Another year, another whale war. Victory for Sea shepherd

[Atlan]

I'm curious why some people consider Sea Shepherd to be a pirate vessel. Doesn't piracy involve illegally capturing a ship, cargo and / or crew? Simply bullying a ship or interfering with commercial operations doesn't really fall into any one of those categories.

Edit - well according to Wikipedia it also includes the use of criminal violence...so I guess in that regard they could be pirates.

Based upon their actions, their moniker is either pirates or terrorists. Take your pick.

[Highlord Laan]

Personally, I'm waiting for them to do something that earns them a harpoon shot through the hull. With the shit they pull, the captain of the whaling vessel could easily say he was defending his ship with what he had on hand.

[Thanas]

Personally, I'm waiting for them to do something that earns them a harpoon shot through the hull. With the shit they pull, the captain of the whaling vessel could easily say he was defending his ship with what he had on hand.

Oh, I see. You are not for observing the laws or protecting human lives, you want the guys to suffer. Okay then.

[Stark]

Sea Shepherds are self-righteous assholes.

However, the Japanese are the same here and on top of that slaughter intelligent species for no good reason, which gives them a special place.

As people have mentioned, trying to 'save the whales' by risking a serious environmental disaster is just ridiculous.

If only Australia wanted to 'stop the boats' down in Antarctica I guess. :V

[Sea Skimmer]

As a review of the videos blatantly show, Sea Sheppard's vessel was stationary at the time Nisshin Maru rammed them from astern and knocked them into the Japanese tanker which was also stationary, this isn't UNREP, then rammed the tanker itself. That's 100% the Japanese not giving a damn. If Sea Sheppard didn't give a damn they could have just welded a proper ram on one of the ships they have for a few grand and rammed and sunk the NIsshin Maru years ago.

Also the bunker oil everyone is so concerned about, is in fact banned in Antarctic waters. So if the Japanese are carrying it they are in gross violation of international law simply by existing in those waters. The Japanese have never made it clear if they converted the factory ship to burn lighter less crude like grades of fuel or not.

[Thanas]

So the Japanese were in fact the assholes who risked environmental disaster illegally here? Maybe Highlord Laan will now cheer for them to be sunk now.

[Sea Skimmer]

Unless you think a stationary vessel can be at fault for a collision from astern the Japanese are completely at fault. It really doesn't matter how obstructionist Sea Sheppard was being, they were not in contact with the Japanese, they were not hazarding the navigation of the Japanese tanker. Nisshin Maru deliberately rammed both vessels from behind. This is not ambiguous at all, unlike the ramming and sinking of Ady Gil several years ago.

Also the very act of refueling at sea, which the Japanese do repeatedly in these whaling expeditions, in such hazardous water is in and of itself a serious risk of an environmental disaster, if a smaller one. Oil spills and fuel tank explosions become much more likely when you engage in such activity.



The above is a spill the Russians managed to cause with a fucked up refueling. That ship, the largest of the three, is the carrier Kuznetsov for scale. A pipe broke while pumping from excessive pressure. Luckily this was in the middle of the North Atlantic and not anywhere particularly sensitive. The Japanese take risks like this dozens of times every single time they dispatch the whaling fleet. All those little whale chasers have fairly limited range. The factory ship itself has to refuel a couple times.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Every episode I see, I keep hoping the Shepards do something even more stupid than usual and get the ship sunk. I detest pirates or whatever the hell else one wants to call lawbreakers. That the Sea Shepards are getting publicity (and therefore backing) from Animal Planet is disgusting, and on the day they get their ship trashed, I hope it takes most of them with it into the deep.

So you'd rather let the Japanese lawbreakers, in spirit if not in letter, harvest their endangered species?

Has the law actually been violated? No? Than too bad. You want that to change? Start campaigning to get like-minded people together, raise funds, and start making waves within the legal structure. If you back what the Sea Shepards do -which is outright piracy and willful endangerment of those Japanese crews- than you'd dammed well better back any group that decides to take the same flavor of vigilante action against them.

Somehow, I don't see you or any other fan of the Shepards being that honest.

OK. It is time that someone is educated as to how this shit works.

The International Whaling Commission exists as a legal but toothless oversight body for non-commercial whaling. Effectively, they have banned commercial whaling (but members can simply leave and ignore the ban, like several nordic countries have done. More on them momentarily), but not "research" whaling.

The Japanese call their whaling "research" whaling, when no research actually gets done under their auspices other than shit like gut content analysis of the whales they have killed which can be done using non-lethal methods. None of the research they do actually requires the killing of whales, and even if it did, does not require the number of whales they take to be killed. The shit they do with whales would not be acceptable to any animal use ethics board in the G20 if the proposal was to do it with lizards, let alone a self-aware mammalian taxa.

The rest of the IWC knows this, but the Japanese threaten to leave said IWC and take the rest of the pro-whaling faction with them. As long as they are members of the IWC, their catch quotas and species targeting are negotiated. If they leave, they start hunting humpbacks, blue whales and other species that dont have the population to sustain any harvesting, and they will over-harvest those like Minke Whales that do. Effectively turning whales into very large Bluefin Tuna (in fact they use a similar strategy to increase their catch quota of Tuna, thus ensuring that Bluefin will go the way of North Atlantic Cod).

They then proceed to do "research" whaling in marine sanctuaries (which is illegal), and in the Australian EEZ (also, obviously, illegal) in the full knowledge that they have the political leverage to make sure no one but Sea Shepherd will do anything.

They are not just whaling, which is bad enough. They are fucking poaching. They also apparently use tankers, the existence of which is illegal in the waters they occupy.

(incidentally, they do the same thing with Bluefin tuna, going over their catch quotas, illegally not reporting tuna catch, and fishing for tuna in waters prohibited to them)

The law will not deal with them. Vigilantes are the only actual option. Thus, I DO support any group that interferes with them in any way. Personally, I think those who poach endangered species should be taken out behind a tool shed and shot, like they do Rhino poachers in Africa. That is one thing I think they are doing right there, because poachers are fucking loathsome. However, that is just me, and I realize that civilized people (rightly. I have a strong knee jerk reaction to poaching I know is probably not morally correct) wont do this. However, harassing, interdicting, and generally making life unpleasant for Japanese whalers? More power to them. Sea Shepherd gets an annual donation from me.

As for the Nordic whalers, they at least very very carefully manage their whaling. It is still wrong, but they dont take as many as the Japanese, dont poach them from other country's EEZs, only harvest a small number of very common species like Minke Whales etc. That is the difference. Whale meat in Norway is a thing eaten by a portion of the population on special occassions. It is a niche thing, part of their traditional diet in the same way that a roast turkey is in the US for holiday dinners. Demand is not high, and they dont artificially drive up demand. Eventually, whaling in the Nordic countries will just die off on its own. They also dont game the system. They are not in the IWC, they dont put pressure on it. They are doing their own thing. It may be fucked up that they still hunt whales, but at least the Norwegians are not giant assholes about it.

The Japanese are different. They commercially whale, not because their population actually eats whale anymore, but for reasons of Nationalism, and saying "fuck you" to the Gaijin. Most of the meat from the whales gets ground up into pet food because it does not sell in supermarkets.

[mr friendly guy]

I wanted to reply to Highlord Laan but AD beat me to it and said it in much more eloquent manner than I can.

But basically
1. Illegal to carry heavy fuel oil into Antarctic waters under international law - I have seen this claim in various articles about this topic, but Skimmer confirmed it here.

2. Fishing or whaling in Australia's territorial waters (which we inherited from a British claim).

3. Whaling officially via a loop hole - ie for scientific purposes and not consumption, which we know is not true for years.

So yeah, the law has been violated. So these vigilantes are doing things the Australian government should be doing, and making a television show out of it to boot.

The law will not deal with them. Vigilantes are the only actual option. Thus, I DO support any group that interferes with them in any way. Personally, I think those who poach endangered species should be taken out behind a tool shed and shot, like they do Rhino poachers in Africa. That is one thing I think they are doing right there, because poachers are fucking loathsome. However, that is just me, and I realize that civilized people (rightly. I have a strong knee jerk reaction to poaching I know is probably not morally correct) wont do this. However, harassing, interdicting, and generally making life unpleasant for Japanese whalers? More power to them. Sea Shepherd gets an annual donation from me.

That's basically my dilemma. If the Australian government takes my tax earnings but doesn't do anything concrete about Japanese whalers, than perhaps Sea Shepherd can take some free money and actually get something done. I predict the fact they actually get results (and lets face it, this season appears to be the best they have done), will just strengthen the cash flow.

[Sea Skimmer]

MARPOL, as amended in 2010, does not blanket ban tankers from Antarctic waters. It only bans heavy fuel oils, and most forms of crude oil. So most but not all oil tanker traffic is banned by this. Basically it’s meant to be a ban on forms of oil that don’t substantially evaporate. If tankers or ships serving as tankers were completely illegal it'd be impossible to supply antarctic bases.

Like most merchants, Nisshin Maru was designed to burn very heavy bunker C oil in her diesels, which is banned. Converting to lighter grades of fuel would have required fuel injector changes and other fuel system modifications. Nothing they can't do, but it does cost actual money, and all the other ships in the fleet would have needed conversion. Random RUMINT suggests Australia and New Zealand have suddenly become very interested in if this conversion was done or not.

[CaptHawkeye]

What's creating a market for whale products and byproducts in Japan? Does Japan simply lack any kind of animal/environmental welfare or awareness? Why is the Japanese Government complicit in the blatant crimes of this industry?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We encouraged the Japanese to eat whale meat with a large effort in the late 40's during the occupation of Japan as a cheap and easy means of helping them avoid mass starvation as we were badly strained in shipping food to Japan in the period and their own food production and distribution was wrecked by the war. Japanese people growing up in that generation, were therefore growing up with whale meat as a normal part of their diet, and took a liking to it. It became a popular food for them even after large-scale consumption of it receded later. Now, Japan has an aging population and people of that age are retired, so they have a large number of retirees who eat it, and almost nobody else at all. It is like a chicken soup casserole or spinach quiche for American baby boomers, basically. Or maybe chicken fried steak or fried chicken, waffles, and gravy. A stereotypical thing for retirees which everyone else mocks as being yucky and disgusting.

[Sea Skimmer]

Its all about Japan maintaining the right to do whatever it wants with the oceans for food, they don't actually give a damn about whale meat itself. They give a damn about the ability to sell individual tuna for over a million bucks. Plus that whole 'cannot loose face' cultural issue, that makes admitting fault worse then allowing nuclear reactors to explode.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

With the issue of losing face, is open opposition to it such as Sea Shepherd aggravating the situation, in a sense? Giving up because someone else is demanding you do it makes you lose face while if you quietly retired it when no one was paying attention, then it's not a big deal.

[mr friendly guy]

With the issue of losing face, is open opposition to it such as Sea Shepherd aggravating the situation, in a sense? Giving up because someone else is demanding you do it makes you lose face while if you quietly retired it when no one was paying attention, then it's not a big deal.

If that's the case, then this problem isn't going to go away if Sea Shepherd does. They have faced diplomatic pressure before from the Australian and NZ governments and to a lesser extent the US as well looong before Sea Shepherd decided to do their vigilante actions. Unless its somehow better to concede to a middle power like Australia, than a bunch of fanatics in boats.

[Sea Skimmer]

A bunch of fanatics creates public pressure on the foreign governments to care. They really don't otherwise, once yearly complaints at the IWC don't mean much. It also creates its own loss of face for Japan, and has driven up the cost of the whaling operation considerably. It now needs several tens of millions of dollars of government aid each year to operate and that has generated some additional opposition within Japan. Particularly when they funded some of that aid out of the Tsunami relief budget. So yes, Sea Sheppard has a tangible effect far beyond simply reducing the number of whales actually killed.

[Aaron MkII]

OK. It is time that someone is educated as to how this shit works.

The International Whaling Commission exists as a legal but toothless oversight body for non-commercial whaling. Effectively, they have banned commercial whaling (but members can simply leave and ignore the ban, like several nordic countries have done. More on them momentarily), but not "research" whaling.

The Japanese call their whaling "research" whaling, when no research actually gets done under their auspices other than shit like gut content analysis of the whales they have killed which can be done using non-lethal methods. None of the research they do actually requires the killing of whales, and even if it did, does not require the number of whales they take to be killed. The shit they do with whales would not be acceptable to any animal use ethics board in the G20 if the proposal was to do it with lizards, let alone a self-aware mammalian taxa.

The rest of the IWC knows this, but the Japanese threaten to leave said IWC and take the rest of the pro-whaling faction with them. As long as they are members of the IWC, their catch quotas and species targeting are negotiated. If they leave, they start hunting humpbacks, blue whales and other species that dont have the population to sustain any harvesting, and they will over-harvest those like Minke Whales that do. Effectively turning whales into very large Bluefin Tuna (in fact they use a similar strategy to increase their catch quota of Tuna, thus ensuring that Bluefin will go the way of North Atlantic Cod).

They then proceed to do "research" whaling in marine sanctuaries (which is illegal), and in the Australian EEZ (also, obviously, illegal) in the full knowledge that they have the political leverage to make sure no one but Sea Shepherd will do anything.

They are not just whaling, which is bad enough. They are fucking poaching. They also apparently use tankers, the existence of which is illegal in the waters they occupy.

(incidentally, they do the same thing with Bluefin tuna, going over their catch quotas, illegally not reporting tuna catch, and fishing for tuna in waters prohibited to them)

The law will not deal with them. Vigilantes are the only actual option. Thus, I DO support any group that interferes with them in any way. Personally, I think those who poach endangered species should be taken out behind a tool shed and shot, like they do Rhino poachers in Africa. That is one thing I think they are doing right there, because poachers are fucking loathsome. However, that is just me, and I realize that civilized people (rightly. I have a strong knee jerk reaction to poaching I know is probably not morally correct) wont do this. However, harassing, interdicting, and generally making life unpleasant for Japanese whalers? More power to them. Sea Shepherd gets an annual donation from me.

As for the Nordic whalers, they at least very very carefully manage their whaling. It is still wrong, but they dont take as many as the Japanese, dont poach them from other country's EEZs, only harvest a small number of very common species like Minke Whales etc. That is the difference. Whale meat in Norway is a thing eaten by a portion of the population on special occassions. It is a niche thing, part of their traditional diet in the same way that a roast turkey is in the US for holiday dinners. Demand is not high, and they dont artificially drive up demand. Eventually, whaling in the Nordic countries will just die off on its own. They also dont game the system. They are not in the IWC, they dont put pressure on it. They are doing their own thing. It may be fucked up that they still hunt whales, but at least the Norwegians are not giant assholes about it.

The Japanese are different. They commercially whale, not because their population actually eats whale anymore, but for reasons of Nationalism, and saying "fuck you" to the Gaijin. Most of the meat from the whales gets ground up into pet food because it does not sell in supermarkets.

And the First Nations that hunt whales off the coast of British Columbia as part of their treaty rights, they OK with you?

Edit: Correction, its the Inuit. They can take one bowhead every two years from the Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin. And one every 13 years from the Baffin Bay-Davis Strait population.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

First nation traditional whaling with traditional techniques like the whaling by the Makah (which was protested by Sea Shepherd anyway, fuck them, indigenous Americans are getting fucked over hard enough without more help, thank you) is to me the only form of whaling that should continue to exist. I also see things like the grind in the same light. Collectively the Makah and the Alaskan indigenous people have the right to take 55 whales a year, the Makah's being held in abeyance by legal challenges from envirofundies. Canada holds the Canadian Inuit to sub-annual levels, which isn't really fair, though I'd be willing to see the alotments for the US indigenous and Canadian indigenous shared if there were an agreement between the groups. The Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, St. Vincent and Grenadines, and the Lamalera people in Indonesia are in similar positions. There aren't any other actively maintained whaling cultures, it was a relatively rare practice.

Iceland and Norway on the other hand have industrialized the process so you can't really call it indigenous whaling anymore, so I don't see those as appropriate. But I just hate the idea of all of us arrogant snooty fucking retarded whites going around and building goddamned Walmarts all across the land these people lived in for twelve thousand years and then telling them they can't spear a fucking whale every other month. It's WRONG to do, and yet of course we're so self-absorbed and privileged we do it anyway while thinking we're in the right. This is why I hate both sides in this ridiculous little war.

[Flagg]

I'm not OK with Native Americans hunting whales unless they are starving to death and whale meat is their only recourse, which they aren't and it isn't. So no. I don't give 2 shits about their traditions.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm not OK with Native Americans hunting whales unless they are starving to death and whale meat is their only recourse, which they aren't and it isn't. So no. I don't give 2 shits about their traditions.

Then you should die. You live on their land, your people took it from them. It is a fact we both share, sweeping across North American in genocidal strength. We signed treaties with them afterwards, and then broke them. Now you are a treaty breaker too, someone who deserves to die, because you're part of the body politic which supports stripping them of rights that they possessed under treaty, and in the case of the Makah very particularly the right to take whales off their own coast.

We have systematically screwed these people and their cultures and beliefs for centuries now. What we need is more respect for them and less regulation. Tribes should be fully governing. Land should be returned to reservations. All tribes whose status as legitimate Indians are denied by the Feds should be recognized immediately and given reservations. The right to try non-Indians who commit crimes on Indian land should be restored to Tribal courts. All state and provincial laws should cease to apply in reservations, letting them do whatever they wish that is legal under federal law. Transfer payments should be the same size as grants to states for projects, and they should be able to issue their own ID and documents and conduct affairs on the same status as full states/provinces, each and every one, and we should just deal with it. Maps should cease showing Indian reservations as parts of states/provinces and show them as separate subnational entities in the US and Canada as a point of pride and fact. And people should come together to fight for this.

It's their culture, their custom, and they lost enough. And now you want to take it from them. Well, you're either trolling or you're a sick fuck filled with a truly miserable amount of white privilege.

[Flagg]

Ok, I'm just pointing out that I'm ignoring everything Duchess posts since she's either trolling or insane, and I don't debate either kind.

[fgalkin]

First nation traditional whaling with traditional techniques like the whaling by the Makah (which was protested by Sea Shepherd anyway, fuck them, indigenous Americans are getting fucked over hard enough without more help, thank you) is to me the only form of whaling that should continue to exist. I also see things like the grind in the same light. Collectively the Makah and the Alaskan indigenous people have the right to take 55 whales a year, the Makah's being held in abeyance by legal challenges from envirofundies.

What part of "intelligent self aware species" escapes your notice? Should we permit murder and cannibalism of humans if it is for cultural reasons? What about things like sati?

Ok, I'm just pointing out that I'm ignoring everything Duchess posts since she's either trolling or insane, and I don't debate either kind.

Yeah, see you can't actually do that on this board. Unless, of course, you volunteer to no longer be on this board. Please say yes. Pretty please?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Ok, I'm just pointing out that I'm ignoring everything Duchess posts since she's either trolling or insane, and I don't debate either kind.

I'm dead serious. I actually believe that indigenous people should have those rights. In case you haven't noticed, there is an indigenous rights movement which demands very much the same which is a widespread social phenomena in the Americas.

[Flagg]

First nation traditional whaling with traditional techniques like the whaling by the Makah (which was protested by Sea Shepherd anyway, fuck them, indigenous Americans are getting fucked over hard enough without more help, thank you) is to me the only form of whaling that should continue to exist. I also see things like the grind in the same light. Collectively the Makah and the Alaskan indigenous people have the right to take 55 whales a year, the Makah's being held in abeyance by legal challenges from envirofundies.

What part of "intelligent self aware species" escapes your notice? Should we permit murder and cannibalism of humans if its for cultural reasons? What about things like sati?

Ok, I'm just pointing out that I'm ignoring everything Duchess posts since she's either trolling or insane, and I don't debate either kind.

Yeah, see you can't actually do that on this board. Unless, of course, you volunteer to no longer be on this board. Please say yes. Pretty please?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I've been ignoring most of what she says for years. Same on your account. Turns out, since I didn't actually respond to her drivel, but rather Aarons post, I don't have to. And I won't be refferencing anything she says. And she can take it as a concession to her if she wants to, I couldn't care less.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

As for the other point: Fima, there is a large degree of variation among whale species and it has by no means been proved that all whales of all families are even as smart as elephants, let alone primates. And the ultimate point is that indigenous people should have the right to decide for themselves whether or not they want to continue.