The Greenpeace ship MY Esperanza is on her route towards Antarctica through the icy reaches of the Southern Ocean. This is the end of the 14 month Defending Our Oceans expedition which was started by a trip to the Southern Ocean to confront the Japanese government's whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. At the end of this expedition Greenpeace return to the whale sanctuary to, once again, defend the whales. Despite a moratorium on commercial whaling, the hunt for whale meat continues through the loophole of "scientific purposes".