Anti-whaling activists from the Sea Shepherd society are claiming victory as Japanese vessels appear to have withdrawn from Antarctic waters off the coast of Australia.

Sea Shepherd international chair and author Farley Mowat told the Star on Saturday night he spoke with Sea Shepherd Capt. Paul Watson from Antarctica as the Japanese ships began to draw away toward the Indian Ocean.

“He sounded like somebody who had just won the lottery,” Mowat said.

While the Star was not able to reach Watson on Saturday, the controversial captain did talk to the Sydney Morning Herald: “Things are looking good for the end of whaling for this season. We came, we intervened, we stood fast, we won.”

Sea Shepherd’s annual confrontation with Japanese whalers began in January when it deployed four anti-whaling vessels to the Southern Ocean. Its fleet blocked Japanese ships from refuelling, cut the harpoon boats off the from the main factory ship, Nisshin Maru, and parked between whaling boats and their prey, the BBC reported.

The standoff heated up in the last week and there were several hard collisions between the Sea Shepherd and Japanese fleets, one of which severely damaged a Sea Shepherd vessel.

On Wednesday, the whaling boats were joined by a Japanese military icebreaker equipped with armed helicopters and coast guard officers.

“They were throwing concussion grenades at our ships and our crew, which is obviously a big concern, any explosion going off near a fuel tanker,” Australian Sea Shepherd director Jeff Hansen said. “It's like throwing a match into a petrol station.”

The battle against whaling is also being fought in the courts. This week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Sea Shepherd to stop harassing Japanese whaling ships, the BBC reported.

Judge Alex Kozinski said Sea Shepherd’s anti-whaling tactics were “the very embodiment of piracy.”

“When you ram ships, hurl glass containers of acid, drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders, launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships,” Kozinski said in the ruling, “you are, without a doubt, a pirate.”

Because of the injunction, American Sea Shepherd representatives were unable to comment on the Antarctic whaling campaign.

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An international moratorium on commercial whaling went into effect in 1986 but the Japanese maintain their annual hunt is scientific.

As of Saturday evening, the Japanese government had not commented on its ships’ exit from the Southern Ocean.