Is the Japanese Whaling Fleet Using HF CW?

I was keeping this quiet because both sides of the famous "Whale Wars" dispute monitor the Internet almost as intently as the radio, looking for any information on position and course of the others. However, they have now made contact, and awareness of the existence of communication no longer gives either one useful information for location.

The "Whale Wars" are, of course, the yearly Japanese whaling expedition to the Southern Ocean every summer, and the efforts of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to shut it down. This is shown every year, a few months later, on the Animal Planet TV show with this name.

About a week ago, suspicious Morse code comms were heard on 12443 kHz CW. This frequency is in the ship CW working band, but it is not an international channel. It's one kHz off from 12442.0, the ship transmitting side of a duplex pair with 9MG, Penang, on 12943.5 kHz.

These comms, however, are simplex. The ship operator sends Morse with a standard "straight key," not a "bug" or automatic keyer. Content is mostly numbers, though the people who are able to hear this have reported non-international Morse characters that could be Japanese or other languages.

One listener in New Zealand reports that he copied the words "Sea Shepard." It's not known whether the CW op misspelled it or it was a typo. He also notes that he has heard Antarctic CW activity on 12443 kHz simplex in previous Southern Hemisphere summers.

This activity coincides with reports on the Sea Shepherd web site of a series of complex tactical maneuvers ending in their intercepting the factory ship Nisshin Maru, making it impossible to process whales and bringing the Japanese whaling to at least a temporary halt.

So, have utility listeners done the seeming impossible, and heard the Nisshin or one of its associated vessels? This is not known. It could be another vessel mentioning the activity. It's sure fun to speculate, though. Did the whaling fleet think no one would check the old CW frequencies?

But, regardless of who you think is right in this yearly dispute, anything actually associated with it would be a major utility catch. Who says there's nothing on short wave?

Russian Antarctic Comm Station Burns

The Russian "Progress" research station in Antarctica has experienced a fatal fire in one of its buildings. Word of this fire was slow in arriving, because all of the radio gear was destroyed. Routine HF communication from this station has been interrupted.

From RIA Novosti:

Russia Antarctic research station fire kills one, injures two

MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - A two-story building, part of Russia's Progress station in Antarctica, caught fire killing one construction worker and seriously injuring two others, the expedition's head said on Thursday.

Valery Lukin said the fire broke out on Sunday on the station, where 29 people are based, completely destroying the radio equipment, which made it impossible to contact Russian officials about the incident until Thursday.

...

The Progress research station was opened in 1989 and is located in the Larsemann Hills in East Antarctica. The station is around 1.5 kilometers from China's Zhong Shan research station, where the injured Russians are receiving medical treatment.

Antarctic Operations Gearing Up for Summer

The end of summer in the Northern Hemisphere is the beginning of spring in Antarctica. Already the ski aircraft using the identifier ICE have begun operations.

A good report on the annual US Operation Deep Freeze is at Larry Van Horn's Milcom blog. There is a frequency list at the end.