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To at least one retired Australian rear admiral, their actions are life-threatening, counter-productive, and even have the potential to destabilise the Asia Pacific region. To many in the global environmental movement, though, the sea-borne activists from the Sea Shepherd conservation group are brave and buccaneering heroes. Normally each year they engage in what begins as a high seas game of cat and mouse with the Japanese whaling fleet in the vast Southern Ocean, and ends with perilous collisions and clashes. This year, because the Japanese fleet was late in leaving port, Sea Shepherd was lying in wait. It meant that for the first time in years no whales were killed in January, and that the conservationists were able to scatter the Japanese fleet, making it much harder to conduct its annual hunt. The Japanese aim was to kill 950 whales for what they have long claimed are "scientific purposes," a definition that allows them to skirt - or flout, according to anti-whaling governments and campaigners - the international moratorium on commercial whaling that came into effect in 1986. This year, Sea Shepherd believes fewer than 100 whales have been harpooned - a figure which the Japanese do not dispute but did not confirm.