Anti-whaling group clash with Japanese whalers on high sea

The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd has clashed with a fleet of Japanese whalers.

It happened Friday in Antarctic waters during the whalers' annual hunt.

Anti-whaling activists threw rotten butter and bottles containing an unidentified liquid at a Japanese whaling vessel in the Antarctic.

The Japanese ship Nisshin Maru radioed warnings to the Sea Shepherd to desist.

But the protesters ignored the warnings, and the Nisshin Maru responded by launching what it calls "warning balls."

There were no injuries among the Nisshin Maru crew. But a leading protester says he was shot and only saved from injury by his bulletproof vest.

Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Captain, said, "We had a confrontation with the Japanese vessel and we were putting stink bombs on the deck and rotten butter and they retaliated with flash grenades which injured two of my crew, and then I felt a thud in my chest and found I had been hit by a bullet which was lodged in my Kevlar vest."

Australia's Foreign Affairs department said its embassy in Tokyo had been told by Japan that the ship "fired warning shots".

It was impossible to verify either side's account of the clash, which took place in remote waters three-thousand kilometers south-southwest of Melbourne in the Antarctic Ocean.

Sea Shepherd and other anti-whaling groups have repeatedly harassed the Japanese whaling fleet to interfere with the hunt.

Japan kills about one-thousand whales every year under the pretext of scientific research.