Transcript of media conference with Bob Brown, Founder of Brown Foundation, Omar Todd, CEO of Captain Paul Watson Foundation, and Locky MacClean, Ship Operations Director for CPWF, Princes Wharf No 1, Hobart, 3 May 2024.
Bob Brown
I’m very happy today to be here welcoming Northern Horizon, the first ship from the Captain Paul Watson Foundation to come into Hobart. This ship is on its way to defend Antarctic waters and wildlife and its oceans. It’ll be at just as popular as Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd have ever been with Hobartians and with Tasmanians, and indeed with Australians. The ship has come from the northern hemisphere. I’ll leave it to the experts to talk about that.
However, it looks like it’s not going to stay with us. It’s going to have to leave port because of the exorbitant rates being demanded of it. Even its intention to spend three months here in refurbishing or upgrading for the trip to Antarctica. And if that happens, of course, that business will be lost Tasmania and it’ll be off to a port that charges reasonable rates.
This is not a commercial vessel. This is a conservation vessel and TasPorts needs to wake up. I’ve written to the Premier this morning asking him – because TasPorts is a government corporation – to look at this and urgently review that decision to charge nearly $1,200 a day just for being here in Hobart. And if you wanted my opinion on it, we should be paying $1,200 a day for the wonderful presence of this ship in in Hobart. Anyway, it’s here. That’s great. It’s a beautiful day. It’s a great, great day, Hobart autumn day, to welcome the Northern Horizon in and I’ll ask Omar Todd, the CEO of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, to say a few words.
Omar Todd
Omar Todd.
Thank you, Bob. Obviously the ship’s here now, we would like to spend some time here. We had planned to spend roughly, you know, two to three months here. It would be good for local tourism, local business, and hopefully we can, but it all depends on the price of the dock. But apparently the dock is not well used so we look forward to hopefully staying here.
But the Captain Paul Watson Foundation is now in Australia. It’s also registered just now in Germany, it’s in United Kingdom. We have a new TV show coming out down the road, called Neptune’s Pirates, hopefully on one of the big streamers. And we believe that the Antarctica whaling problem will continue … we still don’t know but we will be ready to go if it does happen.
I want to introduce Captain Locky MacClean. He is our ship Operations Director and he has managed the vessel from the pickup port in South Korea all the way down to Australia.
Locky MacClean
Well, it’s great to be back in Hobart again. My name is Locky MacClean and I have been calling it these at the port of Hobart for roughly 15 years now. First with vessel Steve Irwin back in the days when we were opposing, with Paul Watson, the whaling in the Southern Ocean.
As of a month ago, Japan has unveiled a new $47 million whale factory processing vessel. And that vessel, it appears, has every intention of starting up whaling again in Antarctica and in the Australian Antarctic Territory. Back in 2018, when the International Court of Justice declared or concluded that whaling was illegal in Antarctica, Japan had stopped. By then we had spent 10 seasons in Antarctica, going down from Hobart and using Hobart as our main port of call our main provisioning port and jumping off point for Antarctica for all of those 10 years, over a decade of fighting whaling in the Antarctic.
Unfortunately for Antarctica and its beautiful marine life, it appears that Japan will be starting again as soon as 2025. So our intention with this new vessel, the Bandero, which is a Japanese fisheries protection vessel, is to be a be a protector and a defender of Australia’s marine wildlife in Antarctica. And hopefully, if possible, use Hobart as our regular port of call for those missions.
Journalist – unidentified
Can you explain the difference between this vessel and what you were using before and how this will improve your mission?
Locky MacClean
Well, the indication is that the new factory vessel, the Kangei Maru, is slightly faster than the old Nishin Maru, which was the previous factory vessel, which was retired a few years ago. In light of that, we’ve had to upgrade and obviously Paul Watson has a new foundation, now the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, and in line with that we’ve had to purchase and secure faster vessels. This vessel’s top speed can match and outrun a new factory vessel. And our second vessel, the John Paul DeJoria, which is currently getting ready to fight whaling in Iceland out of the UK can also keep up with the with the whale factory vessel.
Journalist – unidentified
The vessel here, what else could it be used for if not Antarctica? What other plans would you have for it?
Locky MacClean
Well, there are the issues of krill, there are issues of eastern tropical Pacific with Chinese High Seas fleets, the vessel would be very useful regardless of the campaigns. But at this stage, the indication is that whaling is going to start up again in the Southern Ocean Antarctic territory.
Journalist – unidentified
And how does it actually combat whaling? What are the features on the ship that actually help with that?
Locky MacClean
Well, yes, the vessel is very similar in its design to what Japan uses for its for its chaser ships, which are the harpoon ships. She’s very narrow. Her length overall allows her a very top a good top speed whilst maintaining very good fuel economy. So the vessel actually can carry enough fuel to stay down in Antarctica for an entire season.
In previous vessels, such as the Steve Irwin and other vessels that Captain Paul Watson operated, we were limited to about 45 days at sea then we would need to refuel, come back to Hobart and re-provision for a second leg. Now during those 10 days of coming back from Antarctica, usually the Japanese whaling fleet would get away. And, you know, cause us to have to start chasing them all over again. With this ship we can stay down in Antarctica up to 75 days on one tank of fuel, which will allow us to follow the fleet throughout the whole season.
Journalist – unidentified
Can you explain why it’s so important to have a ship like this to be in Antarctica? Like what whales are endangered, and all those sorts of things.
Locky MacClean
Locky MacClean.
Whaling has been banned globally since 1986. Despite that, as we’re all familiar with here in Hobart, Japan continued whaling in Antarctica pretty much in an unbroken line, since the Second World War they’ve been going down to Antarctica. Antarctica is resource rich. The Antarctic Treaty is coming up for review and Japan has, it appears, has every intention to continue extracting resources in the Antarctic, starting with possibly whales as soon as 2025.
Journalist – unidentified
What is the main indication that Japan is going to resume whaling?
Locky MacClean
The main indication is that for coastal whaling, Japan doesn’t need a $50 million factory whale processing vessel. The ships that are used coastally in Japan are about 40 meters long, 45 meters long. And what they do is they’ll go out and chase a whale and return to port, you know, coastally, within a few 100 miles of the coast. Whereas this, this vessel has enough fuel capacity to operate in Antarctica and stay at sea for months at a time.
Journalist – unidentified
I suppose when you are combating whaling, how do you measure … I mean, it’s hard to measure success, but are there numbers?
Locky MacClean
In the past with the JARPA program, which was the Japanese research program, it was called a research program, but the JARPA program would publish its desired quota every year. That used to be around 950 or 1000 whales per season. So we can measure the actual success of a campaign by how long we can block a slipway of a vessel, how long we can block the slipway of the of the factory ship, and how many transfers of whales we can block going on to the slipway. So it’s a pretty clear cut calculation. If that quota comes down to 500, then we’ve saved 500 whales, if they only catch 300 then we’ve saved 700 whales.
Journalist – unidentified
You said 950 to 1000, how long is that time period?
Locky MacClean
I can’t speak for future Japanese whaling programs, but in the past the season would typically coincide with Australian summer so December to March.
Journalist – unidentified
[inaudible]
Locky MacClean
Yes, the reason for coming to Hobart was we have almost two decades history using Hobart as a re-provisioning port and basically an adopted home port. In 2015, the Lord Mayor at the time declared our vessels or declared the city of Hobart a friendship city to to our ships.
And in that light, we’ve had excellent relationships with engineering companies here in Hobart that specialise in fitting out vessels for heading to the Southern Ocean. So that was our every intention to return here and use great local companies like Taylor Brothers, an engineering company based up in Derwent Park next to the Incat factory, and other companies here so that the ship can be refurbished and prepared for the next campaign.
Journalist – unidentified
What’s your reaction to the charges TasPorts are imposing?
Locky MacClean
We hope that TasPorts will reconsider. When we initially left Korea, we decided on Hobart because we figured the rate was somewhere around 90 bucks a day. And we were very much looking forward to being back down here. It’s a great city. We hope that that will be reconsidered and that the ship can stay for a couple of months.
Journalist – unidentified
If it isn’t reconsidered what will happen?
Locky MacClean
The ship would depart as soon as next week if, unfortunately, if TasPorts decide to charge us full commercial rates. The vessel is registered as a private yacht. Our indication is that Princess Wharf number 1 has been downgraded so it’s no longer used by commercial ships. I don’t know if that’s, you know, a tonnage thing for the actual wharf but we were told the vessels don’t call there anymore that are commercial, and then it can be used for more, vessels like us, marine conservation vessels and such.
So if we do have to leave we’ll head back up to New South Wales or even Queensland. But, you know, we don’t really want to have to burn that much fuel in order to go to Antarctica. So, as a jump off point, you know, since Captains Scott, Ross, Amundsen, Hobart’s been the spot where Antarctic missions can be prepared.
Journalist – unidentified
If you do get that green light to stay another couple of months, what do those months look like and what will you be doing?
Locky MacClean
If we do stay a few months, there’s pipe pipe fitting work to be done, welding work. We’re hoping to have ship’s tours and allow the public to come and learn about what we’re doing in Antarctica and learn about Captain Paul Watson’s new foundation. So we really do hope we can stay here.
Journalist – unidentified
If you have to leave, how many days would that take?
Locky MacClean
I would say that it’s a very similar problem that your new icebreaker has, whereas, you know, Hobart being the most southerly port in Australia, fantastic infrastructure here, you’ve got these docks that have been used for 200 years to allow for Antarctic missions. However, going back up to the mainland is maybe 20 tons worth of diesel, it’s four days more worth of steaming. That cuts down on our range when we’re heading to Antarctica. So we really do hope that Hobart can be an adopted home port for the Bandero and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. Thank you.
Tasmanian Times
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation is going to do what they do to deter or to interfere with the Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. What should governments around the world be doing to put pressure on the Japanese government to not recommence this form of whaling?
Bob Brown
Well, governments should be informing Japan that if it does, it’s going to come under sanctions from the government. The first thing is that Kevin Rudd’s government’s sent an Australian surveillance ship down and Tokyo was outraged. It didn’t want the film shown, it wanted to put it in a drawer and so on.
The Australian government’s got a big job here, but the best thing to do is to stop it in its tracks. Whaling remains illegal, even if the Japanese are not observing that. And it’s an Australian government’s job to uphold not just the international law but what Australians think about this. It’s very difficult to find an Australian who’ll back Japanese bloody whaling operations in our our waters or waters to the south of Australia.
Tasmanian Times
There’s a blockade going on at Lee Point in Darwin in the Northern Territory to prevent the clearing of bushland, which is to be developed for housing, and there are plenty of native species – threatened, rare, Gouldian finch, tree rats, etc. – that use this block of land. The government looks like they’re going to send in the police to protect the bulldozers. Do you have any comment about that situation? What should Tanya Plibersek and the NT government be doing?
Bob Brown
If they don’t defend the Gouldian finch and the other magnificent wildlife in that place, then nothing’s defendable. It just means that there is no line that the Australian Government – I’m talking about the Albanese government here – and our Environment Minister won’t allow commercial or other interests to cross in destroying Australian wildlife and habitat and sending them to extinction.
This is a very urgent situation in Darwin, and the federal government … I mean, it’s a Defence Housing operation that’s about to clobber this place. So Prime Minister Albanese personally is responsible for what’s happening there. And those bulldozers should be pulled out. They should be pulled out today. The more Australians get to know about that, the more outraged they’ll be. That housing could go somewhere else. But the Gouldian finches – in my books one of the most, if not the most colourful little bird on the planet – will be destroyed, that nesting site will be destroyed. Albanese needs to stop it.
Journalist – unidentified
[inaudible] is there a long term solution to whaling?
Bob Brown
The long term solution to whaling is to not whale. Even the Japanese don’t want to eat whale meat any more, it’s plummeting. They’re forcing it into some schoolchildren’s sandwiches, but that won’t last long. It’s just outrageous. It’s a bit like bullfighting and all the other dreadful things that people have done in the past.
It is – as our friends from the Captain Paul Watson Foundation have said, it’s illegal. The only thing that’s missing here is the police force to apply the law. And that’s where the Australian government comes in. It should be ensuring that at least as far as Australia’s interests are concerned, and that includes these whales and the food they eat, that’s the krill, that this destruction should stop.
Journalist – unidentified
To put it into perspective, what are the impacts if whaling or the krill destruction continues?
Bob Brown
Well, of course, killing is … the krill fisheries are taking the food out of the mouths of the whales. So it’s an indirect way of killing whales. There’s now evidence that whales are coming up past the Australian coast emaciated, that is hungry and not properly fed, because they can’t get the feed in Antarctica. But the answer to this is to end krill destruction. One of the shameful things about this is that krill from Antarctica is going into feeding Atlantic salmon in these destructive industrial salmon cages here in Tasmania. Government should prohibit that.
Find out more about the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.
