(Adds Australian confirmation) CANBERRA, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Two anti-whaling activists held on a Japanese whaling ship have been handed over to an Australian fisheries patrol ship near Antarctica, Canberra said on Friday. "The two men were transferred in the early hours of this morning and are safe and well onboard the Oceanic Viking," a spokeswoman for Australia's Home Affairs Ministry said. Australian Benjamin Potts and Briton Giles Lane were picked up from Japanese whale hunter Yushin Maru No.2 in the Southern Ocean early on Friday and would be taken back to their protest ship the Steve Irwin later in the morning, their group said. The families of both men had been informed, the ministry spokeswoman said. Whaling was halted near Antarctica after the activists were detained two days ago when they scrambled aboard a Japanese whaling boat to deliver a protest letter from the militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Each side accused the other of behaving like terrorists and Australia's government offered on Wednesday to act as a neutral intermediary and pick the two men up in a fisheries patrol ship sent to the area to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet. The Australian spokeswoman urged restraint on all sides and said Sea Shepherd and had been given conditions by Australia's government before Canberra agreed to pick up the men. "This still requires the cooperation of Sea Shepherd," she said. Kim McCoy, Sea Shepherd's executive director, told Australian radio that protests against the Japanese whaling fleet would resume when the men were back on the Steve Irwin. "The moment we get them back on board we plan to resume what we came here to do, which is enforcing international conservation law," she said. The Oceanic Viking is seeking to gather photo and video evidence for an international legal challenge by Australia against whaling that Tokyo says is scientific and thus legal. Japan plans to hunt almost 1,000 minke and fin whales for research over the Antarctic summer, but has abandoned the cull of 50 humpback whales after international condemnation and a formal diplomatic protest by 31 nations. Despite a moratorium on whaling, Japan is allowed an annual "scientific" hunt, arguing whaling is a cherished cultural tradition and the hunt is necessary to study whales. Its fleet has killed 7,000 Antarctic minkes over the past 20 years. (Reporting by Rob Taylor, editing by Richard Meares)
