The Sea Shepherd ship looks like something built for Batman. It's too bad they do good work. Apparently they were picked up by a new five million dollar ship payed for and named after Bob Barker. *promote

>> ^lavoll:
acid throwing, laser and noise gun wielding hippies 0 - japan 1


Agreed, they are wusses. If they really want to stop them they could... get an RPG-7 and a couple of rpg´s and there goes the japanese whaling fleet... just look at http://www.videosift.com/video/South-Park-Whale-Wars-are-a-bunch-of-pussies-no-more

From NYT website:

The video above shows the collision of the $1.5-million dollar speedboat deployed by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society this year to dog the Japanese whaling fleet with a Japanese security vessel. The video was provided by the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research.

Sea Shepherd’s leader, Paul Watson, has labeled the incident a deliberate attack by Japan, but Japan’s whaling institute, which claims the whale hunt is scientific research, blamed the conservation group for what it called “illegal harassment and terrorism.”

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
They forgot the school house rules; It doesn't matter how loud your siren is but who's boat is made from carbon fiber and who's from metal!


I think the sound cannons were coming from the whales, as well as the water cannons.

The Japanese ship Shonan Maru, was providing security to Japan's whaling fleet. They go to great lengths to create distractions using aggressive diversions to keep the activists from the "Sea Shepherd & affiliated Ships" busy - Then they send out five or six whalers to suck up every whale within miles - It's like "Clear-cutting" the ocean for it's resources. I'm not an activist but the Japanese have eliminated all of the whales and large fish in their own waters and now spend their time encroaching and often poaching in foreign waters.

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

Found video of that ship collision, after all

http://www.videosift.com/video/Sea-Shepherd-Ship-Collides-With-Japanese-Whaler-Damaged

I can't stand the Sea Shepherd Society/Paul Watson and I hate Whale Wars. Why? Because the Sea Shepherd Society is actually hurting their own cause and Whale Wars is glorifying it.

Let me explain. I lived in Japan for eight years and I saw that every time the Japanese whaling fleet was attacked by the Paul Watson's group sales of whale meat went up in Japan and the resolve to continue hunting strengthened. The sales of whale meat has been falling for years in Japan, to the point now where there is over 1000 tons of frozen whale meat, some of it going back 12 years, in government freezers. The government can't give it away, but they try. If this trend continues it just won't be financially viable for Japan to continue whaling.

I taught at a university in Japan and I would ask my students if they eat and/or like whale meat. The vast majority of my students (90%+) said they didn't eat whale meat (however almost all of them had eaten whale meat at some point, usually served to them in their elementary school lunches, of course provided by the government). Almost the same number said they didn't like whale meat. Then I would usually give them the above statistic and ask if Japan should continue whaling, again a big majority would say "No". However, when stories about the Sea Shepherd Society attacking Japanese whalers hit the news (and it hit BIG TIME), attitudes would change. Then most of my students would say Japan should continue whaling. This was not just found in a university setting either. Editorials and opinion letters to newspapers would echo the same feelings.

In direct response to the Sea Shepherd's attacks on Japanese whaling ships supermarkets, restaurants, street vendors, etc. would suddenly begin carrying whale meat. More schools would serve it in their lunches (kids don't get a choice of what they can eat at school, one meal for everyone), and a restaurant in Osaka made headline news when they began to sell 'whale burgers'. There was a line around the block for those burgers and many of the people in the line made it clear that they were there as a giant 'fuck you' to the Sea Shepherd Society for attacking the Japanese whaling fleet.

As I said above Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Society are hurting their own cause. What they need to do is put more effort into better information campaigns within Japan. Record and photograph what's going on then use Japanese bloggers and YouTube to get the info out there. This worked very well when the Sea Shepherd Society and others documented the Taiji Dolphin Hunt:
http://www.seashepherd.org.uk/taiji/taiji_sscs_in_taiji.html
http://www.savejapandolphins.org/

Many people in Japan were shocked to find out that Dolphins were being hunted by Japanese, and the hunt now gets regular news coverage in Japan which has led to Japanese themselves protesting.

Pacifism has been so ingrained in the Japanese people since the end of WWII that using even mild violence to get what you want will assuredly turn the average Japanese person against you and whatever cause you are promoting, even if the cause is a 'good' one.

This fight will be won only if the Japanese people can be turned against whaling and make it too expensive for the Japanese government to continue to fund the whaling fleets, it won't be won by using the tactics of the Sea Shepherd Society.

Sorry for the long rant, but you can probably tell that I feel strongly about it.