WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – A Japanese whaling ship crippled by fire drifted off the world’s largest penguin breeding grounds Friday, and New Zealand alerted other countries it may need help if the vessel leaked oil into the pristine Antarctic waters.

A Japanese fisheries official said that the blaze could force an early end to the season’s whale hunt.

One crewmember was missing from the 8,000-ton Nisshin Maru. The fire was contained below decks but continued to burn, said New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter.

No oil had spilled and the vessel was in no immediate danger of sinking, officials said.

Carter contacted his counterparts in Japan, Australia, United States and Britain – other signatories to the Antarctic Treaty with responsibility for protecting its environment – in case “an international environmental response is needed,” ministerial spokesman Nick Maling said.

Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson said the U.S. Antarctic program likely would send a flight over the Nisshin Maru today to provide the first independent assessment of the vessel since the fire began.

The ship, which is carrying 132,000 gallons of heavy oil and 211,000 gallons of furnace oil, had been listing. But Steve Corbett, a spokesman for Maritime New Zealand, said his agency had spoken with the ship early Friday and the captain said the problem was corrected by pumping out excess water.

“That’s corrected the list … but there is still no (engine) power,” he said. The fire “is contained and controlled” at present.

“We’re confident the situation is under control but there’s still an environmental threat and a crewman is still missing,” he told The Associated Press.

Japanese Fisheries Agency official Hideki Moronuki rejected concerns that the ship may leak oil. “There is absolutely no oil leak. Concerns of an oil spill are completely unfounded.”

Crew members went below decks for the first time on Friday, running power cables from another whaling vessel to operate fans in an attempt to clear the dense smoke, according to a Japanese official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Search teams were waiting for smoke to clear before attempting to assess its condition and search for crewman Kazutaka Makita, 27, Japan Fishery Agency official Kenji Masuda said.

Japanese officials said the blaze broke out below deck, where whale carcasses are processed. Most of the vessel’s 148-member crew were evacuated Thursday to three other ships in the area that also belong to the Japanese whaling fleet, said Moronuk.

Hatches were closed to seal off the burning area, and some 30 crew members stayed aboard to fight the fire, pumping in seawater, Moronuki said.

The Nisshin Maru is the mother ship for five other Japanese vessels that hunt whales in annual hunts that Japan says are for research. The hunts began after the International Whaling Commission imposed a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986.

The drama unfolded as Japan hosted a conference aimed at reforming the IWC. Half the commission’s membership – including anti-whaling nations the United States, Britain and Australia – boycotted the meeting.

The program is allowed by the IWC, which uses its data and approves its kill quotas. But many environmental groups say the hunts are a pretext to keep Japan’s tiny whaling industry alive. Meat from the catch is sold commercially, and canned or frozen whale can be found in most large supermarkets, though it is no longer an important part of the Japanese diet.

One of the ships in the Nisshin Maru’s group collided on Monday with a ship from the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group, which was protesting the hunt.

Hajime Ishikawa, an official at the government-affiliated Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo, said that carrying on the hunt will be “difficult” if the 8,000-ton vessel has to be brought to port for repairs.

The ship was drifting 110 miles from Antarctica’s Cape Adare, which hosts the world’s largest penguin breeding rookeries with some 250,000 breeding pairs of Adelie penguins, Sanson said.

“It’s a long way off the coast but the currents do go that way. We’re very concerned about what could happen,” Sanson told The Associated Press.

He said the ship was far from help and in a “high energy environment where you get a lot of storms.” Conditions were calm Thursday.

The New Zealand navy said it had two frigates that could get to the scene quickly. A Greenpeace ship is also nearby, though Moronuki said Japan would not seek help from anti-whaling vessels.

Institute of Cetacean Research spokesman Glenn Inwood said the New Zealand-owned tug Pacific Chieftain, the closest salvage vessel to the Nisshin Maru, was 61/2 days away.

“Contingencies are being made at this stage but, again, it all depends on the damage assessment and that will be done over the next few hours,” he told National Radio on Friday.

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Associated Press Writer Carl Freire contributed to this report from Tokyo.

AP-ES-02-15-07 2249EST