It’s OK – they’re just “surveying” the whales

Doesn’t it strike them as a bit odd that each whale they carefully scientifically survey somehow ends up dead on the deck of their ship?

I suppose it’s a reliable method to avoid re-counting the same whales over and over again. If they’re not moving. And not in the sea.

Or it it that an important part of the survey involves renowned food and restaurant critics?

I don’t like what the Sea Shepard et al do regarding their confrontational approach to stopping the whalers BUT it seems that they’re the only ones really doing anything. The Discovery program made them look a bunch of disorganised wannabe hero’s and in my opinion didn’t do them many favours, however the fact remains that they’re the only ones really going out on a limb to stop them.

I abhor whaling and this suggestion that it’s for scientific purposes is a joke. They really do need to be stopped and if it takes a couple of ‘hippy’ boats being sunk and people being injured to make a point, then all power to them…

Jam it zokes. They won’t hunt them into extinction as they like eating them. Doesn’t make sense. Hippy propaganda.

+1 flange.

I’d much rather an Australian Navy or Coastguard vessel kindly showed the Japanese the door and both defended their own territory and upheld the relevant international laws in the region. They’re quick enough to stop any boats with asylum seekers or ‘illegal’ fishermen*

However, in the absence of that, it’s pretty amazing that Sea Shepherd are getting the results the seem to be achieving. And this time at least, compared to multiple Japanese attempts to sink or disable them, they’ve simply put themselves in the right (or wrong, depending on your outlook) position and made whaling nigh on impossible. They’d not even been using their own water cannons on this campaign until the latest incident. I don’t normally agree with direct action, but the brazen manner in which the Japanese are carrying out their commercial whaling activities requires some action. And if Australia won’t do it, then better Sea Shepherd do than noone at all.

*When they have no connection to regional powers

They won’t hunt them into extinction as they like eating them.

Like cod then, or bluefin tuna?

You seem to be particularly hard of thinking. Find a playground to play in – you’ll probably find a level of intellect you’re more accustomed to there.

How’s this for an idea? Why don’t they not hunt them because it is illegal to do so, that being an international treaty based upon scientific evidence? Or were there too many long words in that sentence for you?

The only countries now that defy the ban on commercial whaling are Iceland and Norway.

They never signed up to the ban in the first place so they can’t defy it. Japan on the other hand, did and walk a fine line.

there are friends of mine aboard the Bob Barker at the moment.
i know that they know the risks involved, but at the same time i hope they stay safe. it looks dodgy at the moment.

Jam it zokes. They won’t hunt them into extinction as they like eating them. Doesn’t make sense. Hippy propaganda.

Are you really that stupid? Just look up Passenger Pigeon and see how many are around. Or Dodo, for that matter.
I respectfully suggest you get an education. 🙄
I also suggest you look up the situation regarding the North American Bison, an animal that ran in herds of tens of thousands, yet was close to being wiped out by ignorant hunters on trains who slaughtered them in their thousands.
Human history is littered with the examples of animals exterminated because nobody cared, and when they were gone, humans just shrugged and moved onto slaughtering something else.

Do you drink milk? 😆 what do you say to that level of wit and sophisticated discourse.

Scarily I am with Zokes on this one, the Japanese have been flouting rules on this for years. Scientific research my ass!

i’ve watched a few series’ of Whale Wars and found them brilliant TV but the Sea Shepherds do come accross as a bunch of gobshites who are taking protesting a bit too far…. If I was against the HS2 railway the last thing I’ll do is park my car on a railway line and try and stop a 10,000 ton piece of metalwork in it’s tracks, the laws of the seas don’t count against the laws of physics and people will die because of their beliefs.

Any whale isn’t worth a human IMHO

i’ve watched a few series’ of Whale Wars

Sweet Jesus and the orphans!! They’re making them fight each other?!! Does their inhumanity know no bounds?!!! Is it like cock fighting, but on a massive, blubbery scale

Greenpeace were regarded as a bunch of eco nut job terrorists so much so that the French secret service murdered one of them and sank a ship docked in another country. Greenpeace are now lauded for there work. Same will happen to Sea Shepherd.

Is it like cock fighting, but on a massive, blubbery scale

No, that’s this place.

Sweet Jesus and the orphans!! They’re making them fight each other?!! Does their inhumanity know no bounds?!!! Is it like cock fighting, but on a massive, blubbery scale

They strap “lasers” to their heads.

Re: Hunting whales. No No No No. End of story. We have deliberately domesticated certain animals to provide food, why do we need to continue to plunder the rest of the animal kingdom? This is especially true when there is no humane way to kill the animal and their numbers are shaky at best.

Any whale isn’t worth a human IMHO

A commonly held view and why essentially we as a species have such utter tunnel-arrogance, claiming dominion over everything we can dessimate, turning creatures into farmed products.
I am ashamed by my species to be honest, so capable of intelligence but so often failing to use it.

I am ashamed by my species to be honest, so capable of intelligence but so often failing to use it.

Surely breeding all those daft, furry things specifically so that you can have a readily available, and cheap source of burgers and kebabs is the very epitome of intelligence?

Its a bit pathetic that Japan is even trying to justify this as “scientific”, we don’t need to eat whales, there are other things.

Mind you I think much the same thing about powdered rhino horn remedies – tatty bye bye, rhinos. And elephant tusk trading. And eating turtles or gorillas. And making love potions from tiger tadgers.

The list is sadly, quite extensive.

we don’t need to eat whales, there are other things.

To be fair, we don’t need to eat any animals 😕

To be fair, we don’t need to eat any animals

except for the ones we have eugenically bred to be slaughtered. It would be cruel to let them roam free. They cannot operate without us.

binners – Member
I am ashamed by my species to be honest, so capable of intelligence but so often failing to use it.

Surely breeding all those daft, furry things specifically so that you can have a readily available, and cheap source of burgers and kebabs is the very epitome of intelligence?

Yeah and let’s not forget all the downsides and unnatural processes needed to create and sustain that cheap source of burgers and kebabs but hey, thanks for reinforcing my point.. 😉

To be fair, we don’t need to eat any animals

[quote]
except for the ones we have eugenically bred to be slaughtered. It would be cruel to let them roam free. They cannot operate without us.[/quote]We could phase them out though if we chose to. But we don’t want to.
We eat farmed animals and game from the wild because they are tasty.
If we want to continue to do both we will have to find a sustainable balance.
I think taste is a consideration and (as someone above said) I think the youth of Japan will have less and less appetite for whale. Having said that, if I was offered a nice minke kebab after a night on the beer in Reykjavik, I’d eat it with no moral issue, knowing that every year they take a small number out of a stable population. I would also eat wild salmon, venison etc.

fourbanger – Member

Jam it zokes. They won’t hunt them into extinction as they like eating them. Doesn’t make sense. Hippy propaganda.

Good effort this, for a second I actually thought it was serious.

Before we all sharpen our pitchforks and get all het up, has anyone here tasted whale? Tasty stuff. Can’t really fault them for hunting it.

Excellent logic……and while we’re at it, they may as well go and shoot a few tigers, rhinos, elephants etc etc for a bit of research as they might be tasty too, with the added bonus they can utilise other bits to pep up their sex life, make dodgy potions for medicinal purposes and even attractive carvings 🙄

I think you’ll find that’s covered (for right or wrong) under the for scientific use clause.

It’s not scientific use.

Excellent logic……and while we’re at it, they may as well go and shoot a few tigers, rhinos, elephants etc etc for a bit of research as they might be tasty too, with the added bonus they can utilise other bits to pep up their sex life, make dodgy potions for medicinal purposes and even attractive carvings

This.

The “scientific hunt” is no different. Many species of whale are endangered, and as joao3v16 points out, their method of “scientific survey” always seems to land up with the whale they’ve just surveyed dead, in bits, on their ship’s deck.

If they were better at cetacean research, they’d have worked out how to leave the whale in the sea without a grenade-tipped harpoon poking out of its neck as a marker.

They’re not though, the catch is for scientific[b]commercial[/b] purposes, so they take only the 500 or so that they need for can just about get away with claiming it’s for research each year, then onsell the meat rather than wasting it.

The only countries now that defy the ban on commercial whaling are Iceland and Norway and Japan.

It’s a cultural thing, the whaling industry receives huge subsidy from the Japanese government. Some of that money was donated by other governments following the Tsunami. It’s fairly shocking that a government would push something so far. There is plenty of evidence of bribery of smaller nations to keep the International Whaling meetings in favour of Japan and away from outright bans.

Aye, that was eye-opening- $30 million from the tsunami fund for whaling, justified because it would help the whaling port recover- even though none of it was spent on the port.

In inadvertently ate right whale in Norway. It taste good BTW. I don’t sanction with hunting whale while it remains internationally outlawed. Attacking protester ships is bang out of order.

I’m surprised some enterprising and sneaky type hasn’t made up some small but powerful explosive devices, in waterproof casings, with magnets on, and snuck into the whaling fleet home ports at night, and attached them to the hulls of the whalers and factory ships. A warning to the crew to get the hell off, then nice big holes punched in the bottom. The loss of entire fleets that I’m pretty sure couldn’t be economically replaced, thus ending the whole disgusting industry.
Economic loss without loss of life. Result.

I’m pretty sure SSCS used to go in for sinking whalers after making sure everyone was off (or able to get off). I guess they’re trying to move away from the “terrorist” label, hence their non-agression this time.

What you want is to escalate the whale war to full scale war so that they get to meet Fat Boy and Little man again … 😈

Or launch something from Japland to the land of Dear Leader … to see fireworks.

The weird thing is, the fleet runs at a loss, it’s been kept afloat by subsidies for years, never mind the cost of the government support. It genuinely is a cultural/idealogical thing not a financial greed thing. Not that it makes any real difference.

So, just hitting them in the wallets doesn’t seem to do the trick. Sea Shepherd do claim 10 “kills” including some sunk by explosives though. (others scuttled, some seized by national forces and subsequently sunk)

The only countries now that defy the ban on commercial whaling are Iceland and Norway and Japan

It is not a ban. It is a moratorium. The IWC exists “to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry“.

If and when whale stocks return there is no reason why the IWC shouldn’t open up more extensive whaling with the following controls: “complete protection of certain species; designate specified areas as whale sanctuaries; set limits on the numbers and size of whales which may be taken; prescribe open and closed seasons and areas for whaling; and prohibit the capture of suckling calves and female whales accompanied by calves.“

http://iwc.int/history-and-purpose

New video not looking too good for the ‘evil Japs rammed us’ narrative…

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAWiLyDlIvk[/video]

Hard to tell what’s going on from the deck of a ship tbh, no fixed points.

This one seems pretty unequivocal though… That’s the Sun Laurel’s lifeboat rig that’s taking the blow too, nice move.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/sea-shepherd-claims-whalers-using-stun-grenades-20130225-2f1is.html

More footage from the same sequence here

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/military-icebreaker-arrives-to-defend-japanese-whalers-20130225-2f0hj.html

Don’t think there’s much question here of what’s going on in these films?

I think all the who-rammed-who thing is sometimes a bit of a nonsense, if you’re using this sort of physical interference tactic, things are going to collide, and ships aren’t exactly precision instruments. A lot of it’s basically full-contact sport. But not always and that definitely doesn’t look like “oh we got too close, oops” to me.

designate specified areas as whale sanctuaries

They are currently attempting to whale in one of those sanctuaries.

And then as discussed, another very sound reason for not allowing any whaling is the method of their despatch, which TBH makes bull-fights appear humane.

A couple of frigates would a better job of sinking warning off those whalers.

Time the whole “cretacean research” baloney cover was blown out of the water.

They are currently attempting to whale in one of those sanctuaries.

The two existing whale sanctuaries prohibit commercial whaling. The Japanese are operating under a scientific permit issued to them by their own government. Whaling for research purposes is not banned in either of the sanctuaries. This may be controversial but it is legal.

With hindsight, maybe the power to grant the scientific licenses shouldn’t have been left with nation states in the first place.

With hindsight, maybe the power to grant the scientific licenses shouldn’t have been left with nation states in the first place.

y’think? 😯