Ya, No doubt. I'm sure they wanted the hit and they wanted it to be the whalers fault. I'm not sure if they put themselves in front or if they were slightly to the side and the whaler veered to to make the hit. I'm just telling you what "Captain Watson" said...

>> ^MilkmanDan:
If that video depicted the Ady Gil being "suddenly rammed", I'll have to reevaluate my definitions of both of those words. Sort of like when people stop a car on a highway just after a high-speed semi-blind turn and wait to get hit so they can sue the driver, because rear-ending another car is almost always automatically determined to be the fault of the rear-ender.>> ^Sagemind:
...
Captain Watson said the Ady Gil was idling in Antarctic waters when it was suddenly rammed by the Japanese ship Shonan Maru, which was providing security to Japan's whaling fleet.
...

If that video depicted the Ady Gil being "suddenly rammed", I'll have to reevaluate my definitions of both of those words. Sort of like when people stop a car on a highway just after a high-speed semi-blind turn and wait to get hit so they can sue the driver, because rear-ending another car is almost always automatically determined to be the fault of the rear-ender.>> ^Sagemind:
...
Captain Watson said the Ady Gil was idling in Antarctic waters when it was suddenly rammed by the Japanese ship Shonan Maru, which was providing security to Japan's whaling fleet.
...

Wow, for a site that seems to favour rational scepticism, you don't really believe in research, do you?

The Ady Gil is a former Earthrace boat that was donated to Sea Shepherd. They didn't build or buy it themselves. But then again, if you fail at spelling "ton" or "little", I guess I can't expect much in the way of intelligent thought.

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^vaporlock:
I don't give a f^ck what your political bent is. You can't ram a ship in the middle of the ocean. They will be able to buy twenty of those little boats after the lawyers get done with them. WTF

Apparently you've never driven a boat before. One of the most basic rules is that the largest ship ALWAYS has the right of way. The reason is fundamental physics, the larger the ship, the more momentum it has meaning stopping or turning it is going to take much longer. A small boat like the one here doesn't get by hit a large ship like this unless it gets too close ON PURPOSE.
A boat that much smaller could literally run circles around the larger ship all day long and no matter how hard the larger ship tried it could never ram the smaller boat, it's just too slow and unwieldy by comparison.


Actually, if you watch this footage and the footage from the Bob Barker closely you'll see two things occur: in the video from the Shonan Maru, you'll see the water at the back of the Ady Gil churn just before the impact; and in the video from the Bob Barker, you'll see the bow of the Ady Gil lurch out of the water and move forward a bit.

Now I'm not a marine expert but I can tell you from the fair amount of boating I've done, both of those factors imply that the Gil throttled up just before being hit. My take is that they wanted to be hit and moved the boat into position to be struck.

Also the Ady Gil, formerly Earth Race, was designed as a highspeed craft, so it's very likely that even at "idle speed" it moves through the water with some vigor.

The footage from the Barker is also rather deceptive, because it appears to show the Shonan Maru turning toward the Ady Gil, but what is actually being seen is the camera angle change as the Barker sails forward and pans the camera to the right of the scene. You can tell this is what is occurring because the Gil's profile changes as well.

Idling?? I see it moving against another ship, and a big one. Not that I know much about ships, but if I was the one on the small high-tech touch-me-and-i-will-break-down ship, I would have steered away from the big i-eat-whales-for-breakfast ship instead of "idling" against it.
>> ^Sagemind:
Captain Watson said the Ady Gil was idling in Antarctic waters (...)

>> ^Sagemind:
Captain Watson said the Ady Gil was idling in Antarctic waters when it was suddenly rammed by the Japanese ship Shonan Maru, which was providing security to Japan's whaling fleet.


Seriously, could a ship that size sneak up on you and "suddenly ram" anybody with half a brain? And if getting hit by the firehose (prior to being "suddenly rammed") wasn't incentive enough to get out of the way, fuck 'em, i say.

"Thanks to a $1 million donation from its namesake, US multi-millionaire Ady Gil, formerly known as Earthrace, the Ady Gil has become the latest addition to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's protest fleet". I quote Linda Carel: "(do you) you support the Japanese fisherman illegally shooting pregnant mother whales with spear guns that explode inside of them…in an area named a sanctuary by the IWC, which Japan refuses to abide by? Why would they? It serves them to refuse to recognize this sanctuary… the fish are so plentiful - they come to what they think is their safe haven to give birth to their calves." Whaling is wrong - especially in protected waters - so these people should be applauded for braving the harsh conditions and putting up a fight. >> ^westy:
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
1.5m dollars on a boat...the true spirit of the modern conservationist movement.

lol yah if they had any brains they would have gotten say 20 cheep boats that way they could scare whales of from all the whalers.

The $1.5m, 79 foot long 'stealth' boat Ady Gil sank after the collision in Southern Ocean but its six man crew was rescued uninjured, said Captain Paul Watson, founder of the radical environmental group Sea Shepherd.

Captain Watson said the Ady Gil was idling in Antarctic waters when it was suddenly rammed by the Japanese ship Shonan Maru, which was providing security to Japan's whaling fleet.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/video-stealth-boats-bow-sliced-off-in-whaling-clash-2001210.html

-taken from Demon_ix's accidental dupe of this video - I didn't want this info to be lost.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'whale wars escalate, japanese, whaling, southern ocean' to 'sea shepherd, ady gil, ship, trimaran, japanese, whaler, whale wars, collision' - edited by Sagemind