Whales saved by fire on Japanese vessel

Japan's controversial whaling operation in the Antarctic is facing collapse this weekend as its most important vessel wallows helplessly off the coast of the icy continent.

The country admitted yesterday that this year's hunt - due to kill 945 whales by mid-March - will probably have to be abandoned as a result of a fire that has crippled its fleet's mother ship, the Nisshin Maru, and raised fears of an oil spill into the area's pristine waters.

Environmentalists hope that the 8,000-tonne ship, the only one capable of processing harpooned whales, will have to be scrapped following what is its second serious fire in less than a decade. If so, they hope it will not be replaced, spelling an end to an annual hunt which has caused protests for a quarter of a century.

With neat irony, the crisis began as Japan was hosting a meeting of pro-whaling members of the International Whaling Commission to work out a strategy for legalising a full return to the slaughter. Commercial whaling was banned after the Commission agreed a moratorium in 1982, but Japan continued under the guise of scientific research.

The fire broke out on Thursday on the vessel's second deck, close to where the whales are processed, and has raged for days, partly fuelled by whale oil from the slaughtered mammals. One crew member was killed and most of the 148 others abandoned ship.

The ship's electronics and engine were knocked out, leaving it drifting about 100 miles from the world's biggest penguin breeding ground, with some 250,000 pairs of Adelie penguins, at Cape Adare, Antarctica.

Environmentalists feared that some 330,000 gallons of oil aboard the ship could leak and be carried by currents to the breeding area.

But Hiroshi Hatanaka, director general of the Institute of Cetacean Research, which is affiliated to the Japanese government, denied this, saying: "Fears that this may turn into some environmental disaster are premature. The area in which the fire broke out is not located near the fuel holds."

Nevertheless, Chris Carter, the Conservation Minister of New Zealand - responsible for maritime rescue in that part of the ocean - says it is "imperative" that the stricken ship is moved further from Ant-arctica and the penguin colony. "The Nisshin Maru is dead in the water", he said. "Somehow, we have got to get that ship away from the coast."

But Japan has rejected help from the nearest boat best equipped to tow it, the Greenpeace protest ship Esperanza, a former tug. There is no love lost between the whalers and the campaigners, who have regularly set out to interfere with the factory ship's operations, in dramatic clashes in the freezing Antarctic waters.

In December 2005, for example, Greenpeace inflatables stopped a whale being hauled on to the ship for 45 minutes. The whalers fought back with water cannons, and one of the inflatable capsized.

The Japan Fisheries Agency said assistance was refused because the Greenpeace protesters are "environmental terrorists". Hideki Moronuki, from the agency, said: "They used to attack us all the time and now they suddenly put a smile on their face and offer helping hands. How do you expect us to react?" He recalled that the environment group had boarded the Nisshin Maru in 1998 as it lay in port in New Caledonia, after its previous fire, and said it would instead seek help, if necessary, from a Japanese tanker close by.

For its part, Greenpeace says that the latest accident should be used as an opportunity to end the whale hunt for good. Steve Shallhorn, of Greenpeace Australia, called it "an opportunity to retire an older vessel; this is the second time there has been a serious fire on board".

He added: "What the Japanese government should be considering is scrapping this vessel, not replacing it, and giving up whaling in the Antarctic Ocean."