Wellington, New Zealand – A Japanese whaling ship crippled by fire drifted off the world’s largest penguin breeding grounds Friday, and New Zealand alerted other countries it may need help if the vessel leaked oil into the pristine Antarctic waters.
One crew member was missing from the 8,000-ton Nisshin Maru, which was starting to list from water pumped aboard to fight the fire. The fire was contained below decks but continued to burn, said New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter.
No oil had spilled and the vessel was in no immediate danger of sinking, officials said.
Carter contacted his counterparts in Japan, Australia, the United States and Britain – other signatories to the Antarctic Treaty with responsibility for protecting its environment – in case “an international environmental response is needed,” ministerial spokesman Nick Maling said.
The ship was carrying 132,000 gallons of heavy oil and 211,000 gallons of furnace oil.
Japanese officials said the blaze broke out below deck, where whale carcasses are processed. Most of the vessel’s 148-member crew were evacuated Thursday to three other ships in the area that also belong to the Japanese whaling fleet, said Hideki Moronuki, an official with the Japan Fisheries Agency.
The Nisshin Maru is the mother ship for five other Japanese vessels that hunt whales in annual hunts that Japan says are for research. The hunts began after the International Whaling Commission imposed a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986.
But many environmental groups say the hunts are a pretext to keep Japan’s tiny whaling industry alive.
Meat from the catch is sold commercially, and canned or frozen whale can be found in most large supermarkets, though it is no longer an important part of the Japanese diet.
The ship was drifting 110 miles from Antarctica’s Cape Adare, which hosts the world’s largest penguin breeding rookeries with some 250,000 breeding pairs of Adelie penguins, said Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson said.
“We’re very concerned about what could happen,” Sanson told The Associated Press.
