A Message from Captain Paul Watson

I have been fighting the abomination of whaling all of my life and over the last three decades we have achieved some major victories for the whales.

The greatest victory of all was the global moratorium on whaling declared by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1986.

Although whales have continued to die at the hands of Japan and Norway primarily, the commercial ban has kept those numbers down to a few thousand.

We have never been able to realize the great dream of abolishing the killing of the whales on this planet.

But we have never surrendered and we never will, until we realize our objective of total abolishment of whaling.

Our goal is to have whaling condemned as a violent barbaric anachronism that has no place in civilized culture.

Achieving this goal is challenging. After eighteen years, the global moratorium may soon be overturned by the incredible economic and political pressure exerted by the powerful nation of Japan.

Japanese demand for whale meat is driving the move to end the moratorium, and every year Japan buys more votes and comes closer to getting what it wants. Now Japan is saying they may just go and kill whatever whales they like anywhere they like and the rest of the world can go to hell for all they care.

After all, Norway has demonstrated that the law can be ignored without suffering any consequences. This year Norway has raised its illicit quota to 1,800 whales.

In 2005, at the scheduled meeting of the IWC to be held in South Korea, a proposal by IWC chairman Henrik Fischer of Denmark will be put forth to adopt the Revised Management Scheme (RMS).

Japan, the world's most notorious whale killing nation, is seeking to discredit the IWC in an attempt to set up an international whaling regulatory body that Japan will be able to control. The IWC knows it will not survive if Japan pulls out and so the IWC has been looking for a way to appease Japan.

If adopted, the numbers of whales targeted for slaughter will be increased dramatically.

If this happens, we will be back to pre-1986 days and humanity's cruel and relentless war against the whales will return with a vengeance.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society must be ready for this. We must raise the funds for a ship that will have the range, the speed and the strength to hunt down and intervene against the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctica.

I still have years of fight left in me and I have no intention of ever retiring as long as the harpoons continue to tear through the sensitive flesh of the most gentle, most intelligent Earthlings of us all - the great whales.