OUTRAGE OVER WHALING ... #2 <cont>

A new report has urged the Australian Government to take a whole new approach to stop Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.

The expert report argues Australia should open up a new front in its anti-whaling campaign by challenging Japan through the forum of the Antarctic treaty system over the environmental costs of its annual slaughter.

The Southern Ocean has long been protected as part of the world's largest unspoiled wilderness Antarctica.

But Japan's so-called scientific whaling program has sparked passionate debate about whether the area is truly an international safe haven for marine life.

While conservation activists continue to harass whaling ships in the open waters, it is the Australian Government which has led diplomatic efforts to enforce the Antarctic whaling sanctuary.

Now the Australian Government is being urged to take a fresh approach to stop Japanese whaling.

Darren Kindleysides represents the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which wages a less confrontational campaign to end Japanese whaling carried out under the guise of scientific research.

It believes Australia should abandon behind the scenes diplomatic persuasion and change tack by challenging Japan, not on whaling, but environmental grounds.

"It's time to rock Japan's boat on the whaling issue and really pull this into the Antarctica treaty forum as a way of challenging Japan and working towards ending their whaling in the Southern Ocean," he told ABC1's The 7.30 Report.

"Whaling activities pose a greater risk to the environment beyond just the risk to whale populations, risk of oil spills and pollution in the Antarctic, and these really need to be challenged within the Antarctic forum.

"Antarctica is known as a unique environmental asset and we need to keep it that way and avoid any threats to it."

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith agrees, but says the Government will continue to tread carefully.

"It's obviously something which the Government will consider, but our approach on whaling continues to be an objective by diplomatic means to have the Japanese Government desist from whaling in the Great Southern Ocean," he said.

An independent policy report just delivered to the Federal Government urges Australia to hold Japan to account over its environmental practices in the Southern Ocean.

The report identifies four specific areas of concern that could form the basis of a challenge: compliance with environmental pollution standards for vessels in the Southern Ocean; compliance with requirements on safety of life at sea; failure to give Australian and New Zealand rescue authorities details on their precise whereabouts in case of emergency; and refuelling and resupply operations at sea in the absence of an environmental impact assessment. ................

Sea Shepherd says it is prepared to end aggressive protests against Japan's scientific whale cull if Australia or New Zealand agree to challenge the hunt in an international court.

The anti-whaling activist group, blamed for collisions with the Japanese Antarctic whaling fleet in recent years, as well as high-seas boardings and stink bomb attacks, said it was willing to "back off" for a season if either country acted.

"Take them to court, and if that fails, if the Japanese refuse to appear, if they refuse to abide by any legal decision, Sea Shepherd could then return with a much more aggressive approach," Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson said in a statement.

More than 40 sperm whales have died after a pod of about 50 became stranded off southern Australia, an official said Friday as rescuers struggled to reach the survivors.

By the time the pod, which is trapped on a sandbar 150 metres offshore from Perkins Island on the north-west coast of the island state of Tasmania, was discovered late Thursday most had perished.

"They think that there may be seven or eight that are alive," spokeswoman for Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Services Liz Wren said.

Ms Wren said rescue options would be difficult because of the massive size of the animals and the fact that the pod was accessible only by water. ....

Only one of 48 sperm whales stranded in Tasmania remains alive, drawing criticisms authorities refused help to save the marine mammals.

The whales, mostly mothers and calves, beached themselves on Perkins Island near Smithton, in Tasmania's remote north-west tip, on Thursday night.

By yesterday morning only two of the mammals remained alive, but one animal died during the day.

The last of the stranded whales was still alive today, but hopes were fading for the creature's survival, said Chris Arthur from Tasmania's Parks and Wildlife Service.

"We are administering palliative care," Mr Arthur said.

The remaining whale was trapped behind several other dead ones and moving the 20-tonne creatures was difficult because the area was remote, he said.

Meanwhile the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has lashed out at Tasmanian authorities for refusing to let its volunteers help in the rescue effort. ....

....Spokesman from the Department of Water and Environment, Warwick Brennan, says rescuers held little hope that the last sperm whale could be saved.

"Things were looking quite difficult because the chances of a rescue were becoming increasingly remote," he said.

"We had staff working there, it was basically palliative care trying to keep the animal cool."

Authorities will now turn their attention to obtaining information from the pod.

Mr Brennan says samples will now be taken from all of the whales.

"We're looking at ageing the animals, getting sizes, sex of all the animals, looking at stomach content aswell, what have the animals been eating that might help us understand a little bit more about the species and their relationships with other animals out there aswell," he said.

Japanese whalers could hunt a regulated number of minke whales in their own coastal waters under the plan, as well as take many more whales in the high seas of the North Pacific.

In exchange Japan would agree to one of two offers: either to phase out whaling under self-awarded scientific permits in the Antarctic entirely, or to impose an annual Southern Ocean limit.

The package was hammered out in confidence by an International Whaling Commission drafting group of six nations, including Australia and Japan, at a meeting in Cambridge, England, last month. It was obtained by The Age yesterday.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare said it appeared that Australia had become part of a dangerous drift towards commercial whaling in the 21st century.

"This is Whalergate," Patrick Ramage, global director of IFAW's whale program, said from the US yesterday.

"We have had growing concerns about the talks under way behind closed doors in the IWC. Those concerns are increased by the leaking of this secret plan.

Australia was ready to "seriously consider" Japan's priorities and a "reduced" total take of Southern Ocean whales, according to a US State Department memo written late last year.

As recently as last weekend, Australia was among a select group of nations which met confidentially to refine a compromise package for International Whaling Commission approval. This proposed letting Japan expand North Pacific kills through coastal and high seas whaling while also limiting, or phasing out, its Antarctic hunt.

The Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, said yesterday Australia did not share the position advanced in the package for the commission chairman, William Hogarth, who is working to bridge the divide between pro- and anti-whaling nations.

"The matters that have been raised today are matters that other countries have put up," he said. "They are not matters which Australia has endorsed."

The US State Department's memo, much of it rated "sensitive but unclassified", was written last November, when Australia's special envoy on whale conservation, Sandy Hollway, lobbied unsuccessfully for Japan to suspend its Antarctic hunt, in order to create space for negotiations within the commission. ... <cont>

EVIDENCE of a Federal Government offer to Japan over whaling has emerged in spite of its insistence that it stands totally opposed to the hunt.

Australia was ready to "seriously consider" Japan's priorities and a "reduced" total take of Southern Ocean whales, according to a US State Department memo written late last year.

As recently as last weekend, Australia was among a select group of nations which met confidentially to refine a compromise package for International Whaling Commission approval. This proposed letting Japan expand North Pacific kills through coastal and high seas whaling while also limiting, or phasing out, its Antarctic hunt.

The Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, said yesterday Australia did not share the position advanced in the package for the commission chairman, William Hogarth, who is working to bridge the divide between pro- and anti-whaling nations.

"The matters that have been raised today are matters that other countries have put up," he said. "They are not matters which Australia has endorsed."

The US State Department's memo, much of it rated "sensitive but unclassified", was written last November, when Australia's special envoy on whale conservation, Sandy Hollway, lobbied unsuccessfully for Japan to suspend its Antarctic hunt, in order to create space for negotiations within the commission.

"[Mr] Hollway has travelled to Tokyo and Washington in recent weeks, explaining that Australia is ready to seriously consider Japan's priorities in the IWC [if not actually support them] and simultaneously secure reductions in the larger Antarctic whale quotas that Japan grants itself," the memo from Washington to the US embassy in Tokyo said.

"Hollway … stated [Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd's desire to find a way forward that [1] reduced the total take of whales in the Southern Ocean; and [2] helped prevent a 'blow-up' in the IWC negotiations.

"We believe Australia's proposal reflects a major move forward in Australian whaling policy and shows openings for negotiations that were unimaginable even a year earlier."

The memo was obtained by Humane Society International, whose program manager, Nicola Beynon, said compromise in the commission was dangerous and likely to open yet more loopholes, such as the widely condemned scientific whaling provision. ... <cont>

The Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin has collided with a harpoon boat in the Antarctic as the Japanese fleet shrugged off the hardline activists' attempts to halt whaling.

Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson said his vessel hit the Yushin Maru No.1 when it swept in front of him to clear the Steve Irwin away from the stern of the factory ship Nisshin Maru so it could take a whale aboard.

Captain Watson said he tried to back away but the movement of the whaling ships made a collision inevitable. No one was hurt and the vessels were not seriously damaged.

He said the Steve Irwin recovered to be steaming on the stern of the Nisshin Maru and blocking further attempts at transfers.

So far today the whalers have managed to transfer four freshly harpooned minke whales to the Nisshin Maru, in the first successful whaling mounted by the fleet in the presence of Sea Shepherd.

Until today Captain Watson has been able to claim that in all of his Antarctic campaigns, the whalers were unable to hunt while his ships were around. ... <cont>

The "Tokyo Two" - Greenpeace activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki - were arrested and held without charge for 26 days last year after they intercepted a quantity of whale meat stolen by crew from the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru. Their trial will take place in the traditional northern fishing and whaling town of Aomori in the coming months. They face up to 10 years in jail.

the 'Tokyo Two"