Japanese Antarctic Whale Kill 2010-11: If there are official photographs of the slaughter why aren't we seeing them?

Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown in The Sydney Morning Herald on 21 December 2010:

Greens leader Bob Brown says he has met with Japan's ambassador and told him that whaling is doing his country "great damage".

He says he told Shigekazu Sato that whatever victory Japan thinks it has in killing whales is "a pyrrhic victory".

"I did describe this bloody business of whaling in very direct terms to the ambassador.

"I was able to ask him if he, as a Christmas gesture, might not give me the co-ordinates of the whaling fleet and update them every other day. He declined to be so generous."

Senator Brown also called on the federal government to release the most recent whaling photographs, which he said are being kept hidden "in the minister for the environment's drawer".

"That sort of cowardly approach to Tokyo is not representing what the Australian people think about the cowardly business of whaling," Senator Brown told reporters.

"If they want to go down there and slaughter whales in our oceans or the oceans south of New Zealand, let the rest of the world see what they're doing."

The intransigence and blatant hypocrisy of the Government of Japan and its agencies having oversight and operational responsibility for these annual whale hunts begs the question of why the Australian Government continues to take such a low-key approach:

Japan's Fisheries Agency has admitted its officials accepted gifts of whale meat from the body that runs the country's so-called scientific whaling program.

Six months ago the ABC broadcast allegations by two whaling crew members that officials and crew were illegally taking thousands of dollars worth of whale cuts.

At the time the Fisheries Agency denied the allegations, but it has now reprimanded five of its officials for taking more than $3,000 worth of whale meat.

The Federal Opposition, which when in government was not inclined to pursue legal action against the Japanese Government, now calls for:

… an interim injunction be taken out against Japan to prevent it whaling in the Southern Ocean this summer.......

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt says the federal government should be doing more to stop the annual whale hunt.

And an interim injunction should be sought through the international court, or the tribunal on the law of the sea.

Australia's efforts through the International Court of Justice has been "torturously slow", Mr Hunt said, noting the court's decision isn't expected until at least 2013.

While the Sea Shepard’s methods of directly confronting the whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean raises concern in many quarters, sometimes it is hard to stand back from the fact that this group is the only one physically standing between whales and painful, unnecessary, early deaths from unnatural causes.

Japan's Insitute of Cetacean Research has sent out a media release and two short videos which allege to show an 'attack' on its whaling fleet on New Year's Day 2011:

2011.01.01 Antiwhaling activists aboard a zodiac boat throwing glass bottle projectiles against the Yushin Maru No. 3 (2.91MB)

2011.01.01 Antiwhaling activists aboard a zodiac boat prepare to deploy a rope aimed at the Yushin Maru No. 3 propeller and rudder (794KB)

Although last year Japan reiterated its intention to again hold off plans to slaughter humpback whales like Migaloo the White Fella, there is no guarantee that this decision will not be arbitrarily reversed.