest of the Maldives and within the waters off Kenya and Tanzania.

EXTENDED FORECAST: Expect the SW monsoon to dominate the weather pattern for the areas mentioned above through 8 June.  These areas will not be conducive for small boat operations.

C. SURFACE CURRENTS: Currents off the Somalia coast are variable with speeds up to 2 knots from the Equator to 5N.  Current speeds up to 4.5 kts may be seen along the coast between 5N and 10N and along the coast from the equator to 4S.  Currents within the Gulf of Aden remain minimal, up to 1 knot.

On March 24th 1999, ATC’s supertanker Marine Columbia entered Prince William sound to find the SeaLand SeaRiver vessels anchored far from port. The mate on watch was aware of the fact that Exxon renamed it’s fleet SeaRiver and he realized that it was the 10th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez but did not put the two facts together until the ship was secured alongside the dock when he got an unusual call from his AB on deck.

“Mate, request permission to drop the Starboard Anchor.” said the AB.

“WTF do you want to do that for?” replied the mate.

“Come up here and see for yourself!”

Upon arriving on the bow he was directed to the hawsepipe where he could plainly see Greenpeace protesters who had chained themselves to the anchor. Dropping the anchor was, of course, a joke. Rather than sending the activists on a quick trip to Davey Jone’s locker the police were called and they where removed the proper way, by a SWAT team with rappelling gear and bolt cutters. But it left a strong impression in everyone’s mind, what would have happened if the anchor slipped or if the AB had not been American but from a country less tolerant of such actions? For this reason Greenpeace developed a new device in their arsenal of anti-ship weapons; The Anchor Pod.

According to Greenpeace, no expense was spared in the building of the 2 meter wide, 1/2 ton yellow pod which they have “equipped with supplies to last for a month.The pod has everything you need, bathroom, kitchen, hospital … and housemates.” said Leila Deen, an activist who lived in the pod during it’s recent deployment against the drillship Stena Carron. The pod reportedly cost Greenpeace nearly $50,000 to construct and is made of “bullet proof” material (probably a carbon fiber or kevlar composite) although we question the survivability of the design.

Of curious note, at the time of the protest the Stena Carron, as this video shows, had both anchor’s hung off just above the water’s edge making it easy for the protester’s to gain access. If any of our readers have insight into why the anchors where hung off please add a comment below.

(If Video becomes “unavailable” try HERE or HERE)

The BBC Writes:

Australia has released graphic pictures of minke whales caught by a Japanese hunt in the Antarctic.

Canberra claimed the pictures, taken by customs officers tracking the hunt, show a harpooned mother and calf being dragged from the sea.

Japan denied that claim and called the pictures “emotional propaganda”.

Australian environment minister Peter Garrett said he hoped the “distressing” images would boost international opposition to the whale hunt.

Mr Garrett said they contradicted Japan’s long-standing claim that the hunt was legal and for scientific research purposes.

“It is explicitly clear from these images that this is indiscriminate killing of whales, where you have a whale and its calf killed in this way,” he said.

“And to claim that this is in any way scientific is to continue the charade that has surrounded this issue from day one.” Continue Reading…

Links:

• Official Australian Customs Service Media Files
• Official Japanese Whaling Institute Media Files

Bitterend found this great image of so called “Rubbish Soup”. They tell us;

“The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.” “The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.”

Click the image for the full sized version, click HERE for an alternate version then view the related article HERE.

Thanks Richard!

In breaking news from the Antarctic Japanese whalers have taken two activists hostage after they boarded the whaling ship Yushin Maru. The BBC tells us;

The Sea Shepherd campaign group said the two – a Briton and an Australian – had been assaulted and tied to the radar mast by the Japanese crew.

They said they wanted charges of kidnap to be filed in Australia.

Minoru Morimoto, of the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), admitted the pair had been detained but denied they had been assaulted or harmed.

He said the Sea Shepherd’s accusations that the two men were tied up were “completely untrue”.

“It is illegal to board another country’s vessels on the high seas. As a result, at this stage, they are being held in custody while decisions are made on their future,” he added.

You can read the full report HERE and watch the video HERE.

UPDATE 17Jan:

The AP wire tells us:

Australia said Thursday it would send a ship to pick up two anti-whaling activists who jumped on a Japanese harpoon vessel from a rubber boat in Antarctic waters, offering a solution to a tense, two-day standoff on the high seas.

The protesters from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society scored a victory with their stunt, bringing Japan’s whale hunt to a standstill while officials scrambled to resolve the faceoff.

The Australian customs ship Oceanic Viking will pick up the two activists, an Australian and a Briton, and return them to their anti-whaling vessel as soon as the details can be arranged, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said. Continue Reading…