The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd's boat, the Ady Gil, has sunk in the Southern Ocean after being hit by a Japanese vessel.

The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd says one of its boats has sunk in the Southern Ocean after being hit by a Japanese vessel.

The group says the Ady Gil was at a standstill in Australian waters off Commonwealth Bay when the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru 2 deliberately rammed into it.

Sea Shepherd spokesman Chris Aultman, a helicopter pilot for the group, says no crew members were injured in the incident, but the ship has been destroyed.

"The vessel was dead in the water. It was completely and absolutely a wilful act," he said.

"Luckily no one was in the bow of the vessel at the time of the collision or they certainly would have been killed instantly."

Lacky Maclean, the first mate of the Sea Shepherd's ship, the Steve Irwin, says the bow of the Ady Gil was cut off in the attack.

"There's a big difference between throwing stink bombs and sinking a vessel," he said.

A spokesman for Japan's Fisheries Agency, which oversees the country's whaling program, says it is investigating the incident.

The Federal Government has repeated its call for restraint by all parties in the Southern Ocean.

Earlier in the day the Ady Gil clashed with a different Japanese whaling boat.

Sea Shepherd unveiled the Ady Gil in October last year, describing it as "a fast, futuristic-looking trimaran that recently set the world record for global circumnavigation".

The ship, which can reach up to 50 knots, was used to intercept and block harpoon ships from killing whales.

Captain Paul Watson, the president and founder of Sea Shepherd, had said the ship enabled the group's current campaign to be the "most ambitious and aggressive effort to date".

source: ABC News

The Gadani ship-breaking yard is a centre for the breaking up of derelict ocean-going vessels for scrap. The yard is located in Gadani, Pakistan, about 50 kilometres northwest of Karachi.

In the 1980s,the Gadani yard was described as the largest ship-breaking yard in the world, with more than 30,000 direct employees. However, competition from newer facilities in India and Bangladesh resulted in a significant reduction in output, with the Gadani yard producing less than one fifth of the scrap it produced twenty years ago. A reduction in taxes on scrap metal led to a modest resurgence at the Yard, which now employs around 6,000 workers.

Ships to be broken up are run aground on the beach under their own power, then gradually dismantled. As the weight of the ship lessens, it is dragged further onto the beach until completely scrapped. In common with many other breakers in the region, scrapping ships at Gadani uses large amounts of local cheap labor with minimal mechanical assistance.

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From the BBC: Episode 6 Fragile Paradise: The South Pacific is still relatively healthy and teeming with fish, but it is a fragile paradise. International fishing fleets are taking a serious toll on the sharks, albatross and tuna, and there are other insidious threats to these bountiful seas. This episode looks at what is being done to preserve the ocean and its wildlife.

The Amoco Cadiz was a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier), owned by Amoco, that split in two after running aground on Portsall Rocks, three miles (5 km) off the coast of Brittany (France), on March 16, 1978, resulting at that time in the largest oil spill ever, currently the fifth-largest in history (though this ranking may vary depending on criteria). (source: Wikipedia)