No one was reportedly injured in the latest strike. The U.S.-based activist group Sea Shepherd, which sends vessels to confront the Japanese fleet each year, said a small hole was torn in the hull of its ship, but it was above the water line and the vessel was not in danger of sinking.
Sea Shepherd founder Captain Paul Watson said by satellite telephone that the Japanese ship rammed the Bob Barker
- named after the U.S. game show host who donated millions to buy it for Sea Shepherd
- as it blocked the slipway of the Japanese fleet's factory ship.
Watson's claim that the Bob Barker was deliberately hit could not be independently verified.
Japanese Fisheries Agency official Takashi Mori said officials were trying to confirm details of a reported clash.
Saturday's collision was the second this year between a Sea Shepherd boat and the Japanese fleet.
On Jan. 6, a Japanese whaler struck Sea Shepherd's high-tech speed boat Ady Gil and sheared off its nose. The Bob Barker then came to rescue the crew of the Ady Gil, which sank a day later.
Sea Shepherd and the whalers have faced off in Antarctic waters for the past few years over Japan's annual whale hunt, with each side accusing the other of acting in increasingly dangerous ways.
Sea Shepherd activists try to block the whalers from firing harpoons, and they dangle ropes in the water to try to snarl the Japanese ships' propellers. They also hurl packets of stinking rancid butter at their rivals. The whalers have responded by firing water cannons and sonar devices meant to disorient the activists. Collisions have occurred occasionally.
Japan aims to take hundreds of whales each year under a program that is allowed despite the international moratorium on killing whales because it is done in the name of science. Critics say the scientific program is a front for commercial whaling, and much of the meat is eaten.
On Saturday, the Bob Barker found the whaling fleet for the first time since the time of the Ady Gil clash, Watson said.
The Bob Barker took up a position behind the Nisshin Maru - the Japanese factory ship where dead whales are hauled aboard and butchered
- so the four harpoon vessels could not reach it, he said.
