Environment

Sea Shepherd Captain Peter Bethune Now Prisoner in Japan

by Barbara McPherson | March 13, 2010 at 10:47 am

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Sea Shepherd Captain Peter Bethune is now a prisoner in Japan. He was transported to Japan on the Shonan Maru 2 after a daring move in which he boarded the whaling ship last February to make a citizen's arrest for the sinking of the anti-whaling ship the Ady Gil. The Ady Gil was struck and sunk by a Japanese whaling vessel, resulting in injuries.
Peter Bethune captained the Ady Gil as part of the Sea Shepherd Society's campaign to stop whaling in the Antarctic Ocean. The Sea Shepherd Society maintains that the Japanese whaling fleet is conducting commercial whaling while the Japanese assert that the killing of the whales is for research purposes.
Whale meat is being sold, as evidenced in the recent Academy Award film "The Cove" which exposed the Hump restaurant in Santa Monica for selling whale meat. The restaurant is associated with Typhoon Restaurant, Inc. and chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto. While there is as yet no direct evidence that the whale meat was furnished by Japanese brokers, investigations continue.

The activists bagged samples of the meat and slipped them into a purse. The samples were sent to Scott Baker, associate director of the highly regarded Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. Baker determined that the meat was sei whale.