I've been watching Whale Wars on Animal Planet and I wanted to know what people thought about Sea Shepherd and their mission to stop the Japanese whaling fleet. Both sides claim to have the law on their side.

I'm personally in favor of the Shepherds' cause. I absolutely cannot condone commercial whaling.* It's brutal, tragic, wasteful, and it nearly brought our ecosystem to a crash. I think leaving whaling nations a loophole for harvesting whales in the name of research was a necessary olive branch, but it's time to close that hole. There's no excuse. Not one more whale needs to die at human hands in the name of profit.

That said, I'm not sure I condone the Sea Shepherds' methods. They take serious risks, but their methods are mostly nonviolent and they draw attention to the cause. They really are all alone down there during whaling season. If something goes wrong, there's nobody to help them.

*Some remote tribes do hunt small whales for survival. While I certainly wish they didn't, they usually don't have much of an alternative and they don't hunt enough whales to make a significant environmental impact.

Why are they selecting Japan when Norway and Iceland also whale commercially?

In Canada, the Inuit can catch whales, mostly to feed themselves. You don't see whale meat for sale in most local supermarkets unless you live up north in a majority-Inuit population.

I don't mind if small, isolated tribes catch a few whales for food, unless the whales are endangered species--and even then, you have to give the people an alternate food source if you tell them they can't catch whales any more.

But I don't see why modernized urban populations should be catching and eating whales, and selling whale meat, when there are enough other things to eat and when whale populations are so low. We don't need whale oil any more...

Can't they be both?




I prefer the Captain Kirk method to stopping whaling.

watched an episode of this the otehr day at a friends house.

these people strike me as the worst kind of dirt, crazy hippies.

Both.

I can honestly say:


I don't care about Whales.

Agreed. I'm against whaling, but the crew of the Sea Shepherd is so damn irritating that it's very hard to sympathize with them.

No. No, they're not. They may not be terrorists exactly (although they do come close sometimes), but they're definitely not heroes.

Most of the time, I would not go so far as to call them terrorists, but certainly their actions are morally questionable. Whaling may be unquestionably wrong and the Japanese basically ignore the fact that it's illegal, but the Sea Shepherds have no right to take the law into their own hands. Using methods like trespassing (illegally boarding another boat) to get your guys arrested (when they damn well should be, because they boarded someone else's property without permisson) as a publicity stunt against the "evil" whalers doesn't make you any better than them. Doing something wrong, even in a good cause, is still wrong.

What we need is actual enforcement of the laws and treaties pertaining to whaling, not a bunch of lawless vigilantes roaming around with no one holding them accountable for their actions.

I don't think they're going far enough.

The Sea Shepherd needs a deck gun and torpedo tubes.

I'm not sure, honestly. I think that Norway and Iceland whale within their territorial waters, which entitles them to the protection of their Navies. Conversely, the Japanese do their whaling in Antarctic waters. It could also be that Sea Shepherd only has three ships in their fleet at present and they do a lot of other conservation projects around the world.

^

This.

To be honest the whale vigilantes are idiots. Not to say I condone whaling. But it IS regulated to an extent. And Minke whales aren't precisely endangered.

I do find it morally repellent. Even a little disgusting, given unlike Inuit the Japanese have multiple other sources for meat. But what the whale vigilantes do is entering jackass territory. And to be honest they should be fined, and jailed in most respects for the stunts they pull. Not to mention, thier propoganda TV show yoinked off the air.

Not to mention that they Sea Sheperds then turned around and accused the Japanese of kidnapping their people when, in fact, the Sea Shepherds left the area





Nonviolent? They're ramming the whaling ships. I've seen crew members, most recently the second mate Pete Hammarstedt in the episode aired on Friday, wearing shirts with a kill count on the back of ships rammed, as well as boarded.

Look, I'm all for saving the whales. I'd rather they not be killed. But the law allows for a certain number of whales to be killed for research, and the law also states that whatever they kill has to be completely used. That's why they have a factory ship down there. And have the Sea Shepherds proven yet that the Japanese are killing over their quota? Or that they're not actually collecting tissue samples?

This is vigilantism. They have no proof of what they're accusing the Japanese of, and until they do, I, unfortunately, have to side with the Japanese.

They have this much, at least. The Japanese are catching more - many more - than is allowed or necessary for "research". The whalers are committing illegal acts, no doubt.

That doesn't excuse vigilantism, though.

Well, they're Spectres,so basically anything they do is legal.


Oh. Shepherd

Well, if these whaling laws were more enforced than they are now, we would have no need for Sea Shepherd's vigilante acts. Both sides, Japan and Sea Shepherd are doing illegal acts. You cannot fight criminals by becoming criminals.

Sure you can.

You just have to be really good at being a criminal.

After all, criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot.

Yeah, the entire world almost shut down because of whaling. That's a ridiculous claim.

I've not seen the show itself, just commercials. From what I see on those, they seem to be in the same boat (see what I did there!) as Greenpeace, and I'm no fan of them.



They don't have an alternative? They can move, dude, especially if you're talking about people in North America. They can move to other areas and go to the damn store to get their food. I mean, I'm all for hunting, but I find the inconsistency on this issue irritating. I really don't think that it's the supposedly lower numbers of dead whales that allows these "tribes" to be apparently excused; I think it's just the fact that they getting a pass because whale-hunting is part of their culture. Which is probably true for the Japanese whalers, too, I'd imagine.

The Sea Shepherd, as a group, are no better than people who murder abortion doctors. I hope they become squid food.

How DARE YOU!!!!







They'll give the squid indigestion. Give em to the hagfish.





This is pretty closed minded.

These tribes are inuit, and NO they don't have much of an alternative. Given meat is in precious short supply. These tribes are also responsible for tiny numbers of whale deaths a year. (2 per village per year round about) They also consume EVERY part of the whale. IE: The whole tribe eats off that whale. It feeds an entire village.

Japan however is COMMERCIAL whaling. Which is a hell of a lot different.

You... really don't understand how our ecosystem works, do you? Whales are an ecological linchpin. Kill all of them -hell, wipe out enough significant species; it'd only take one or two- and all the species that depend on them are left without options and go extinct, and then all the species that depend on them go extinct, and so on. Baleen whales are also necessary to thin down the plankton biomass and keep it from turning the oceans into a swamp. No other creature has such a significant impact on that biomass by a long shot. I think you can see how this would escalate.

That's why the world rallied so hard against whaling: We realized that we were literally teetering on the brink of an environmental cascade. It's been just over 60 years and we've only inched away from that edge.

In the months since I started this thread, Sea Shepherd and their allies have been busy. The Steve Irwin is making a tour of Australian ports. The Transparentsea campaign, wherein surfers and kayakers escort humpbacks on their southerly migration route down the Australian coast, is just a few days from its end. Earthrace has donated its record-breaking, ultra-fast, carbon neutral, biodiesel-powered speedboat to Sea Shepherd. The newly rechristened Ady Gil will be used as an interceptor and to block the harpoon ships. I guess they're banking on the whalers not wanting to fire an explosive projectile if they might risk hitting another ship.

What do you think?

Once again.

I don't care about Whales. If they eat the meat, it's not major. They don't kill them all.

I think the whole thing is hilarious. Each time one side gets a new toy, the other gets something new to counter it.

I think the Sea Shepherd would have better luck colonizing Antarctica and using international law to force the ships away though.

All in favor of letting the hippies colonize Antarctica?

New boats doesn't change the fact that these "activists" are using questionable tactics and illegally interfering with others. They're not exactly terrorists, but they're not heroes by any stretch of the imagination.

I wouldn't call them heros, but given that they're not trying to frighten the other ships into giving up for fear of immenint death, I don't think the terrorist label applies either.

So, I'm going to vote douchebags.

Honestly the whalers could sink them all and I wouldn't really care.

And I think I wouldn't care the other way around. So long as no one gets hurt. No one should be killed over there. Whales included.

If you knew what the whales were plotting, you'd think differently.

Do you really think whale songs are used to attract mates? How naive.

The Sea Shepherds are aiding the whales in their dastardly plot and don't even realize it.

My question is, how long until they start doing that?

Well, at the very least I'm sure they'll wait till the television cameras are off.

Personally, I don't think I like either side of this situation: the Japanese whalers or the hippy douchebags.

So if both factions wiped each other out, I wouldn't really mind.

Today, they are just Sea Shepherds.

Tomorrow? Celestial Being.

I can't help but think that perhaps Sea Shepherd is one of the inspirations for Celestial Being.

^ this

Pretty much just waiting for someone to get killed over it. And it'll happen. Maybe it'll even actually be by accident.

Two thoughts

1) I'm really torn. I like whales. I don't want them to die. And yet, who I am to tell other cultures what to eat? We commit our own food sins. Anyone who eats veil is every bit as bad. So while I can't really argue against disruptive/annoyance outings (it's a free world after all) it's kind of hard to support any violent acts against the whalers. It really isn't that different from imagining PETA taking up violent arms here on the streets. The Sea Shepherd people are just lucky that their waters are the modern Wild West.

2) Someone make sure and bring this back from the grave one more time at the end of the month, when the South Park "Whale Whores" episode is available for viewing online.

.... You didn't by any chance mean veal there, did you?

'Cause eating veil makes less sense than I do.

Why so much hate for people who actually care enough about whaling to actually go out and do something about it?

Because their methods of 'dealing with it' are extremely inappropriate and will lead to someone dying eventually.
Simply put, I think there's a better way to protect whales than just by being a floating ship of jackasses.

Ha, yes, that is of course what I meant.

I'd say the big difference bwtween eating veal, and killing whales, is that the cows are being bred as a food source, and barring some kind of catastrophe we're not going to run out of cows. If Japan had carefully maintained whale farms, well... I think people would still be outraged, but maybe not as much if they were being deliberately raised as food animals instead of being hunted down in their natural environment and violently killed.

Veal=baby cows.

Right, I was thinking of something else. But the point remains, that cows aint goin' nowhere.

Animals taste better as helpless babies.

It was for a short time, but is no longer. For the record, I thought it was funny.



Bingo. Cows are sustainable and are killed humanely. Whales are another story. Harpoon ships chase the whales until they're exhausted (with the whales swimming at around 15 knots; by comparison, the Steve Irwin's top speed is 16.5 knots.) Then they fire an explosive harpoon into the whale's chest cavity. Because of the whale's motion and the crudeness of harpoon guns, the actual hit often ends up in the whale's stomach. The explosion isn't typically enough to actually kill the whale because the whalers don't want to risk dislodging the harpoon and losing their kill. At this point, the whale's default panic reaction kicks in: It dives as deep as it can. It doesn't have enough time to take a good breath -and its lungs are likely injured anyway- so it often drowns.

Whether the whale drowns or not, it rises to the surface, where the kill-ship reels it in. If the whale is still alive, its screams carry for dozens of miles. Upon hearing that ghastly cry of pain and terror, most first-time whalers quit their jobs right then and there. People on ships twenty miles away can smell the blood, which forms a slick miles wide. If the whale is alive, a whaler goes to the bow with an elephant rifle and orders to shoot the whale until it finally dies. This often takes around a dozen shots. Sometimes even that isn't enough and the whale is tied to the side of the kill-ship to bleed out and/or drown on the trip to the factory ship.

Tell me that's humane. Tell me you still don't care.

I still don't care. People hunting often wound animals and leave them alive but crippled, and as they approach at a leisurely pace the deer or whatever likes in a pool of it's own blood and in horrible pain. If I'm not going to go into a forest and save some deers, I'm not going to freeze my arse off on a boat to save a giant fish that has the unfortunate restriction of needing to breathe air.

Mammal.

It's taking every ounce of self control for me not to go into a long and inane rant about how whales are mammals right now.

A lot of ignorance in this thread, I see. Not surprising that many of the people who care the least are the ones who know so little. Whales and dolphins are also among the most intelligent species on the planet, possibly greater than chimps and elephants; animals that have also been severely brutalized by humans.