Ady Gil sinks after whaling skirmish

Australian Broadcasting Corporation ^ | January 8, 2010

[myknowledge]

The Sea Shepherd's anti-whaling speedboat Ady Gill has sunk after it was sliced in two by a Japanese whaling vessel during a clash in the Southern Ocean on Wednesday.

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson told ABC News Breakfast the Ady Gill went down shortly before 3:30am AEDT while it was being towed to a French research base by the group's Bob Barker boat.

"I think they were towing for about six or seven hours," he said.

"Even the act of towing was taking more water on. The Japanese vessel had cut the vessel completely in half and made it unseaworthy."

Six Sea Shepherd crew members were almost thrown overboard and one crew member suffered broken ribs when the Japanese whaling security ship, the Shonan Maru 2, ploughed through the bow of the high-tech Ady Gill on Wednesday.

Both the Japanese whalers and the Sea Shepherd crew blame each other for the incident, which happened in Antarctic waters.

But Mr Watson has defended his crew and says the risk of dying on the high seas is worth it if it allows the group to save whales.

"My crew are well aware of the risks that we have to take to protect whales down here. I think those risks are worth taking," he said.

"I can tell you now that if the oceans die, civilisations collapse and we all die.

"People die everyday to protect oil wells and real estate and we call them heroes and pin medals on them. I think protecting the diversity of oceans... is a far more noble cause."

'Harassment and attack'

But Glenn Inwood from Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research says Mr Watson has a dangerous attitude.

"Paul Watson has said before that he's willing to give any Japanese vessel what he calls a steel enema by ramming his ship into the stern of any Japanese vessel," Mr Inwood said.

"He also proudly displays the number of vessels he's sunk on the side of the Steve Irwin.

"You can understand why the Japanese have put security vessels down there.

"To say Japan has broken maritime laws can't be justified in this instance when you're under constant harassment and constant attack from these ships."

Mr Inwood says Japan's whaling program is internationally recognised as legal.

"The International Whaling Commission (IWC) have sanctioned it. The New Zealand government recognises its legality, and many members of the IWC do as well," he said.

"Sea Shepherd is trying to prevent Japan from conducting what is a legal operation under the rules of the IWC."

Yesterday Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard asked the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) to investigate the incident and said the findings would be made public.

She says the Government reserves the right to take international legal action if diplomacy with Japanese officials fails, and has warned that evidence has already been collected to launch such action.

New Zealand is also investigating the incident because the Ady Gil was registered there.

'An act of war'

Mr Watson says an insurance payout on the Ady Gill is unlikely because the incident was a deliberate act.

"It's a $1.5 million loss for our organisation," he said.

"I think the Japanese deliberately took that vessel out; they saw it as a threat and they were under orders to take it out.

"It would be an act of war so there wouldn't be any insurance on it."

Mr Watson says two Japanese harpoon ships were nearby but did not offer any help after the incident.

"They were responsible, they destroyed the vessel ... I think they should have offered some sort of assistance but they refused to acknowledge any distress signal," he said.

Mr Watson says they were able to remove all the fuel from the speedboat to prevent any pollution.

Mr Watson is urging the Federal Government to take a tougher action against Japanese whalers.

"In the six years that we've been doing this, we've never caused an injury to anyone, we've never broken a law... and now they have sunk one of our vessels," he said.

"[Federal Environment Minister] Peter Garrett has become the master of restraint. He made a campaign promise to end whaling; now let's see him [do something]."

Mr Watson says the Government should send a boat to Antarctic waters, where the Sea Shepherd's other boats - the Steve Irwin and Bob Barker - are continuing to pursue Japanese whalers.

Mr Watson says the boats are chasing the Japanese fleet and the whalers have not killed a whale in two days.

Diplomatic approach

Meanwhile, New Zealand officials have met with representatives from the Japanese embassy in Wellington to discuss the situation.

The ABC understands that at the Wellington meeting, Japan said it regarded the incident as "regrettable" but a "low-key event".

This morning a spokesman for the New Zealand Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, said contrary to media reports, Japan had not lodged a stern complaint with the New Zealand Government.

He said Japanese officials agreed with New Zealand that their citizens needed to have better regard for people on the high seas.

The spokesman said legal action over the collision had not been discussed, because it still had not been established who was at fault.

Maritime New Zealand has launched an investigation.

[Toadman]

It’s a weak argument when you ask someone to prove a negative. However.

Minske whales are considered “Least Concern” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

Here’s their scale according to risk of extinction:

Extinct
Extinct in the wild
Critically endangered
Endangered
Vulnerable
Threatened
Conservation dependent
Near Threatened
Least Concern

Just for reference, the American Bison is listed as Near Threatened. So according to the IUCN, Minske whales are not endangered. Now prove to me they are endangered.

You display hubris in stating the Japanese don’t need the whales. Japanese don’t eat much beef but they don’t tell us to stop slaughtering cattle.

I love wild life and consider myself an environmentalist in the sense I do my best not to pollute or waste. But I’m also an avid hunter and will use natures resources in responsible manner.

[anglian]

Minke Whales.......in excess of 1,000,000

Now I don't care who you are, THAT ain't endangered.

___________

Until the 1990s, only one species of minke whale was recognized, the Antarctic Minke Whale B. bonaerensis being regarded as conspecific with the Common Minke Whale B. acutorostrata. Most of the scientific literature prior to the late 1990s uses the name B. acutorostrata for all minke whales including Antarctic Minke Whales. Since 2000, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scientific Committee (SC) has recognized Antarctic Minke Whales as the separate species B. bonaerensis, while all northern hemisphere minke whales and all southern hemisphere "dwarf" minke whales are regarded as B. acutorostrata (IWC 2001). This has been followed by management and treaty bodies, such as Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

http://www.cites.org/eng/resources/species.html

Balaenoptera bonaerensis

(1978–84) 645,000

(1985–91) 786,000

(1991–2004) 338,000

http://www.redlist.org/documents/attach/2480.pdf

The IWC SC conducted a major assessment of Antarctic minke whales in 1990, and a population estimate of 760,000 was adopted, based on results of the IDCR surveys conducted in the seasons 1982/83 through 1988/89 (IWC 1991). Results of subsequent surveys indicated lower abundances leading the Committee to conclude in 2000 that the estimate of 760,000 was no longer a valid estimate of current abundance. The Committee has to date (January 2007) been unable to determine whether the apparent decline was real or artifactual. The Committee considered the two most likely confounding factors to be: (i) a reduction in sighting efficiency (e.g. due to smaller school sizes and possibly less experienced observers) and (ii) changes in ice extent, such that fewer whales occurred in surveyable open water.

http://www.redlist.org/apps/redlist/details/2480/0

[anglian]

Japanese eat nearly 4 million tons of meat a year.

[anglian]

the Japanese don’t need the whales. Whale meat accounts for 0.2 percent of overall meat consumption and 1%. of the 500.000 tons of tuna. The warehouses are full of it. Japanese whaling days are numbered. The Japanese people are ticked that the whalers who took taxpayers money and cannot posibly pay them back.
Earlier this year, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that the whalers were struggling to pay back $1 billion Yen in borrowed public funds. With a massive 4,000 tonne stockpile of unconsumed whalemeat and Asahi Shimbun reports of consumer disinterest in “bloody drippings”, the whalers seem to be onto a sure loser. To make matters worse, the annual increase in targeted Southern Ocean whales means that supply is already outstripping demand, a situation “unthinkable for an ordinary business entity” according to the accountant of a major audit corporation quoted by the Asahi Shimbun.

[struggle]

Good. Japanese have eaten whale since before Christ and them being a developed country does not automatically disqualify them from continuing to consume them like other indigenous tribes.

Plus, whale is delicious.

[WVKayaker]

Yes I am. As a new pet owner this year I have had an attitude adjustment. A year ago I could give a damn but having an animal changes you. ...

If you're a child, that could be so, but as an adult, you should understand more fully. Pets are not people. Pets are not a replacement for people. Pets do not have people, people have pets. You probably have a cat.

I love my dog, Spot. He is one of many dogs I have had in the past. He is my constant companion, and best buddy. He's my dog. That said, if I were starving, Spot wold be t'boned! I would probably shed some tears, but God gave him to me for my benefit.

I watch a lot of cooking shows, and Gordon Ramsey is one of my faves. On one of his series, he has raised turkeys and pigs, at different times. He has children and they all interact with the animals. They name them, groom them, and feed them. Then the parents with their 3 kids all eat them and thank God for their tasty food.

Man is more important than spotted owls, snail darters, and whales... and to put any animal in a position superior is the usual result of a poor understanding of life, in a created world. Believe God, not me....

Genesis 1: 20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

[AmericanInTokyo]

BREAKING:

Crew of Ady Gil were ARMED, and were assaulting the ship.

They were apparantly using bow-guns with pointed arrows. These have been recovered by the Japanese ship and photographed. That to me seems to be some kind of violation of international maritime law, and could even be classified as terrorism.

Link to several pages with this information developing about the ecofreaks in this incident:

http://mainichi.jp/select/jiken/graph/20100106/15.html

http://mainichi.jp/select/jiken/graph/20100106/14.html

[DTogo]

Not a fan of whaling, but an even lesser fan of eco-nuts. So I offer three "Banzais" to the Japanese:

万歳！万歳！万歳！

日本＊ピング＊ (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

[Quickgun]

You aren’t a WWII veteran, are you?. I have/had some WWII veteran kinfolk that would agree with you that the Japanese are butchers.One of my friend’s father was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. Kind of hard for me to describe his attitude towards the Japanese here on FR.!
Having said that, if the species of whales are not endangered, what is wrong with harvesting some of them? I am a pet owner, too, and would probably react violently if someone intentionally harmed one of them. And I am a hunter and fisherman, too, and can tell you that here in Texas, hunters have done far more to preserve our wildlife than all the idiot groups of mostly unemployed protesters have.

[GonzoGOP]

I'm surprised this is only coming out now. I would think that would have been the first thing the Japanese reported.

Skeptic talking
(1)Tips of those arrows look awfully pristine, not like they had slammed into ships hull. My arrows get scratched up hitting a wood and foam target. You would think that baning off a ships hull would have chipped the tip of at least one of the four arrows shown.

(2)The water in the picture http://mainichi.jp/select/jiken/graph/20100106/14 is blue and nearly dead calm. You can even see reflections of sky in the sea it is so calm. Compare that to the water in the videos of the collision. Green with high seas and white caps. In the Japanese video the crew are getting hammered with spray all the way up on the deck.

(3)How did they find that arrow floating when the ship was under way. There is no wake visible in the picture and if they had taken the time to slow down the arrow would have been left far behind the ship.

Just because the Sea Hippies are turbo jerks lets not get caught in propaganda. I'm not saying that it didn't happened, but those pictures smell worse than the dead whales.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I for one would like my children and grandchildren to be able to see those whales and not see them go the way of the dinosaur

So buy one and care for it.

[Abathar]

The SOP of the chase boats is to get in front of the whalers and drop nets and ropes to foul their props. The Ady Gil was the perfect boat to do this, stealthy and fast to get in front of them, drop the fouling and get out.

The Japanese know this, and their only choice is hard maneuver to avoid or stop their props and hope it doesn’t catch. As far as the water cannons all I can say is that should be about the least of their worries. I don’t know if they were trying to foul the props, but doing that in international waters, especially in that part of the world to a ship is a criminal act deserving a harsher response than acoustic weapons and fire hoses.

[thackney]

Those whalers are scum. They are the scum of the earth.

Do you hold the same view of Alaskan Natives who hunt whales?

[Vaquero]

EFFFF YOU WHALES.....EFFF YOU DOLPHINS!!!!!!!

[thackney]

Thursday, January 07, 2010 9:22:56 PM · 48 of 353
Dengar01 to proud_yank
No, as I said HUNT ANYTHING as long as it is not in danger of being extinct.

- - - - - -

Thursday, January 07, 2010 9:43:40 PM · 107 of 354
Dengar01 to ConservativeMind
No, you just don't like my answers. And to the other FReeper, I did not know Minke are humpback whales, now that I know that they are I do think it should be outlawed to hunt them. I don't care how many there are.

- - - - - -

It appears your opinion isn't even rational to yourself.

[Vaquero]

to paraphrase future President Palin:

"There is room for all Gods creatures, right next to the wasabi sauce"

[Vaquero]

the Japanese have every right to hunt whales according to the IWC. If a ship prevents that legal persuit it is a PIRATE SHIP and should be sunk and if necessary with all hands.

Change the laws if you want them to stop whaling.

[AAABEST]

You sound like a ranting, illogical, overly sentimental dummy.

"Gee, I saw the pretty whales once in real life, and now I watch them on TV. They're much lovlier than the cows I eat every day."

Clue: The whale aren't endangered, the Japanese are following the law, the enviro-whackos are breaking the law.

[maica]

I was waiting for someone to say it tasted like chicken...
*****
It came from a can like a tuna can, and was a bit chewy! I would not go out of my way to eat it again. LOL!

[DCBryan1]

I see that you like touting your credentials, so let me tout mine:

With an MD in psychiatry, I would like to say that I would like you get some professional help. Really.