Sea Shepherd clashing with harpoon boats, or merely decoys?

The so-called whale wars saga, featuring Japanese harpooners claiming to be conducting important research and activists who have made high-seas harassment into a science, has been playing out in the Southern Ocean for one week.

Crews with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society spotted two harpoon boats on New Year's Eve and both sides have since been playing cat-and-mouse, with the activists tossing stink bombs and trying to disable the whaling boats by throwing ropes onto their propellers.

Sea Shepherd is implying that things are going its way, and that seems to be the case.

But while the activists also claim to be pursuing the whaling factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, and one other harpoon boat, the Yushin Maru No. 1, they had not -- as of Friday morning in the Southern Ocean -- sighted those vessels since Sea Shepherd's helicopter crew caught a fleeting glimpse of the factory ship on New Year's eve.

Could it be, then, that the two harpoon boats Sea Shepherd has been skirmishing with for the past week are merely decoys, sent to keep Sea Shephrd busy while whaling is practiced elsewhere by crews aboard the other two boats?

 

Sea Shepherd's latest news release states, "The Nisshin Maru and one other harpoon vessel the Yushin Maru No. 1 have fled for over 1,200 miles since the discovery of the fleet on December 31st. It is doubtful they have had time to slow down to catch any whales."

In other words, it remains unclear whether they've killed whales because Sea Shepherd has not found them.

This is not to diminish the effect Sea Shepherd has had in its annual campaigns against Japan's yearly effort to kill 900-plus minke whales and 10 fin whales in the Antarctic region.

Sea Shepherd has seriously hampered the effort and top Japanese officials have acknowledged as much, according to diplomatic cables posted earlier this week on the WikiLeaks website.

According to those secret transmissions, Japan and the U.S. even discussed ways of punishing Sea Shepherd as part of a compromise deal that would result in Japan reducing its quota but being allowed to legally conduct commercial whaling in the same region.

Japan currently takes advantage of a lethal-research loophole in the wording of a ban on commercial whaling imposed by the International Whaling Commission in 1986.

This season, for the first time in seven campaigns, Sea Shepherd encountered whaling vessels  before any kills were made. But the Yushin Maru Nos. 2 and 3 are only part of the fleet.

It'd be interesting to learn what, in fact, is happening aboard the Nisshin Maru and whether the Yushin Maru No. 1 has logged any kills for the mother ship -- in the name of science, of course.

-- Pete Thomas

Video is courtesy of Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research

 

Comments

[Preston Moller]

I am only 14 and I think it so sad what these Japanese people do. I wish thay would stop

[Joe Black]

I played pirate as a kid and it seems some still do.

[Richard]

Sea Shepherds are clowns as are their network of supporters and media guys like underwater phtographer Eric Cheng. Seriously misguided he is one of Sea Shepherds brains trust members helping them plan the next round of useless "save the" campaigns.

Shame on people like Eric and others for raising and ultimately dashing the hopes of honest hard working people who really want to see an end to whaling and not more of the same reality tv bites each year.

I suppose he could always go back to shilling underwater images but the big eco parties in Los Angeles are more fun right?

[Dirk]

joseph and rolando, keep the "paul watson hate mail" coming. I going to set up a "hatemail-athon" and for every hate letter I will send 5 cents to the sea shepherd. Thanks for your contibution to a great cause. Love it, the more people like you that paul p***es off the better

Who here hates the finland bird life convervation society? Exactly. Why because they are not very effective at stopping poaching. If they were effective at stopping the poaching of rare and endangered birds in topical rain forests they would be on your hate mail list as well. "Because" you simply do not like to be told that you should not be allowed to kill, expliot and pollute everything on this planet.

You see it as a right to be destructive, like naughty children who were never made to be responsible for your actions, Now as adults you vertally go on the war path with anyone who challenges you about your behaviour.

I say great, I am sending your 5 cents worth of opinions to the sea shepherd as a donation. More anger please, the sea shepherd needs lots of funding. Thank you heaps.

[Joseph Kool]

Anything the sea shepperds say is a lie. They aren't activistsd they're spoiled children who never worked a day in their life. That's not entirely true though because now discovery channel is actually paying them to harass innocent people. This makes Discovery channel liable for any damages or injury to the Japanese. They (Discovery channel) are making a huge mistake paying these clowns. They will get sued into oblivion eventually.
Watson has done so much damage to whale conservation it isn't even funny. People actually side with the whalers now. The only ones dumb enough to donate money are ignorant celebrities that are out of touch with reality. Sea shepperds days are numbered, I have inside information that Watson will be arrested when the current whaling season is over if not sooner. The Australian government is sick and tired of being manipulated by these ass clowns and will no longer protect them in any way.

[Rolando]

Paul Watson is a fat useless fool, as a Captain myself, I can say with complete confidence that the illustrious Paul Watson is incompetent. Furthermore, he has proven himself a liar on several occasions, which, tarnishes the sea Sheperd organization as a whole. If the Japanese torpedoed that glory-hunting idiot and the fools who follow him I'd raise a glass to them for their efforts. Paul Watson will go down one day I assure you, a big head like that will eventually succumb to gravity and I'll be laughing when it finally happens.

[Devon McDonald]

The Japanese have not taken Humpbacks in years. That is just Paul Watson propaganda talking.

[Dirk]

So you have been to the freezer and counted the whale meat? yeah right. Is this the stuff that has not been stolen yet? Whale meat can not be all that good, seen you tube clips of whalers throwing the not so choice cuts of whale meat off the side of the ships. What meat factory in the world would be allowed to dump tonns of waste into a national park. Shame on you. Shame for refuelling below the 60 degrees, oh is that not illegal. Lets just bend the the rules.

Go fish in your own toxic waters, it is not traditional for Japanese to fish in the Antartic. Show me in all the thousands of years of tradition where little Japanese villagers jumped in little wooden boats and paddled all the way down to the Antartic to catch whale? Go fish along your own depleted coast line. Also stop setting up foreign front companies in other countries to get around your fishing limits.

Do not use the "you eat cows" as a guilt trip, I am vego, I was an animal activist at 4 years of age. I am send my money to Sea Shepherd. Mr Rodrigues can send his money to???????? yeap

[kujirkira]

Mercury isn't a problem in whale meat. It's only an issue in animals that eat high up on the food chain and in close proximity to industrial waste.
Krill is nowhere near high on the food chain -- in fact, it's on the bottom. The southern ocean is also as "pristine" as it gets.

Numerous studies on whale meat, including Stanford, show that it's as low as seafood the FDA *recommends* pregnant mothers to eat. Or about 0.07ppm
PCBs are in the same boat.
Non-Issue.

As for the guy rambling on about Mr. Rodriguez not wanting to do anything about it himself -- why should he do anything?
While Japan would be fully justified in confronting, detaining, and scuttling SS vessels like the common pirates and thugs they are, it is solely their responsibility to protect their own vessels.
Norway, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Canada, et. al. have all clearly shown how you deal with thugs like SS. Show them legitimate Authority and they'll run like the cowards they are, never to return.

And now getting onto the lies about whale stocks -- over 6000 tons? Where, praytell, did you find such a statistic?
The latest monthly report from December clearly shows 4500 tons.
http://www.maff.go.jp/j/tokei/kouhyou/suisan_ryutu/reizou_ryutu/pdf/reizou_0912.pdf
Of course there's also 180,000 tons of pork and 70,000 tons of beef in frozen storage. Nobody would claim those don't have a market, however. Japan, being an island nation, keeps a meat storage like we keep oil reserves.
Why is it anti-whalers can't say a single thing without brazenly lying?
Even the author here gets snippy attempting to paint ICR as having claimed their research is vital or ground-breaking. No such claims have ever been made. From the beginning their stated goal to do the research REQUIRED BY the temporary moratorium. Anti-whalers demonize this science because
A.) They don't want the moratorium to end; and
B.) The science clearly demonstrates whaling is entirely sustainable

[Devon McDonald]

According to the info that I have, the Japanese have taken 28 whales as of yesterday.

[Dirk]

I love comments from the likes of people like Mr Eduardo Rodrigues. Quote: "Japan should send the Maritime Self Defence Force and send these thugs straight to the bottom". Yes that's it folks, Mr Rodrigues feels so strongly about it, to the point that someone else should be doing something about it, but not him. A very angry person who could not lift his own butt off his comfortable sofa and raise money to buy a boat and fuel and go down to the Antartic to defend the poor defenseless Japanese whalers from the evil Sea Shepherd.

But he feels so passionate that he can blog and vent, he does not have conviction in his own words or he would actually be doing something about himself. Mr Rodriguez there is 6000 tonns of umwanted frozen whale meat in storage in Japanese freezers they have not been able to sell. Why don't you support them by eating whale meat? You have a record 6000 tonns backed up from last year to get through. It is full of PCB's and mercury up to 16 times that found in shark meat.

Stop bleeding about it, get eating man. The Japanese need mindless eaters to dispose of their toxic waste pile. Dig in man enjoy, eat as much whale meat as you want until you go crazy, have fits and die. The Japanese will love you for your contribution towards their whale reseach.

[Eduardo Rodriguez]

Japan should send the Maritime Self Defence Force and send these thugs straight to the bottom.

[Mr Philips]

If the factory ship was sighted on new year eve, it would have to be maintaining a high speed to evade detection by the pursuing SSCS ships, too fast for the ships to be killing and transferring to the factory ships. So it is unlikely that any whales are being killed.
Though it is possible the 2 Japanese poachers presently engaged are decoys, the additional expenses of engaging SSCS until the end of march will negate any profit from illegal activities in the Whale Sanctuary.

Endangered humpbacks, a target of the Japanese, were recently seen next to the SSCS ship Gojira, in full view of the Japanese. The poachers didn't approach them.