In other news, activists with the environmentalist group Greenpeace say their ship has been targeted by a whaling fleet of Japan’s Fisheries Agency that they’ve been following on the seas of the Southern Ocean.

• Greenpeace’s Shane Rattenbury : “This morning the Japanese whaling vessel, the Nisshin Maru, has performed a dangerous maneuver, which has resulted in a collision with the Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise. The Nisshin Maru performed a 360 degree turn, coming along and causing a direct collision which has resulted in the damage behind me. This was an area of open ocean and there was no reason for them to perform this maneuver.”

On Friday, the activists caught footage of one of the whaling ships harpooning a minke whale and killing it as it tried to escape.

• Greenpeace’s Shane Rattenbury: “This graphic footage was captured today. It shows an injured minke whale that has been hit by a harpoon from the Japanese whaling fleet. The whale attempted to escape. The fleet took a second shot and missed, finally hit it with a third shot before the whale was killed with a shot from a rifle.”

Japan agreed to an international moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986 but resumed what it called a research program one year later. Greenpeace alleges the research program has been a guise for continued commercial whaling.