Ocean Defenders TV: Nisshin Maru report | Home | Listening to what whales say

I am all for getting the Nisshin Maru out of there, but I wonder, hypothetically, what effects there are on an 880 foot steel-hulled ship getting locked in the ice for months. Do they get crushed as the old wooden whaling and exploration ships used to be in the 19th century? Are they pushed up off the ice? What are the probabilities it can survive the winter? No doubt there would be damage to systems and equipment and pipes as it was plunged into a deep freeze, with no power. I was thinking how, assuming the ship came out intact come thawing time, next year's whaling season (2007-2008) would be probably ended as well, with insufficient time to return to Japan by tow, undergo repairs and refit, and make the long voyage back to Antartica to resume her cruel mission of processing whales. Then again, perhaps a secondary, smaller ship would be readied to take its place.

I misstated the Nisshin's length; it is about half that? By the way, I've been glued to the webcam, stunning shots of sea, ice, sky (the shots duiring the brief night are surreal)...marred only by the stark outlines of a certain fleet of killer ships...

WOOHOO! You go guys! No one commented yet so i thought i'd say hi. My mom has recently become really interested in greenpeace and she's drawing me in with stories everyday about your fight to ban whaling and now to save the antarctic from a dangerous oil spill. Well keep up the fight guys and good luck!

Any chance of regular weather updates / pictures of ice / estimates of drift on the blog? Hourly would be nice for those of us who've become Southern Ocean junkies...

No winch....no hunt....right?

Good grief Martin, don't ya think we're busy enough? Estimating the ice movement means sending the helicopter up - not something we want to be doing hourly!