Thread: Japan : Whalers sink Sea Shepherd boat

OK,,so
The whaling is conducted in international waters, but usually within the huge patch of ocean that is designated Australia's maritime rescue zone and that Canberra considers a whale sanctuary.
So if this is International how can Australia claim that they can make laws concerning what can and can not be done on that piece of ocean.
If it being a rescue zone of Australia and they can make the laws then so could the USA make laws on any parts of the Pacific and Atlantic that they would send rescue craft, either sea or air craft when a ship or plane was in trouble, now that would bring all manner of shit from other countrys.
If Japan and Norway are not signatory to IWC then that means they are exempt from the laws made by IWC and do not concern them on international waters outside of the 200 mile economic zones.
IMHO

New Ady Gil footage backs up Sea Shepherd's claims
Kate Lynch
Sat, 09 Jan 2010

The crew of the Ady Gil realise the Shonan Maru is approaching (background)

New footage has emerged from on board the protest vessel Ady Gil, just moments before it was hit by the Japanese security ship Shonan Maru 2.

The footage appears to back up the claims of New Zealand skipper Pete Bethune, who said they were low on fuel and idling when the boat was demolished.

"This will do us anyway," Capt Bethune is heard saying.

"We've got to save our fuel, eh. Reach in and tell them to stop now."

Those were the orders that were to spell the end for his beloved vessel.

The new footage shows the crew on board the idling vessel sitting back and congratulating each other, after a hard day's work harassing the Japanese whalers.

"F**king good effort guys," says Capt Bethune.

"Awesome effort, it's been a good day. Pity we don't have a couple thousand more litres of fuel to go chucking at them."

Another crew member asks, "Do you reckon we slowed them down a bit?"

"Don't know," comes the reply. "Yeah, we slowed them down for sure - we were zigzagging the whole time."

The Shonan Maru then sounds an alarm, and the crew notice it heading toward them.

They thought it was going to pass by, and instead it did an abrupt turn and headed straight for them at full speed.

This is where this footage ends, but by now most people have seen what happened next from shots released by both the anti-whalers and the Japanese.

The Sea Shepherd crew say the new footage is authentic, and clearly vindicates them.

"Pete Bethune tried his best to get to the controls and back down, but he couldn't do it quickly enough," says fellow Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson.

"I think the Japanese were intent upon destroying the Ady Gil."

Capt Watson is disgusted Foreign Minister Murray McCully has accused them of attempted murder on the high seas.

"That's ridiculous. We've been down here for six years. We've never broken a law, we've never been charged with a violation, we've never injured anybody. Our intent is to come here and save whales, not to kill people.

And for Murray McCully, he should either apologise or resign his position, because he's taking the side of the Japanese against New Zealand citizens and a New Zealand vessel."

Veteran maritime accident investigator Jim Varney has now seen all the footage supplied from both sides.

He still believes both sides were at fault, and this was a game of chicken that went wrong.

"They are being provocative," he says of the Ady Gil.

"The Japanese are also being provocative in trying to see which one gives way first."

It was always going to be the Ady Gil which came off second best, and new video has been released of the vessel as it took on water while being towed to dry land.

It eventually sank, but there is already talk of a replacement being built to take its place.

3news.co.nz

Vid Here : New Ady Gil footage backs up Sea Shepherd's claims - National - Video - 3 News

All you keyboard critics are out of line bagging Watson and the sea shepeard crew. At least they are out there letting the world what is going on. As has been mentioned, it is not even 'japanese tradition' as the japs claim - they didn't eat it till after the war and that was only because they were starving. It's also riddled with mercury. One Japanese politician once said the whales were "the cockroaches of the ocean" and it was fine to kill as many as they want.

I'd like to see the sea shepeard sink a few Japanese tuna fishing boats while they are down there. Fucking japs have over fished the southern oceans so much they are predicted to be extinct in just a few decades..

Originally Posted by malako

I'd like to see the sea shepeard sink a few Japanese tuna fishing boats while they are down there. Fucking japs have over fished the southern oceans so much they are predicted to be extinct in just a few decades..

So what, the oceans can not support this amount of over population anymore either and the Japs and The Russians have over fished all the oceans of the world til there is almost nothing left, so let em have at er and it will be over much before climate change/global warming do the job,, so one way or another humans have fucked it up so bad it can't last much longer before they start to die off in vast numbers..
Wars will never do it in sufficent numbers since everyone is afraid to push the RED button and start a nuclear war, so it will be a slower more painful going.

So if this is International how can Australia claim that they can make laws concerning what can and can not be done on that piece of ocean.

Australia claimed much of the ocean there over a hundred years ago..

The Cove can be seen by going to youku.com and entering The Cove...

Originally Posted by fountain11

The Cove can be seen by going to youku.com and entering The Cove...

https://teakdoor.com/world-news/55635...ster-city.html (Aussie town dumps Japan sister city over dolphins)

Originally Posted by Thaiguy

Originally Posted by Sdigit

Agree 100%

I'd agree to but then we'd both be wrong? what's it all about - why do they want to kill whales?

whaling moratorium would be followed by a wave of demand for whale meat.

The government-sanctioned feeding of whale meat to schoolchildren is an act of desperation, argues Nanami Kurasawa, director-general of the Dolphin and Whale Action Network, one of a handful of small anti-whaling organisations in Japan. “Young people don’t want to eat whale meat because they think it’s tough and smelly,” she says.

It now seems to me from reading yours and other posts as if the Japanese govt are trying to prop up and expand a ailing industry, trying to create and develop a new market for it and it's all to do with jobs and economics and nothing at all to do with it being an historic food source and part of their culture (which I bought into).

While the scandal of stolen whale meat is the most shocking, it's not the only revelation to come from this investigation. Further allegations from our informants that require investigation include:

• Throwing tonnes of whale meat overboard daily because they did not have processing capacity for the increased quotas
• Cancerous tumours being found and cut out of whales and the remaining meat processed for public sale
• Targeted hunts to ensure maximum catch, not random "sampling" as required by the research permits
• Harsh working conditions because of the increased workload from the increased quotas

Download the full dossier


Whale meat scandal | Greenpeace International

Originally Posted by malako

Australia claimed much of the ocean there over a hundred years ago..

I can claim that I am king of Thailand too, but it don make it so.
International law says that you can claim 12 miles offshore too, but now the economic zone for use laws is 200 miles.

^the claim is recognized by the UK , France, and a few others.

So the question is, why do the japs hunt whales? It's not really their culture (I'm pretty sure spegetti bolinaise isn't Japanese, but that's how they try to feed it to kids) It's not really eaten by anybody, and by all acounts it tastes and smells like shit ( i've tried and didn't like it - very oily) it's expensive to hunt for, and a political headache. So why do the japs hunt whale?? - there doesn't seem to be a good reason.

I have a theory. The Japanese are killing whales because they feel that whales eat too many fish. As I mentioned, tuna have been predicted to become extinct, so could this be part of the reason? I would like to know what the diet is of the types of whales hunted. Is minkes and humpbacks they kill? Remember, the Japanese eat q lot of tuna..

Again, this is just a theory but I'd be curious to know if this has been discussed before

Originally Posted by malako

I would like to know what the diet is of the types of whales hunted.

Just checked. Minke - krill and herring, Humpback - Plankton, krill, and small fish (herring/mackerel). Killer whales eat Minkes and young Humpbacks.

Could be wrong but doubt any whale species other than killer whales eat much tuna. Tuna are extremely fast swimmers. I believe some dolphin species take tuna however.

The Japs aint saying the whales eat fish, rather that they consume a shed load of plankton which is the basis of the pelagic food chain and subsequently drives tuna production. Since only ~10% of energy is transferred between marine trophic levels, the direct consumption of primary producers by whales cuts out the flow of food/energy to the small baitfish (herring etc) that make up much of the tuna diet.

Put simply, japs say no whales, more plankton, more small fish, more tuna. More whales, less plankton, less small fish, less tuna. Given they take 1+million tonnes of tuna (for cans) a year from the Pacific Ocean I don't think it means diddly squat. But there may be some relevance to the species (e.g. bluefin) they are getting $200,000 a fish for in Japan, but no one really knows.

Anyway just drunken ramblings

Originally Posted by Wayne Kerr

The Japs aint saying the whales eat fish, rather that they consume a shed load of plankton which is the basis of the pelagic food chain and subsequently drives tuna production.

Originally Posted by Wayne Kerr

Anyway just drunken ramblings

You might be drunk but sounds like a compelling argument for the whalers.

On the other hand. Without the whales, the plankton might just over populate the seas and screw up the whole works. Not a good thing to screw with mother natures balance me thinks.

I have heard that from the north of North America there is a daily cargo 747 takes off bound out for Japan with fresh bled and Iced after bleeding, Very large Blue Fins that land in Japan in time for the morning auctions.

Blue fin tuna (T. thynnus thynnus) is a fast swimming pelagic fish that can grow to sizes of between 350 and 400 kg in the warmer waters off the Canary Islands (Sipam, 2005).
There are two mayor subspecies of blue fin tuna, T. thynnus thynnus in the North Atlantic and T. thynnus orientalis in the North Pacific.
Tuna farming started to develop in the 1980s, but production in Europe has been made since 2000 and mainly in the Mediterranean countries; Spain, Croatia and Cyprus. World production of farmed tuna has been growing rapidly in the past five years. There is an increasing demand from Japanese markets for farmed tuna, which are higher in oil content making them particularly desirable for sushi, and very high selling prices have encouraged the development of tuna farming.
As full-cycle breeding of bluefin tuna has not yet been available on commercial base and though breeding programs are being developed, tuna farming still depends on catching wild juvenile fish (15-25 kilograms) to fatten in large netpens on sea.
World catches of T. thynnus have remained more or less stable oscillating around 36 000 t between 1975 and 1980, while in 1981 they increased to 46 000 t (FAO, 1983). The Blue fin tuna is certainly a tuna species under threat. Its slow growing, in combination with the over-exploitation of the stocks has caused authorities to implement catching quota all over the world. The country taking the largest catches of northern bluefin tuna is Japan, followed by France.

Originally Posted by Norton

Without the whales, the plankton might just over populate the seas and screw up the whole works. Not a good thing to screw with mother natures balance me thinks.

Yep as I said, no one really knows. Especially when you start adding in factors like effects of minuscule increases in global temperatures on plankton production, tuna egg hatch rates, larval success etc. Or pollution of bait fish spawning grounds from the rapid expansion of oil production areas etc. The tuna and whaling commissions are spending loads of dosh on this stuff but there is a shit load of smoke and mirrors involved.

Re the balance, I think we white arses screwed that with indiscriminate whaling which led to the near extinction of several whale species early last century. What we're dealing with now is a highly modified system.

Thanks very much for your drunken ramblings wayne very interesting stuff!

Originally Posted by malako

I'd like to see the sea shepeard sink a few Japanese tuna fishing boats

What a sweetheart you are

^well, it has recently been discovered that they have dishonestly taken MUCH more than their quota over the past decades, so karma owes them..

You can hardly say, though, that tuna is not a traditional food . . .

Speaking of which, an Australian company has recently successfully reared blue-fin (I believe) in captivity . . . hope this turns out be a 'saviour'.

When looking at the arable land-mass of Japan and comparing it with their population figures they need to depend on the sea. I wonder what progress they are making in terms of farm-bred species

He don't have the guts, he has someone else do it.
He don't have the money, he lives off the money that silly assholes like Bob Barker gives him.
He is a phony asswad, putting others life on the line and him setting back and taking the cheers.
There are getting to be an overpopulation of a number of whale species in the worlds oceans and still people that have a history of whale hunting and do infact eat them are no longer allowed to even catch them for their own consumption, like Alaska Eskimos and Aleuts who have since time began depended on them and do eat them and now are not allowed to hunt.
The west coast is crammed to over crowding with Grey Whales on yearly migrations from arctic waters to the Baja Calif coast twice as year and is a danger to both boatmen and whales and Scammons Lagoon in Baja is overcrowded with calving and breeding whales.

Bugger me......the oceans are now overcrowded with whales.....would not want them to get in the way of boatmen.

Anyway, i have no issue with traditional people hunting them and any other species, as long as it is not the last 1 or 2.

problem is, if they want to keep the traditions and culture alive, then fine, do it the traditional and cultural way.....in a dugout canoe with a spear.....fuck cheating and using cannons and high speed boats......then their tradtional and cultural arguements are just piss in the wind.