Race on to save crippled anti-whaling boat

The five New Zealanders and the Dutchman rescued from the New Zealand trimaran Ady Gil after colliding with a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean vowed today to continue their fight despite doubts that their $2m vessel can be salvaged.

Maritime New Zealand tonight is to head an investigation into the collision between the now crippled former 24m Earthrace and the Shonan Maru No 2 near Commonwealth Bay on Wednesday for which each crew is blaming the other.

And Foreign Minister Murray McCully called to both sides to show restraint before someone was killed.

Don Bethune, of Hamilton, father of Ady Gil skipper Pete Bethune, said today the trimaran was made of lightweight materials, including carbon fibre, and as a result the hull would probably not sink.

The crew were salvaging as much equipment as they could and they would be doing everything they could to save the vessel, he said.

Mr Bethune said his son's family in Auckland, including his wife Sharyn and teenage daughters Alycia and Danielle, were shaken by the incident but his son would probably continue his conservation work.

The Dutch crewman on the Ady Gill, Laurens de Groot, said it was hoped that another Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship could tow the trimaran to Dumont d'Urville, where an Antarctic supply ship might be able to take it to a shipyard.

Soon after the collision, the crew were pumping out the trimaran's fuel tanks, as the Antarctic cold meant it had to use conventional diesel rather than the bio-diesel on which the boat last year set a new record for circumnavigating the world.

Since the bow was sheared off, crew members have also had to constantly pump seawater from the remainder of the hull, and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society president Paul Watson, said though the sea was calm at the moment, the boat was likely to be lost if a storm came.

He told the Associated Press today the crew wanted to get diesel fuel, oil and the engines out of the Ady Gil because of the risk they could pollute the pristine environment.

"That is our priority right now; to make sure there is no pollution from that vessel," he said.

Mr McCully said that MNZ would oversee an investigation of the collision, which was in the Australian search and rescue area, while Australia's acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) would conduct its own investigation.

"It seems miraculous that lives were not lost," she said.

There have been calls for the Australian Government to send an observation ship to the Southern Ocean to monitor the whale wars, but Mr McCully said that would not be helpful from New Zealand's point of view.

"People are going to behave badly down there -- there's not much we can do about it. Simply having somebody down there to observe involves incurring significant costs for taxpayers and not much capacity to restrain those who behave badly," he said.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said the whaling ship deliberately rammed the New Zealand boat, but a group representing the Japanese fleet, the Institute of Cetacean Research, said footage of the crash showed the ship was trying to avoid colliding with the Ady Gil.

The institute claimed Ady Gil skipper Bethune deliberately put the boat across the bows of the Japanese ship, but miscalculated.

In a video taken from the Shonan Maru No 2 the Ady Gil appeared stationary but crew members were seen running for the cockpit as the Japanese ship approached, and it began to move as the vessels came closer together and the crash tore nearly 3m off its bow.

Peter Bethune told Radio New Zealand his boat had run low on fuel tailing the main Japanese processing ship, which was accompanied by four harpoon vessels and a security ship, the Shonan Maru No 2.

He said The Shonan Maru steered directly at the protest boat before hitting it on the port side.

"They've just deliberately gone in and tried to run us over. The Japanese whalers are just a bunch of thugs..."