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Piracy and Blubbler in the South Australian Sea!
Zephos
Climbin in yo ski lifts, snatchin your people up.MichiganRegistered User regular
Climbin in yo ski lifts, snatchin your people up.MichiganRegistered User regular
whelp, the Sea Shepherd and the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research research are at it again in the Australian Antarctic Whale Sanctuary with this years battle coming to blows quite early on.
In a nutshell
*Sea Shepherd brings in 3 ships this year, the Steve Irwin, the Bob Barker, and the Ady Gil
*Sea Shepherd has brought high power laser pointers to shine into the faces of the Japanese Whalers.
*On January 6th the Shonan Maru 2 collides with the Ady Gil, a boat known for its attempt at circumnavigating the globe the Ady Gil sinks shortly after.
*Late last night apparently another collision occurred in which the Bob Barker sustained a 3 foot long 4 inch gash
Some pertinent video of the hot ship on ship action
the Sea Shepherds shining a laser at the Japanese whalers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z9Wwp-uBFU
The Ady Gil collision from the view of the Bob Barker, then from the Japanese Ship
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbuq0YEIPNU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gATb8CMVVg
A nice side by side of both views at the same time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXWD_BAkpII
and finally the most recent collision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b57UCDPUElQ
So how long before someone finally gets very seriously injured?
In a nutshell
*Sea Shepherd brings in 3 ships this year, the Steve Irwin, the Bob Barker, and the Ady Gil
*Sea Shepherd has brought high power laser pointers to shine into the faces of the Japanese Whalers.
*On January 6th the Shonan Maru 2 collides with the Ady Gil, a boat known for its attempt at circumnavigating the globe the Ady Gil sinks shortly after.
*Late last night apparently another collision occurred in which the Bob Barker sustained a 3 foot long 4 inch gash
Some pertinent video of the hot ship on ship action
the Sea Shepherds shining a laser at the Japanese whalers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z9Wwp-uBFU
The Ady Gil collision from the view of the Bob Barker, then from the Japanese Ship
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbuq0YEIPNU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gATb8CMVVg
A nice side by side of both views at the same time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXWD_BAkpII
and finally the most recent collision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b57UCDPUElQ
So how long before someone finally gets very seriously injured?
Xbox One/360: Penguin McCool
Zephos on
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That Ady Gil ship is pretty cool looking though.
Is it wrong that I don't particularly care which?
On the one hand, asshole whale poachers cruelly killing off an animal for meat no one really wants.
On the other hand, asshole guy with boats making a spectacle of and setting back a real cause.
Can't both get hurt?
I think it would be hard to argue that the sea sheperd is setting the cause back. And it's not like any other method would get them very far.
Pouring the money into directly lobbying the Japanese government rather than acting as a pirate?
Do you think PETA is an effective organization for advocating a cease to cruelty to animals as well?
Counterpoint: I don't think it would be hard to argue that the Sea Shepherd is setting the cause back.
Yes, I'd say PETA probably are fairly effective actually. They keep the issue in the public in a rather effective way (they are, if nothing, good at doing dumb stuff that gets in all the papers), and I find in highly unlikely that the number of people they turn off is even close to the number who they get to contribute in some fashion.
The kind of person who goes 'I'd support X but for Y' are generally silly geese, and a very small minority. They're the kind of people who go "I'd support feminism if it wasn't for those darn feminazis".
This made me laugh.
So, for the uninitiated (me), this looks like whalers and anti-whalers playing bumpercars in the middle of a whale reserve, is this a correct summary of the situation?
Yes, well, I disagree.
Kind of.
The Sea Shepard is comprised of a bunch of college drop-outs who want to stop whaling, but they also want a TV show and to not get in trouble, so they do stupid shit to try and dissuade the Japanese whalers from whaling. What ends up happening is that they get their asses handed to them and the whalers just get pissed off and kill whales somewhere else.
A better comparison would be that there is one abortion clinic (or at least one major one) in a state where abortion is illegal. Smashing the windows and slashing the tires of the people who go there and threatening the doctors and nurses with GBH is certainly going to effect how many abortions happen or force the police into action.
Replace abortion doctors with drug dealers should you be more on the whales side, we're not talking about the act that someone finds offensive but the way they feel forced to intervene to protect something/someone.
I recognise that bringing abortion into this risks dragging this thread into dark waters, but the principle is pretty much the same - people commiting unsociable acts against people they believe are harming innocents unable to defend themselves since the government won't intervene as it should (point in favour of the whale guys since the government actually should be intervening based on its own rules). More I think about it, the more I think that Sea Shepherd (or some isolated crazy person with an RPG) needs to take matters into their own hand. The Japanese will overreact like they have in other places that they (alone) deem their fishing grounds and send military vessels in which will provoke the Australians or as said before the Aus Navy will have to get involved actually enforcing the law, which would be a win for Sea Shepherd.
PETA are fighting a battle in which they are completely outnumbered and the law doesn't care. Pro-life guys are rarely going to be turned away from their philosophy by members taking it to its extreme and the people who are against whaling are hardly going to say "well they did drown a few whalers, guess we owe them a few whales in compensation". On top of that, that law says NO WHALING HERE! So its not even if your trying to change the law, just get it enforced.
I'm curious as to what people feel is an appropriate response (as in, the "isolated crazy person with an RPG taking matters into their own hands" comment), and by that I mean is it ok to kill people to protect whales?
Also, how does Japan consider that area to be their fishing ground? I'm not so hot on geography, but southern Australia seems like it's really, really far away from Japan.
I would doubt that they are actually hunting in Australian waters, those being the territorial waters and economic zone. They are probably hunting in areas that are closer to Australia than anywhere else, where Australia has more of an interest. If they are in the High Seas then Australia doesn't have any legal right to stop them, outside of opt-in specific Agreements - so the IWC administers this kind of thing and I think Japan sticks within the technical limits that the IWC sets
It isn't territorial waters, or at least if it is, only partially. I think it is an IWC created concept, which therefore doesn't have the same legal status as UN mandated zones. So for 95% of the world, the Sanctuary is probably considered the High Seas - actual territory of any coastal country is amazingly limited - to about 22km or so from the coast. Then you have the economic zone and continental shelf, where, at least in the case of the former, the coastal country will have primary economic control, subject to certain access rights for exploitation.
If they were oil wells, people wouldn't see it as being beyond belief to kill for them - infact each breeding whale is worth at least around 100x as much as its meat (about $60 million or something stupid), so it would be in the interest of the nations who deal with whale tourism to take serious action. However its not that easy to visualise this sort of thing (plus wierd economies like the more breeding whales the less valuable they become). Add in the fact that we're talking about something people see as the closest thing to people mentally (the only way that really counts) and then I can easily see people willing to give/risk their lives for them. I think most people would probably be willing to defend their pets to seemingly unreasonable levels and those don't even have the more complicated mental aspects whales do.
Far as the fishing grounds go, I don't think Japan believes its their fishing grounds - seeing as they aren't fishing. However they have sent warships and sunk vessels in other areas not recognised by any other countries. If a serious incident occured (especially if the Japanese were the victims) I would put money on the Japanese being more likely to act than the Australians. However I don't think the Australians would tolerate warships being sent down, more than the Japanese would arm their ships and the second incident would be the ones that gets the Australian Navy involved.
If I could get away with it, I would visit the same terror on PETA activists that they visit on my family in the UK. I'm talking carbombs, razor mail, and harassing their children/threatening to kidnap them. As far as I'm concerned, it's open season on PETA and their staff.
That being said, the Japanese are absolutely monstrous in the way they mine the sea's resources. The nations of the Pacific need to band together and either blockade Japanese fishing vessels or get the Japanese government to set sustainable quotas.
Murder at worst, they are Japanese registered ships, but its not war any more than me purposely running down an American in my car (an Aston Martin) would make the US declare war on the UK.
PS: I don't own an Aston Martin...yet
Would a private vessel be able to declare war on Australia?
Is it at all clear who rammed who, or if it was a mutual collision?
Maybe a naval ship-ramming expert wants to review the video.
No, but I don't think there's really a better way to bring attention to the Japanese doing bullshit like this.
I mean, I usually hate on environmentalists taking things to extreme, but pretty much everyone just pretends this doesn't happen other than shit like this. It's hard for me to say that they're really hurting things.
How is it any better than locking naked women in cages?
It's complicated. I'm pretty sure that whaling ship isn't a recognized warship. I do believe that they carry guns on board though (apparently the captain of one of these vessels was shot in the chest?) which is strictly illegal for a civilian ship - only military vessels may carry arms and armaments on the seas. And as other people have mentioned, actual territorial waters are somewhat limited, although Australia can take issue with any action against a ship flying their flag anywhere in the world.
I believe the Sea Shepherd ships all fly under the dutch flag, so they aren't Aussie either.
As for who is at fault for the collisions the videos are part of the evidence, but sometimes without a body of land for reference on the horizon it can be difficult to tell who is actually turning into what.
It's still illegal for merchant vessels to carry arms and armaments on the high seas.
You know, the Australian Navy could host some extended military exercises in the region and close it off to civilian vessels. That might be an acceptable course of action to resolve this mess.
Does anyone have any concrete info on where exactly this occurred? If they are in an area where whales are protected that is one thing, but if they aren't then that would make the Sea Shepard people pretty damn ballsy.
the japanese then sell the meat under a loophole in their own laws that states that any meat they harvest, even in the name of research, cannot be allowed to go to waste.
They could announce a TEZ for live-fire exercises. Since it's international waters, the only way to challenge that would IIRC be with other warships. A hilarious game of chicken, if you will.
Are the whalers in question actually legally allowed to be doing so as far as Japan is concerned, or is Japan not so hot with what they're doing? If the latter, they're just criminals and not like representing one nation telling another to go fuck itself.
It's weird, the timing of this story; just last night I was reading about blue whales and the ban on whaling.
The whaling is to establish a sustainable quota, that's what they are researching.
The idea of Australia doing that to Japan, a reasonably close ally, whaling excepted is rather absurd.