A Greenpeace ship, the Esperanza, has offered to help the Nisshin Maru, the flagship of the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean, which has lost engine power because of fires.
A blog by the crew on the Esperanza reports that the Greenpeace ship could reach the Nisshin Maru by tomorrow; one of the Japanese ship's crewmen is missing and the vessel is currently lashed between two other ships as efforts continue to put out fires.
There are fears that the 8,000 tonne vessel's thousands of gallons of oil might be spilled, threatening the Antarctic's biggest penguin rookery at Cape Adare, about 100 miles away. The latest report from Reuters, however, said the crew have managed to stop the Nisshin Maru from listing.
So far, the Fisheries Agency of Japan has spurned the offer of help from arch-enemy Greenpeace who it has described as "terrorists". But Greenpeace is trying to reach the area anyway and you can follow updates on the ship's blog.
If the Greenpeace vessel did help it would be an extraordinary moment given the enmity between the two sides.
The Japanese may have so far refused help because the ship was boarded by Greenpeace activists in New Caledonia in 1998 as it lay in port after another fire, and there have been several other flashpoints over the years.
The Nisshin Maru is the only ship in the Japanese fleet in the area able to process whale carcasses and the season may have to be abandoned if the ship is inoperable. The fleet planned to hunt up to 945 whales from mid-December to mid-March this year.
Japan says its annual whale hunts are for research - a much scoffed-at claim - and is pushing for the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling, imposed in 1986, to be lifted.
