The Greenpeace protest ship, Esperanza, was forced to abandon its 3-week effort to disrupt Japanese whaling in the South Seas earlier today.

Japan circumvents an international ban on killing whales for commercial purposes by classifying its 1,000 whale per year hunt as research.

The Australian government has one ship, the Oceanic Viking, which also monitors the Japanese whaling fleet.

Greenpeace estimates that the Japanese fleet will need to kill 9 minke whales (pictured above) per day and 1 endangered fin whale (picured below) every other day to meet their quota of 1000 whales per year.