SOUTHERN OCEAN (9 Feb 2007) -- Two Antarctic marine sanctuary patrol officers were rescued off Antarctica after a collision with one of Japan's illegal pirate whaling ships. The officers were carrying out their duties to protect marine wildlife within the Antarctic Marine Sanctuary when their high-speed chase boat was damaged in a collision with the Nisshin Maru, an illegal Japan-flagged pirate whaling ship that attempted to ram a patrol vessel in January 2006. The officers, John Gravois, 24, of the United States, and Karl Neilsen, 29, of Australia, were found in good condition eight hours after they went missing in heavy fog, snow and sleet near the Balleny group of islands south of Tasmania. The glass fibre hull of their chase boat was cracked in the collision and filled with water. Both Gravois and Neilsen were wearing neoprene wetsuits under survival suits, which are designed to protect humans from extreme cold. At least three patrol vessels are in Antarctica to enforce international conservation law against illegal poaching in accordance with the principles established by the United Nations World Charter for Nature. According to Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research, which is backed by extreme right-wing politicians and fisheries officials whose strident ultranationalist rhetoric echoes the anti-western slogans of Japanese fascists convicted of war crimes and executed after World War II, Japan's pirate whaling fleet will attempt to kill nearly 1,000 whales in 2007. Recently authorities around the world have stepped up efforts to protect national waters and marine protected areas from Japan's notorius pirate fishing fleet. | 
