Eco-loons Freed, Vow Further Violence

The latest battle over Japanese whaling ended just as I suspected it would:

A Japanese whaling ship has handed over to an Australian customs vessel two anti-whaling activists who climbed aboard two days earlier, an official from Japan’s Fisheries Agency says.

Australia sent the customs ship, the Oceanic Viking, to the Japanese whaling ship in a bid to end the stand-off involving the activists of the militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

"Two Sea Shepherd activists who intruded onto the Yushin Maru No 2 and have been in custody on the ship were handed over to the Oceanic Viking chartered by the Australian Government," Hideaki Okada, a whaling official at the Fisheries Agency in Tokyo, said early today.

The handover took place early today, Melbourne time. [The Age]

I just saw on the news this morning an interview with head Sea Sheppard eco-loon Paul Watson that they plan to continue to pursue and attack the Japanese whalers.  It will be interesting to see what his next media publicity event will be to top the self created "hostage crisis". 

Additionally I have yet to see one report in the Australian media on how the eco-loons attacked the Japanese ship by trying to throw a net in their propeller as well as throwing acid bottles before boarding the ship.  With media bias such as this, no wonder the vast majority of Australians still think whaling is an environmental conservation issue when it is not.