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<em>This just in from Dave Walsh, our man in the Antarctic - it seems that this is the whales' way of expressing their appreciation for the efforts of the Esperanza team!
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"Two days, ago, just after breakfast, the Esperanza was surrounded by around 50 feeding humpback whales, that spent the morning ducking under the ship, and circling us. We launched two inflatables, dropped a hydrophone in the water, and recorded the sounds of humpback whales feeding. The humpies were very curious - swimming right up to our boats and checking us out. To give you some idea of size, an adult humpback is around 15-17m long (50ft) and 40 tonnes in weight. Yet they're remarkably gentle animals - everyone on the boats agreed that they never felt endangered at any time.

It occurred to us that if the Japanese whalers hadn't dropped their quota of 50 humpbacks for this season, and had happened into the area that we were in on Monday morning, then they could have filled their quota in one day!"

Here's some <a href="http://weblog.greenpeace.org/whales/2008/01/video_the_sound_of_humpback_wh.html" target="_blank">amazing video</a> including underwater footage and sound recordings.

<em><strong>Follow up from Dave 12.01.08:</strong></em>

Got em. I'm sitting in the campaign office of the Esperanza at the moment. It's morning, and I've not slept a wink.  It's another cold beautiful morning in the icy Southern Ocean. We're steaming at over 15 knots right now - just ahead of us, four miles away, is the Japanese Factory Whaling ship the Nisshin Maru. We found the Nisshin Maru and its three catcher boats last night - they immediately turned and ran, and we've been chasing them all night, slowly drawing closer to the Nisshin Maru. One of the catcher boats, the Yushin Maru, is astern of us.

This is, obviously, great news. The fleet are running from us - therefore, they're not hunting whales. As they long as they keep running, we'll keep following. If they stop running and start whaling,  we'll be launching our boats, and taking non-violent, direct action to defend the whales.

More as it happens, on the <a href="http://weblog.greenpeace.org/whales/" target="_blank">blog</a>: