The Greenpeace ship known as the Esperanza located the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic Ocean after a search that lasted for ten days. After being discovered, the Japanese fleet retreated while the Greenpeace activists were in pursuit according to environmentalists in a statement.
Greenpeace warned that they would take the non-violent action to stop the ships from killing the whales. This promise in the past had put the Greenpeace activists on speedboats putting themselves between the whales and Japanese harpoons. There was once an incident on the collision of ships.
Officials from the Japanese whaling fleet were not available immediately to confirm and respond to the claims by Greenpeace.
November of last year, a fleet was dispatched by Japan to Antarctica to kill at least 1,000 whales. It was under a program that Japan said would be purposes for the scientific kind.
The plan to include 50 humpback whales was abandoned after pressure from the United States and other countries. However, the fleet still plans to kill 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales.
Ever since 1966, the commercial hunts for humpback whales were banned. Commercial whaling was banned since 1986.
The fleet is run by a research institute by the Japanese government. It operates under an International Whaling Clause. The clause allows for the killing of whales for the purpose of science.
However, critics say that it is a shield for Japan to keep the whaling industry alive and find a loophole through the 1986 ban.
Along with the anti-whaling group Sea Shepard, Greenpeace had sent ships after the whalers. They attempted to prevent the hunt by harassing the Japanese ships. They would find the ships and keep up with them.
Both sides had been urged by the Australian government not to do anything dangerous.
Australia is a strong opponent of whaling. This season, the government had hired a ship to collect both photo and video evidence. The evidence would be used to present a possible legal challenge to the scientific whaling program of Japan.
The whaling hunt by Japan is supposed to last until April.