SYDNEY — Police boarded the ship of a militant anti-whaling group and seized videotapes of violent clashes between the activists and Japanese whalers, the group said Saturday.
Police said they were investigating the clashes after Japanese authorities reported them to Australian officials, but would not to go into further detail.
Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said Australian Federal Police agents with search warrants boarded the group’s ship, the Steve Irwin, as it docked late Friday in the southern Australian city of Hobart.
The police seized video being shot for the television series “Whale Wars” about the group’s campaign to stop a Japanese fleet from killing whales in waters off Antarctica, the Sea Shepherd said in a statement.
The federal police said it had held discussions with crew aboard the Steve Irwin and was investigating events in the Antarctic Ocean “as a result of a formal referral from the Japanese authorities.”
The investigation was being conducted in accordance with Australia’s obligations under international law, though it was not clear what law, if any, may have been broken.
A police spokeswoman said it would not be appropriate to comment further until the investigation is finished.
The Steve Irwin and Japanese whaling ships collided twice in recent months, and the activists have staged hit-an-run attacks on the fleet with rancid butter-filled bottles hurled from motorized runabouts, according to both sides. Video taken by the conservationists shows the whalers responding with water hoses.
Each side has accused the other of putting lives in danger.
The skirmishes were the latest between Sea Shepherd activists and Japanese whalers in Antarctic waters, where the hunters each season kill about 1,000 whales as part of its International Whaling Commission-sanctioned scientific whaling program.
Critics say the program is a front for commercial whaling.
Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research — the government-affiliated organization that oversees the hunt — has long demanded Australia do more to prevent the clashes and suggested the Steve Irwin be barred from refueling and restocking in Australian ports.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s government strongly opposes whaling, and during the 2007-08 season sent a Customs vessel to collect video and photographs of the Japenese fleet that officials said could be used as evidence in an international court case to stop the hunt.
Nothing came of the threat, and the government now says it prefers to use diplomacy to persuade Japan to stop whaling.
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