Japan, please accept the Greenpeace offer to tow crippled vessel

Thanks - Letter is now closed.

After lying disabled for nine days, the whalers’ factory ship is at last underway again. The Greenpeace ship Esperanza will stay with the whaling fleet at least until it is safely out of Antarctic waters.

Thank you all for your emails in the meantime. Help make this the last time a whaling ship ever enters the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary: Find a campaign to be part of, or create your own.

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Dear Mr. Masatoshi Wakabayashi,

Firstly may I extend my deepest sympathies to your government and your country at the loss of Kazutaka Makita during the terrible fire on board the Nisshin Maru.

I am writing to express my great concern for the crew of the Nisshin Maru and the possible impact upon the pristine environment of Antarctica if the ship is not moved very quickly.  I am respectfully asking you to urgently accept the offer by Greenpeace to tow the Nisshin Maru out of Antarctic waters and out of danger.

I understand that Greenpeace has been a thorn in your side on whaling issues for many years and you have publicly stated that you have no reason to trust them now. But Greenpeace in the past has also done many things in support of Japan and to protect the environment and waters around your country. The peaceful protests that they carried out to stop Russian nuclear waste being dumped in the Sea of Japan were successful in bringing about an end to dumping, not just in the Sea of Japan, but worldwide.

Greenpeace peacefully campaigns for an end to whaling and will not stop doing that. But the situation that is unfolding in the Ross Sea as I write is not about whaling. It is about people, your own people, who may still be in danger. It is also about an environment that your government made a public promise to work internationally to protect, through the Antarctic Treaty.

Some people may suggest that you will lose face by accepting the offer of Greenpeace, but as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said "there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right."

I ask you to please do what is right, for the crew of the ship and for the environment, now.