Antarctic whaling 'to continue'

12 July 2011 Last updated at 23:02 GMT By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Japan charges Sea Shepherd activists with launching incendiary devices onto the whaling ships Japan intends to send its whaling fleet back to the Antarctic this year, a senior official has told BBC News.

There has been speculation that campaigns by activists, money problems and new rules at sea might persuade Tokyo to stop Antarctic whaling.

But at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, Japan's Joji Morishita said the plan was to return.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which forced the last hunt's early closure, says it will be back too.

Finding a way to deal with the organisation's vessels is the main obstacle Japan sees to continuing for the next season and beyond.

"We are now discussing how we can send our fleet back to the Antarctic Ocean," said Mr Morishita, Japan's deputy commissioner to the IWC and a senior official in the Fisheries Agency.

"Simply put, the attack from Sea Shepherd organisation is the one we have to consider how we prevent that to happen again."

During the IWC meeting, being held in Jersey, Japanese delegates showed pictures and videos that, they said, showed the campaigners attacking whaling vessels with projectiles including flares, which set netting alight, and glass bottles filled with foul-smelling butyric acid.

They also showed Sea Shepherd boats ramming the whalers, and said reinforced ropes had been put in the water to entangle propellers.

"The attack this past year became so severe that we didn't have any choice to try to prevent the worst from happening," said Mr Morishita.

Each successive year, Sea Shepherd has sent bigger fleets and faster vessels, while Japan has downscaled its forces; last season, for the first time, the activists had the upper hand.

Rather than catching 850-odd whales - the official target - the eventual haul was about 170.

It is not clear how Japan intends to protect its fleet in any future expedition - it was not just a matter of sending military patrols, Mr Morishita said, as that was a legal minefield.

Demonstrating force

A further obstacle Japan faces is that, from next year, new regulations on maritime pollution mean the Nisshin Maru, its factory ship, will not be permitted in Antarctic waters with tanks full of heavy fuel oil without a refit.

Continue reading the main story Objection - A country formally objects to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium, declaring itself exempt. Example: Norway Scientific - A nation issues unilateral "scientific permits"; any IWC member can do this. Example: Japan Indigenous (aka Aboriginal subsistence) - IWC grants permits to indigenous groups for subsistence food. Example: Alaskan Inupiat Another is financial. Japan's national budget was in trouble even before the impact of the recent earthquake and tsunami; and with sales of whalemeat falling, the cost of the hunt is rising.

But Mr Morishita suggested all of these issues would be easier to overcome than Sea Shepherd's opposition.

Some observers have suggested that Japan sees blaming Sea Shepherd as a way to escape from Southern Ocean whaling without losing face.

Mr Morishita said this was not the case, and the basic policy remained unchanged.

Sea Shepherd activists have staged demonstrations outside the IWC meeting here - the organisation is barred from attending - and it is clear that it will send its fleet to the Southern Ocean again if Japan does return.

"Sea Shepherd will also return and will once again intercept and block their operations," the organisation's head Paul Watson wrote on his blog earlier this week.

"If they return, we will launch Operation Divine Wind, and our vessels the Bob Barker, the Steve Irwin, and the Brigitte Bardot will soon return to the remote and stormy seas of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to do what we do best - defend the whales!"

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Wrong turn leads Antarctic penguin to New Zealand

21 June 2011 Last updated at 10:45 GMT Colin Miskelly, from New Zealand's national museum, said it was exceptional to find an emperor penguin so far away from its usual habitat.

A young emperor penguin, normally found in the Antarctic, has turned up on a New Zealand beach.

It is a rare event, the first confirmed sighting of an Emperor penguin in New Zealand in 44 years.

"I saw this glistening white thing standing up and I thought I was seeing things," said Christine Wilton, who found it while walking her dog.

The department of conservation is baffled by how it arrived, saying it may have taken a wrong turn.

"It's amazing to see one of these penguins on the Kapiti coast," says the department's Peter Simpson.

The visitor has attracted crowds of onlookers, who are being advised not to disturb the penguin and keep their dogs on leads.

Conservation experts say the bird is a juvenile, about 10 months old and 32in (80cm) tall.

Emperor penguins are the tallest and largest of all penguin species, growing up to 4ft (122cm) high and weighing more than 75lb (34kg).

Colin Miskelly, a penguin expert at Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum, said the bird was likely born during the last Antarctic winter.

It may have been searching for squid and krill when it took a wrong turn and arrived on New Zealand's North Island.

"Usually they stay among the pack ice," said Mr Miskelly.

"This one just kept going north and it's a very long way from its usual range."

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Antarctic survey lifts ice shroud

2 June 2011 Last updated at 14:07 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News The DC-3 departs from Casey Station. The ice-penetrating radar antennas can be seen under each wing The belly of Antarctica has given up a little more of its mystery.

Survey data taken across a great swathe of the east of the white continent has allowed scientists to map the shape of the bedrock buried deep under the ice.

It reveals in new detail a huge trough hundreds of kilometres long that is cut by fjord-like features.

Researchers tell Nature magazine that this hidden landscape was probably moulded by the action of glaciers more than 14 million years ago.

This was a time when Antarctica was only part way through acquiring the extensive ice covering we know today.

The team behind the survey work believes its data will improve not only our understanding of Antarctica's past but also its future, as the continent contends with a potentially much warmer world.

"This type of study is important to understand how ice flows in Antarctica and how it will flow in the future," said Professor Martin Siegert, from the University of Edinburgh, UK.

"The only way you can do that is with models, and models need topography on which to grow and flow the ice. If our topography doesn't resemble the reality then the outputs from the models won't either," he told BBC News.

The new findings have emerged from the Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate (Icecap) project, an international effort to comprehend how the East Antarctic Aurora Subglacial Basin has been shaped over the past 35 million years.

Previous research had given coarse hints of the rock structures buried under more than four kilometres of ice, but Icecap is the first systematic attempt to get a higher-resolution image of the mountains and valleys in this part of Antarctica.

Close in map of the rock under the ice sheet, showing one of the subglacial fjords. All of the green and blue areas currently lie below sea level

The team used a refurbished 1942 DC-3 plane to gather its data.

Packed with instruments, it took off from Casey Station on the coast and flew long lines that traced out a great fan across the basin.

Ice-penetrating radar on the underside of the plane looked through the cap to build a picture of the rock bed.

What the data reveal is a complex landscape created after Antarctica was plunged into a deep cooling period.

The snows that fell over ancient mountains produced mighty glaciers, which then merged to form one giant, spreading ice-mass.

This would not have been a steady process but one that pulsed back and forth - and it is this advance and retreat of the ice that the scientists believe was responsible for carving the deep fjords they now see in their data.

"The modern ice sheet couldn't possibly have done this; it has to have been the consequence of an ice sheet that was much smaller than today's," explained Professor Siegert.

"Comparing our data with geomorphological evidence from other regions of the world, we can be pretty confident that these fjords were formed by fast-flowing ice at the edge of the ice sheet. It's the first evidence we have of how the ice was in phases of growth and retreat as it marched across this subglacial basin to form the ice sheet we recognise today."

A series of radar strips looking down through the ice, in which each strip shows about 2km of depth and about 400km of length; buried mountain peaks are clearly visible and fjords are marked by blue dots

Information about local gravity and magnetism gathered on the survey flights indicates that the structures being mapped are what they seem and are not the result of tectonics - of lifting or rifting in the landscape.

That can be confirmed by drilling through the ice to sample the rock below. This is a goal. The ice core pulled up in the process would also be another invaluable snapshot of past climatic change. By examining bubbles of air trapped in the compacted snow, it would be possible for researchers to gauge past atmospheric conditions and temperatures in this region.

Icecap incorporates researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Texas, together with the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre.

The aerogeophysical survey is one of several that is "virtually" lifting the ice shroud covering Antarctica to reveal its rock underpinning.

Only a small number of areas on the continent remain to be assessed using modern high-resolution mapping techniques.

Such work is difficult and expensive, however. The remote and inhospitable conditions make for very challenging logistics.

"There are few parts of the world where you undertake pure exploration and Antarctica is one of them," said Professor Siegert.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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