Japanese whaling security vessel slices in half activist boat

Japanese sailors providing security to whalers have collided with a state of the art anti-whaling vessel which resulted in the environmental group boat being sliced in half.

The Ady Gil, a light weight, 79 foot long, $1.5 million ’stealth’ boat resembling Batman’s spacecraft sank after the collision which happened in Southern Ocean.

The six men who on board were unhurt and have been rescued, said founder of the environmental organisation Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson.

Captain Watson said his boat was suddenly hit by the Japanese ship Shonan Maru, as his crew was idling around Commonwealth Bay in the Antarctic. The Shonan Maru was providing security to a fleet of Japanese whaling vessels.

He said that this incident has the consequence of seriously escalating the situation between the Japanese whaling industry and environmentalists.

On board Sea Shepherd mother-ship Steve Irwin, Captain Watson said that the attack had been prompted by what the (Japanese) Institute of Cetacean Research claimed projectile launching at the Nisshin Maru on the part of the Ady Gil crew. The Institute of Cetacean Research also claimed that Ady Gil crew had also tried to entangle the propellers of Nisshin Maru with rope.

The biodiesel powered trimaran Ady Gil arrived at the South Ocean on Tuesday.

The ramming occurred as both sides used new tactics inj a bid to out-wit each other’s rival.

Captain Watson, a former member and founder of counterpart group Greenpeace, is known amongst environmentalists to use increasingly confrontational tactics, so of which are even opposed by fellow activists.