The Chieftain aircraft undertook two four-hour searches. The searches failed to find the Steve Irwin. The Ady Gil, the Sea Shepherd catamaran, was fourteen hundred miles south so finding it was out of the question. It was the Steve Irwin they were looking for.

The two searches failed to find the Steve Irwin so Inwood and Johnston chartered a second Chieftain for another four hour flight. It also failed to spot the Steve Irwin.

Sitting at the 200-mile limit, the Japanese harpoon vessel Yushin Maru waited for word from the spotter planes to resume the tail on the Steve Irwin. It had been spotted and identified by a boat out of Hobart with a six-person crew identifying themselves as the Taz Patrol.

Meanwhile, the Steve Irwin had latched onto a passing storm and rode the winds and heavy rains across the Economic Exclusion Zone into international waters undetected.

The 12 hours of flight with the Chieftains at $1,610 an hour cost Glen Inwood $18,320. He put it on his personal credit card.

Was Glen Inwood a representative of the New Zealand government as he said?

No, Mr. Inwood owns Omeka Communications, the New Zealand public relations firm that represents the Japanese whaling industry.

It will be interesting to see if the New Zealand government has a problem with a Japanese hired public relations firm representing themselves as New Zealand government agents.

The end result was that the search was unsuccessful, the Steve Irwin is running south without a Japanese tail, the Yushin Maru is not whaling, and the whaling industry is out another $18 thousand dollars.