Earlier this year I started watching Whale Wars on Sky’s Animal Planet. The show follows Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and captain of the Steve Irwin, an anti-whaling boat. Paul and his crew follow and harass the Japanese whaling fleet around the southern oceans. Hardcore environmental activism in other words. They believe that governments are not doing enough to stop whaling, so they have taken it upon themselves to disrupt the Japanese whaling ships by any means necessary, including throwing bottles of butyric acid at, and even boarding the Japanese vessels. They certainly disrupted the Japanese fleet on many occasions, but ultimately, the Sea Shepherd boats were underpowered and unable to keep up with the bigger Japanese boats.
No longer. The Sea Shepherd’s next campaign against the Japanese fleet begins in December and they have an exciting new weapon at their disposal. The formidable looking super-boat Earthrace is joining the hunt. Earthrace is a 100% biodiesel and carbon neutral superboat that holds the world record for a powerboat to circumnavigate the globe. Earthrace’s New Zealand owner/skipper, Pete Bethune, says he decided to become involved because “this is happening in my backyard and it really pisses me off. I’m going to make a stand.” To prepare for its new mission Earthrace has been painted in black carbon, making the boat virtually invisible to radar and fitted with Kevlar to protect the super-boat against ice and harpoons. The Sea Shepherd team will film the third series of Whale Wars and I can’t wait to see the Earthrace in action. Earthrace gives Sea Shepherd the speed, stealth and firepower needed to match the Japanese whaling fleet and raises the stakes in what will be a series of incredibly brave and dangerous confrontations in the southern oceans. They won’t be able to stop the slaughter of whales completely, but you can bet that Earthrace will stop the Japanese fleet from operating anywhere near full capacity. This is going to get nasty. Bring it on!
8 Comments
I don’t follow the logic of the whaling boat chasers.
Anything that disrupts the Japanese whaling fleet is all good with me!
I’m all for diplomacy, negotiation and non-violent protest. But this isn’t any of those things. International law is on the side of the Whalers, minke whales aren’t and have never been endangered. Arguing that whales need protection because of their beauty and intelligence is a slippery slope to wing-nut animal rights (all animals are beautiful and intelligent, death to chicken farmers!) OR wing nut anthropomorphic bias (I just feel like the whales are so sad! You can hear it in their songs!).
Either way, when the Hindu’s starts burning down granddads milking sheds, you supporters of the whale chasers are forced to support the tactic, or admit a loose and distant relationship to logic.
I say kill the whales and feed them to starving humans. Or at least sell the boats to feed some humans. HUMANS ROCK!
“This is going to get nasty. Bring it on!”
So how did that work for you?
Whale wars is amazing!these are people who love whales/animals so much that they risk their lives everyday 4 what they know and believe is right!sometimes other people have to pay for another humans mistakes…! The sea shepeards saved 305 whales last year!:) true Heros! They r out in the freezing antartics waters on a ship for months without pay! You have to love animals alot to do that!be the whales voice,they can’t speak for themselves!listen to their sad songs for help.people seem to only learn what they have untill they’ve lost it and it’s too late.but there r some people who understand how precous things are when u have them!so go WHALE WARS!!!
WHALE WARS IS AWESOME! :~)
we need to stop the Japanese asap and i thank all ady gil well help a lot
Aloha! I thought I might slide in a brief comment since I’ve spent the better part of the last 30 minutes reading through your blog articles. I am often stunned at the quality of blog writing that I can easily come across on the web by smacking the “I’m Feeling Lucky” option on Google! Well that’s pretty much everything I have to say! Cheers again and very nice to ‘meet’ you