The Japanese government says it will not lower its guard over its whaling fleet, even after Paul Watson said the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will not send ships to try to disrupt its whaling activities in the Southern Ocean this season.

"It's not clear what the real intention of their statement is and we don't know whether the organization will stop its anti-whaling actions this year," said an unnamed official with Japan's Fisheries Agency.  "We can't deny the possibility that other anti-whaling groups may take action, so we continue to closely monitor the situation and we're not making any predictions," the official added.

Paul Watson this week told the ABC that the Japanese whaling fleet has incorporated high tech military surveillance gear to track the Sea Shepherd ships and easily avoid them.

"We cannot compete with their military grade technology," Watson said, "They have real-time satellite coverage of where we are.  We cannot close in on them. 

"It's a waste of time and money to go down there and not be able to achieve anything," he added.

"The Japanese whalers not only have all the resources and subsidies their government can provide, they also have the powerful political backing of a major economic super-power," Watson said, accusing Australia, New Zealand, and the United States of turning a blind eye and thus enalbing Japan's whaling activities.

Japan began what it calls "scientific whaling" in 1987, a year after an international whaling moratorium began.  Tokyo claims the whales are being killed for some nebulous "scientific research", but the meat is sold commercially and government agencies acknowledge that the goal is the resumption of commercial whaling. 

The Sea Shepherd missions started in 2005, and for a while was able to disrupt the hunt.  The group claims to have saved 6,000 whales.  But Japan has been persistent.  Even after taking a year off in 2014 when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the "scientific whaling" cover story was bogus, Tokyo merely retooled its program to appease the ICJ and went back out to the Southern Ocean.  Last year, the fleet killed 333 Minke Whales.

Paul Watson says Sea Shepherd will change its tactics.

"We're not surrendering.  We're going to have to find an alternative way to deal with them.  And we will," Watson said.