Sea Shepherd Successfully Shuts Down Japanese Whaling for 3 Days Thus Far
Image Source: Flickr
Is Sea Shepherd finally successful in shutting down this year’s Japanese whaling campaign?
Maybe.
For 3 days now, the Japanese have been unable to kill a single whale. Sea Shepherd’s 2 remaining ships, Steve Irwin and Bob Barker, have been closely tailing the Nisshin Maru—Japan’s factory ship. They are currently on a northeastwardly pursuit and have enough fuel to last a month.
According to their website:
“Not a single whale has died since the Bob Barker intercepted the fleet at 0100 Hours on February 6th. It is now the third day that the whaling fleet has been unable to kill a whale. We intend to turn these three whaling free days into three whaling free weeks,” said Captain Paul Watson. “I am confident that once again we will severely cut their kill quotas and we will once again negate their profits.”
While the Sea Shepherd vessels are tailing the Nisshin Maru, the Shonan Maru 2 and Yushin Maru 1 and 2 are following Sea Shepherd. Currently, there is no sign of the Yushin Maru 3, which was recently involved in a collision with Bob Barker.
Check out this news post on the official Sea Shepherd website, for more information on the current status of the ships and their pursuits.
By Heidi Marshall
I have been with GreenFudge for about a year now, but I've had a passion for Nature my entire life. When I'm not writing articles, you can find me out hiking, gardening, working on green craft projects, or taking photos for my website. You can check out the site at http://arkisaeo.com
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Tags: Bob Barker, Japanese Whaling, Nisshin Maru, Sea Shepherd, Steve Irwin, Whale Wars, whaling shut down for 3 days
When you think about how the Chinese are trying to control the net employing ghost writers to follow the “governments” point of view, it’s quite ridiculous to see all these blatant attempts to justify whaling here, obviously written by Mr Hang Chow or Sun Tzu, no doubt backed by some Japanese whaling firm and certainly not by an “Eddie” or a “Malcolm” as the advert would suggest.
Whaling stinks and anyone supporting it is a total idiot.
Support the Sea Shepherds and give them the resources they need to fight the battle to save the whales that our impotent governments will not.
This is about the slaughter of endangered beautiful and intelligent creatures for little more than national pride.
I am thinking many of the countries and the peoples of this world are against whaling. Australia has declared this whaling illegal and would probably take legal action if it where not for all the raw materials they sale to Japan.
General Sherman violated all the state slavery laws when he burned his way through the South freeing Negroes as he went. Everybody that does not respect certain laws is not an anarchist. It is very helpful to establish who has the higher moral ground here. Those who harbored Jews from extermination by the Nazi government were also classified as criminals breaking the law.
The previous slavery in the USA, ethnic cleansing in Nazi Germany, and whale killing require the courage of some to go against some unjust laws of the oppressors to bring about the desired change. If one has the opportunity to change these laws through some accepted legal system this is the preferred method. Revolution and war are the method of last resort but unfortunately sometimes the only method available. Not many argue that slavery would have ended sooner in the USA by honoring the state slave laws and trying to change them through the legal system offered by each state of the Confederacy. Nor do many argue that more Jews would have been saved from extermination by honoring the laws of Nazi Germany and trying to change them through the Nazi legal process. It is not hard to see why many feel that the present international legal system and laws have failed to protect the whales.
They may be Japanese but they are neither savages nor brutal killers.
They simply regard whales as a food resource, and I believe they will continue their research activities so as to gather scientific data that will help facilitate the sustainable and optimal utilisation of those food resources over the longer term. Just as Greenpeace campaigns in the Antarctic never ended the activities, neither will Sea Shepherd’s campaigns.
The Japanese are doing nothing wrong by conducting these activities in the Southern Ocean. It is done in accordance with the 8th article of the international whaling convention.
Similar research activities where other marine resources are concerned are conducted in nations such as the USA.
The only difference here is that, unlike fish whales are generally not regarded as food in places such as the USA, whereas they are in Japan, Norway, Iceland and so forth.
This whole issue stems from a differing cultural perspectives of whether whales are resources or not. The perspective of nations such as the USA, Australia and the UK indeed have changed over the last 40 to 50 years. But cultural changes in some nations do not necessarily occur in others, and nor should they be expected to.
- Japanese whalers are defying a global moratorium on whaling
- They are commericially whaling under the guise of science
- They are in the Australian Antarctic Territory without permission
- They are illegally taking whales from a declared whale sanctuary
- They are in the Antarctic zone operating illegally because they are carrying weapons and are refuelling & dumping waste into the ocean
- They are in contempt of an Australian Federal court injunction on whaling in the Whale sanctuary
- The killing methods are slow, brutal and highly cruel
- They are taking threatended and endangered whales. Minke numbers are an estimate – no one really knows how many of them there are.
- And now the Japanese are arming their ships with military grade weapons, using security escorts and deliberately ramming ships.
Good! These japanese savages are brutal killers. Get them out of the southern ocean!