Whaling activists deny disrupting Japanese sailor search

Anti-whaling campaigners have denied charges that they had harassed Japanese whalers searching for a missing crewman in Antarctic waters and said they were simply trying to help.

"We were there definitely to assist them," said Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel the Steve Irwin.

"I think it's very impolite and very unfair to make these accusations that we were harassing them when they knew that in fact we were not," Watson told AFP by satellite phone from on board the ship.

"The fact is that you can either arrest us or shut up really."

Watson announced on Saturday the Steve Irwin was returning to port to refuel after two weeks tailing the Japanese whaling fleet through the Southern Ocean.

But Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), a government-backed whaling body, accused the vessel of latching onto a distress signal to find the fleet again and hamper efforts to rescue a seaman lost overboard.

In a joint statement with the fleet's parent company Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha, the ICR on Wednesday accused the Steve Irwin of cruising with its lights off and trying to disrupt the search.

"Despite our loss and that we are in the midst of a search, the Dutch (registered) vessel has begun to disrupt the navigation of our vessels in the search," said Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha president Kazuo Yamamura.

"There is a distinctly uncaring nature about Sea Shepherd people in that they are prepared to disrupt the search for a missing seaman for their own ends."

The missing crew member was believed to have fallen overboard in the icy Antarctic Ocean waters after he failed to report for duty, the fleet's operator said Tuesday.

An international moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed in 1986 but Japan kills hundreds of whales a year in the name of research, with the meat nonetheless ending up on dinner tables.

For the past four years Watson has led a Sea Shepherd vessel to find, track and attempt to impede the whaling ships during their hunting season, the Southern Hemisphere summer.

Watson said the Steve Irwin was now returning to port to refuel and expected to reach Hobart, in Australia's south, on January 15.