Japan's whaling fleet may not have seen the last of New Zealand protester Pete Bethune, freed by a Tokyo court Wednesday on a two-year suspended prison sentence after 143 days in custody, dpa reported.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which announced during his trial that it had banned Bethune from future campaigns against Japanese whaling in the Antarctic, said Thursday that was a legal strategy to secure his release and he was welcome to join future missions to the Southern Ocean.
"I don't think he'll be going back this season, because I think he's going to be writing a book, which is good, but he's certainly welcome back in the future," Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson told Radio New Zealand Thursday.
Bethune's wife, Sharyn, said: "I don't think he'll be climbing on any Japanese fishing boats for a while. I still believe he will go on and fight - whether it be for whales or shark-finning in Galapagos."
Bethune, 45, was given a suspended two-year jail sentence after being convicted on five charges related to boarding a Japanese whaling vessel in the Southern Ocean in February when taking part in a Sea Shepherd campaign.
The society's chief executive, Chuck Swift, said at the time that he had been banned from future missions because he broke Sea Shepherd's non-aggression policy by taking a bow and arrows on to his protest boat Ady Gil, which had sunk after colliding with a Japanese whaler.
Bethune, who apologized for the trouble he had caused his family, is expected to return home on Saturday.
Watson vowed to keep up the Sea Shepherd campaign against Japanese whaling in the next season, in the absence of direct action by the New Zealand and Australian governments.
"We are going to go down there stronger than ever and I have a couple of thousand crew applications, so we are not going to have trouble finding crew," he said.
"We are not going to retreat - these people are poachers, they are targeting endangered whales in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary and it's illegal."
Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) and fishing company Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha issued a joint statement strongly condemning Sea Shepherd for "dangerous and violent actions against Japan's whale research vessels and crews in the Antarctic."
They called on the Netherlands, which provides Sea Shepherd vessels with a flag, and Australia, which provides port facilities, "to take action to stop further criminal acts being committed by this group."
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key counselled the need to keep "cool heads" as the international community struggles to come up with a compromise acceptable to whaling and non-whaling countries.
"In the end we want to see an end to whaling in the Southern Ocean," he said. "We strongly believe the kind of actions we've seen will ultimately lead to a loss of life if we're not careful, so trying to find a solution which is acceptable is very important."