US based Sea Shepherd has agreed to pay the Institute of Cetacean Research and Kyodo Senpaku $2.55 million, or £1.65 million, in damages.
The injunction was handed down to the US Sea Shepherd Conservation Society back in 2012 and just last week senior officials have agreed to pay the civil court charges for an offence that occurred in the Antarctic Ocean.
The injunction prohibits Sea Shepherd's captain and founder Paul Watson and those who associate with him to physically attack any of the Japanese vessels in the Southern Ocean. The injunction also bans all Sea Shepherd vessels from coming within 500 yards of any of the Japanese vessels.
December 2014 the US court found that the Sea Shepherd violated this injunction and handed them the £1.65 million fine. In the hearing, the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research told the court that the Sea Shepherd used such tactics as blocking their ships and using confrontation methods that where described as terrorism.
The payment to the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research body has been received with welcome notes, such as "the prevention of unreasonable attacks to our research can now safely be understood by the world" and that "the world can see that Japans Whale hunting is for research only." The institution hopes that future hunts can go on without interruption.
For the last few years Clair Loebs Davis, Sea Shepherd's legal counsellor, has said that her clients didn't agree with the Ninth Circuit injunction and that they were in contempt but they are happy to see it behind them.
She also added that they would now focus on exposing the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research to the dangerous and illegal actions they are doing to the world and that commercial hunting of whales is against international law and that the Japanese are using the scientific research as a loophole.
Critics and protesters have said that there is nothing scientific about the hunt and that for the decades they have been hunting there have never been any results to match the quotes of the catch. They also said that a scientific designed program would have shown results by now and there is no secret that a lot of the meat appears in supermarkets and on menus.
