DIVELOG JUNE 406

novices. Most of my crew will be Whale Wars veterans with plenty of experiences from the many annual campaigns between 2005 and 2015. During that decade of campaigns, Japanese whale quotas were cut every year and a total of more than 6,500 whales were saved from Japanese harpoons. It was a long dangerous and tedious campaign that resulted in lawsuits from Japan and me being placed on the Interpol Red Notice list for the charge of “ conspiracy to trespass on a whaling ship. ” The Red Notice forced me to escape from Germany and to travel halfway around the globe without any documentation to rejoin my ship the Steve Irwin off American Samoa in November 2012. In 2013 I was forced into exile on the islands of the South Pacific for six months before being allowed to return to the United States by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. For the eleven years that I remained on the Red Notice I was not able to captain any of our ships and people who I trusted took advantage of the situation to remove me from the organisation and to seize and control all the assets and the ships. Even more outrageous was that they completely abandoned our objectives and strategies to move the organisation towards a more mediocre mainstream position citing that I was too confrontational and too controversial, the very things that had made our movement the success that it became. With the arrival of our new ship the Bandero , we have signaled that after two years, we are back and prepared to confront the whalers of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary for good. We are now recruiting support all across Australia for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation and I will be doing a fund-raising tour of Australian cities in November 2024 prior to setting off for the Southern Ocean to once again intercept, confront and engage the Japanese whaling fleet. The whales now have their navy back. To support The Captain Paul Watson Foundation Please visit www.paulwatsonfoundation.org

The recently launched Japanese whale factory ship Kangei Maru

The drawing of the Kangei Maru

The Kangei Maru has just completed its sea trials. It will be ready to return to the Southern Ocean by the end of the year 2024. For the past two years two Japanese harpoon vessels Yushin Maru No 2 and Yushin Maru No 3 have been doing non-lethal research in the Southern Ocean counting Fin whales and Minke whales. Finally, my off the record communications with Japanese journalists have given every indication that Japan intends to return to resume the killing of whales. After our summer 2024 campaign to Iceland to block illegal whaling operations targeting endangered Fin whales, I will move our ship the John Paul DeJoria from the North Atlantic to Australia so that we will be in position to counter Japan’s unlawful Southern Ocean whale killing adventures with two fast long-range ships. In 2014, the International Court of Justice in the Hague ruled that Japan’s Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary whaling operations were illegal. Japan abided by the ruling for one year and then began operations illegally again in 2016. In 2019 Japan announced that they would not be returning to the Southern Ocean. Some conservationists hailed this as a victory, but I knew it was a temporary reprieve and my concerns became justified by Japan’s announcement that they were building a replacement mother ship for the whaling fleet. It was obvious to me that the primary reason for Japan quitting whaling operations in 2019 was that the Nisshin Maru , their aging factory ship, was no longer suitable for the task. It had to be replaced and it has now been replaced with the new Kangei Maru . We will not be returning to the Southern Ocean as

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DIVE LOG Australasia #406 - June ‘24