Japanese whalers in their sights

A hard-line environmentalist group chasing Japanese whalers near Antarctica said it had found the Japanese fleet and had attempted to attack one of the vessels with stink bombs.

In a statement on its website, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said the attack by a boat launched from its ship the Steve Irwin was called off because of blizzard conditions.

Sea Shepherd said the encounter with the Japanese ship the Yushin Maru 2 occurred in dense fog and icy seas Friday, within an economic exclusion zone Australia has declared near its Antarctic territories.

Last year the same vessels were involved in a tense standoff when Sea Shepherd members were held aboard the Japanese ship.

Japan’s whaling fleet is in the Antarctic region for an annual hunt to catch about 900 whales, which Tokyo says is carried out for scientific research purposes.

Japan officially stopped whaling under a 1986 global moratorium, but continues to take hundreds of whales in what it calls a research program. Much of the meat ends up on dinner tables.

Sea Shepherd is headquartered in the U.S. Its founder Paul Watson, who was an early member of Greenpeace but later split from the group, is aboard its ship in Antarctic waters.