Damaged Sea Shepherd ship on way to WA
Conservation group Sea Shepherd has reached one of its ships that became stranded after a big wave cracked its hull.
The scouting vessel Brigitte Bardot made a distress call after a six-metre wave cracked its hull in the Southern Ocean on Wednesday night.
The incident happened about 1500 nautical miles (2800km) southwest of Fremantle.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Captain Paul Watson, aboard the group's flagship vessel Steve Irwin, said it took 18 hours battling rough seas with five-to-six-metre waves to reach the damaged ship.
"We're with the Brigitte Bardot right now and we're about 1200 miles (1931km) from Fremantle and we're heading that way," he told the ABC on Thursday night.
"The Brigitte Bardot is going about seven-and-a-half knots so we're just escorting it and so far everything's going pretty good."
The 10 crew on board are safe.
It may take about five days to escort the Brigitte Bardot back to Fremantle.
Captain Watson says once the rescue mission is over, the Steve Irwin will rejoin the anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean.
He says Sea Shepherd crews know the risk heading into the Southern Ocean.
"You are facing two dangers down here; it's not just the Japanese whaling fleet, it's also the weather conditions, the ice conditions and everything," he said.
"We've not had any problems before, but we've had eight campaigns down here, so it's inevitable at some point that something was going to happen."
Meanwhile, the Sea Shepherd vessel Bob Barker will continue pursuing the Japanese whaling fleet.
Sea Shepherd claims to have saved more than 800 whales from being killed during last year's hunt, which Japan maintains is for scientific purposes, and says the industry is in such decline that this could be the final campaign.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/damaged-sea-shepherd-ship-on-way-t...Could Be, means nothing ...
Forum
Pages: 1
Sea Shepherd auxillary vessel BB in distress. (Read 1468 times)
