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A militant environmental group on Tuesday said it had planted tracking devices on Japanese whaling ships to ensure they could always find the harpoon boats in the vast Southern Ocean.

Paul Watson, the captain of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel the Steve Irwin, said a device had been placed on the factory ship Yushin Maru No. 2 which was boarded by two of his crew members in January.

"I don't know if bugging is the correct term (because) that means a listening device," Watson said via satellite phone.

"We have a satellite tracking device. It sends signals periodically to a satellite which beams them down. It's the same thing you use for tracking whales and seals and fish at sea."

Watson said other boats in the Japanese fleet had been tagged in a similar way but he refused to say how many or how it was done.

He said without the devices it might not have been worthwhile to continue to pursue the harpoonists for the remainder of the southern hemisphere summer after the Steve Irwin was forced back to Australia last month to refuel.

"We would've spent probably a month or a month-and-a-half trying to find them," he said.

"We just wouldn't have accomplished much."