silent_jay

So Animal Planet is on a free preview for a month or so, and I was flipping through tonight and came across Whale Wars. I know who Paul Watson is and the Sea Shepherd Society, they all seem rather incompetent on a ship, or just plain incompetent in life in general.

Tonight I watched them take off after a Japanese research boat in two little Zodiacs, with rough ass seas, and they weren't even keeping the same speed or gaining ground. Then some woman slammed her face off the boat when they hit a wave, it's insane the stupid things they do. Hell they even have a helicopter. Oh yeah the clincher, they almost ran out of fuel on the way back to Hobart, oh how I wish they would have.

Now after watching this, I'll watch again I like train wreck TV and I reckon someones going to die on this show, but am I the only one who roots for the Japanese research vessels while watching this show? Maybe it's just me.

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Grasshopper Green

While I appreciate the sentiment of saving whales, the people on board the ship are fucking morons.

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inBOIL

As PETA has already shown, nothing hurts your cause more than being a complete jackass.

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Stare At The Sun

This.

Those guys are crazy. The one episode I saw the first officer was like "I dont trust GPS, ice charts, or really any technology"

I can't imagine what life on that boat is like.

Where do they get the funding?

Zeraph

I think animal planet is doing the show precisely based on the train wreck principle. If they were safe, sane people, it'd just be a bunch of guys roaming the sea and shaking their fists at the Japanese. Almost all reality tv is now based off this unfortunately and I'm not surprised anymore. Although this show in particular...

blahblah454

Shows like this make me glad I don't have any outside signals invading my TV (No cable or anything)

So why were they after a research vessel? Did you mean to say a whaler boat? Or do they just not like the Japanese perhaps...

Hektore

The Japanese claim it's a research boat.

The folks on the show say it's a whaling boat claiming to be a research vessel.

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silent_jay

They seem to come across these two ships quite often:
Nisshin Maru - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yushin Maru No. 2 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Slims

...Either way they are harrassing a foreign flagged vessel in international waters.

If the Japanese grew tired of this and sank their boat (or boarded them and arrested them for interfering with a peaceful and legal research/fishing expedition) I would cry crocodile tears.

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PulpMind

I'm kind of shocked by the ignorance being displayed in this thread. It's been shown time and time again that the Japanese "research vessels" are whaling ships. They are conducting illegal whaling. YouTube it. New York Times it. Google it.
Even if you don't like how the Sea Shepherds are going about trying to stop it (I'll grant that they have the failings of most grassroots human and animal rights groups), they are the ONLY ones doing it. No government body has dared to take action against these ships, because Japan is such a crucial economic partner for anyone that has the power to stop them.

There is tons of evidence out there that these japanese ships are responsible for massive, illegal slaughtering of whales - many species of which are endangered. While the rest of the world is too busy fighting wars, defending their borders, etc, with their ships, the Sea Shepherds have one boat that they do their damndest to try and stop these other boats with.
It may not be safe, but given the means, can you think of a better way to stop the illegal whaling? If not, you should probably consider doing something to support the people that *are* doing something, even if that's just writing them a letter, explaining how this Animal Planet show makes them looks like total asses and sensationalizes their downfalls.

The Sea Shepherds rarely conduct any illegal activity. In International waters, if you observe (and can prove... which they usually can, thanks to hand held video cameras) illegal activity, you're allowed to stop it. This includes boarding the offending ship, blocking its path, etc.

PETA sucks. They're idiots. The Sea Shepherds are fighting a necessary and nearly impossible battle, but, from my perspective, are doing a damn fine job with their resources.

---------- Post added at 10:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 PM ----------

PS - - The whole running out of gas thing is a great example of a stupid network sensationalizing a normal day at sea... almost everyone does this at sea. You have enough fuel to get you out, hang out, and get you back. Any more than that is useless weight. Stupid TV.

The_Jazz

PulpMind, while I agree with your facts and most of your opinions, it does nothing to change my opinion that most of the folks on that show are at best minor-league fools being exploited by the show's producers or at worst a soon-to-be-lethal concoction of complete morons, attention whores and jackoffs. My mom knows one of the guys on the show (I can't remember which one) from her days as a public school social worker, and she's said he's lucky to have survived until adulthood.

I'd say Animal Planet is doing a fine job of making these folks look entirely unsympathetic, especially when I know folks that actively root for cast members to fall off boats.

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Hektore

For the sake of argument....


This chart is pretty self explanatory

There is also this paper(Warning: PDF) where Japan responds to questions from the IWC about it's research program.



The whale harvest is down, clearly. They've also published 91 papers based on the research. That's a lot of papers. They are doing some research, whether they're going overboard with the lethal take I don't know - I'm not a marine biologist even by hobby. I'd love to hear from one to see why this is too many whales being taken, if it is.

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PulpMind

A huge reason those numbers have dropped is because whale populations have declined drastically in the last 30 years because of, *drum roll* WHALING.
There's no real reason for whaling. They don't reproduce fast enough to make any kind of commercial scale whaling sustainable. Whales don't provide humans with anything we can't get somewhere else in a more sustainable fashion. Except that it tastes delicious, which is hardly a reason.

Hektore

The reason the numbers in the chart fell off is due to the International Whaling Commission(IWC) declaring a moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan is claiming the remaining whale take is for research purposes only. There are papers that have been published using the data gathered. Population decline is mentioned nowhere, but if what the chart shows were due to population decline I would expect to see a continuous gradual decline. Not a sudden instantaneous reduction followed by stability at that reduced level.

Please provide evidence for this statement

Tasting delicious is a perfectly sufficient reason to kill all kinds of other animals, why are whales an exception to this rule?

Also, if the animals are being killed for research purposes, the researchers are required by law to sell what is useful that is left from the animal. This makes it much more difficult to tell if the meat is being gathered solely for commercial purposes, although it certainly increases incentive to do 'research'.

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Slims

Kill a whale, save 1,000 chickens!

The answer is clear, whaling saves lives.

Seriously though, Japan is absolutely whaling, but they are 100% serious about finding a way to keep whaling long-term. It doesn't do them any good to exterminate the whales completely.

Also, that drop in whaling was voluntary due to anti-whaling agreements and not by population pressure...at least not directly, there were still plenty of whales waiting to end up on dinner plates which Japan could have been harvested to extinction had Japan not backed off.

Thirdly, I really don't care whether they are using a 'loophole' or not, the fact is the words in the anti-whaling agreements clearly allow that behavior. Japan is not breaking the law, regardless of whether they are 'researching' in order to sell the meat.

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"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

silent_jay

That's your opinion that ignorance is being displayed, it's my opinion the people on this boat come from the shallowest end of the gene pool, and the world would be a far better place if they took a walk off the boat.


You mean failings like deliberately ramming ships, throwing 'stink bombs' made from butyric acid and glass bottles, yeah these 'failings' as you put it, seems an awful lot like eco-terrorism on the high seas. As for being the only ones doing it, maybe that's because others are too smart to put their lives at risk in such a stupid way as the seas shepherds.

If by damndest you mean, foolish, dangerous, then yeah they do their damndest to try and stop them. Oh yeah, they used to have two boats, then they went and pissed off the Canadian Coast Guard, now the RV Farley Mowat is waiting to be sold, RV Farley Mowat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So then, because there's no other way for them to stop 'illegal' whaling, they get carte blanche to do whatever they consider necessary to stop it, regardless of how many lives are put at risk, yeah that makes a lot of sense.

As for writing them and telling them Animal Planet makes them look like idiots, any person with a half a brain would know the things they do make them look foolish, they shouldn't need to be told bu others.
Ummm what illegal activity are the sea shepherds observing? Or is this something that's illegal in their minds?


Seriously a normal day at sea? You're really going to play they it happens all the time card? I reckon any captain with half a brain isn't going to let his ship go out to sea with an insufficient amount of fuel on board to complete the trip and have enough in reserve to get through any problems or bad weather that may come around, so I'm going to have to call bullshit on this 'it's a normal day at sea' excuse.

Another funny quote from the show is when the First Mate says:
Sounds like a safe ship in competent hands, keep up the good work

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Strange Famous

I caught an episode on youtube.

They strike me as a bunch of fanatics who care more about dumb animals than they d human beings. I dont know enough about whaling to have a view on it, but the Captain of the Steve Irwin is a self righteous jerk in my opinion.

Sailing in the southern ocean is a tough business, not well suited to malnurised vegan hippies and pot smokers.

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silent_jay

No sailing in the southern ocean for me

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james t kirk

Exactly.

Hence the reason I donate my hard earned Cash to Sea Sheppard.

Even have the T shirt.

God's Speed Paul Watson.

silent_jay

to the bottom of the ocean i hope, or the heart attack people are waiting for

Wonder what it feels like to condone and monetarily support eco-terrorism, may as well give the money to any other whack job organization, or wipe your ass with it, it would at least serve a purpose, better than these chuckleheads pissing it away with their 'captain'(used very loosely no captains license) leading them on pointless missions.

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james t kirk

Actually, they are breaking the law. I don't know where you get your information from.

The only country to actually do anything about it is Australia and they basically ran the Japanese Whaling Ships out of their waters.

Court rules Japan whalers breaking Aust law - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

If the Japanese had their way, they would hunt the great whales to extinction. I have no doubt of that.

While you might think it perfectly acceptable to hunt an endangered species to the brink of extinction, I do not. Add to that, these are wild animals, animals that are intelligent and gentle and as such, I do not believe that humans have the right to kill such creatures period.

I would be very happy to see the Japanese whalers sunk and every last soul on board drown.

BTW, Fuck Omar Kahdr

Jetée

It's one of those shows you want to feel good about watching, but you just either can't stop chuckling at how many wrong things these guys do throughout their expedition, or you can't stop slapping your forehead in disgust of how obliviously reckless and inherently stupid some of their decisions are.

It's a "trainwreck factor"-type of show, alright. But to be honest, the real reason I got caught up into watching this riveting mess, other than nothing else being on this summer, on a Friday Night, in peek primetime, was that "world is a vampire" promo they kept running.

I was like, "Did that song just say 'the world is vampire'? Did I hear that right, or not? I better check this out to confirm it." And yeah... that's how they reeled me in, like a big blue unaware whale, the Animal Planet seriously obtained a viewer because one person both liked and was confused by the theme song.

Kinda the same way I feel about the crew, if you'd like to take it so far.
I want to like them, but they confuse the blubber out of me.

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silent_jay

And intentionally ramming ships, throwing glass bottles with acid in them isn't breaking the law? Oh but they're the only ones saving the whales so it's alright haha funny shit.
Proof? Or just a general statement with no back up?
Haha with the idiots they have running the Steve Irwin, take a guess what ships going to sink first.....I'll give you a hint, it's the one with the clueless crew, who intentionally rams other ships.......nope no tears for me if any of these asshats dies, they're dumb enough to follow Watson, be my guest and die with him.

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james t kirk

Funny, I recall the Japanes ships having to go back to port.

Damaged Japan whaling ship arrives home early with haul of 508 whales | Mail Online

Too bad it didn't sink with the loss of all hands, but hey, there's always next time.

silent_jay

My signature has what to do with the OP? Stick to the topic at hand rather than taking shots at something that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Otherwise continuing this discussion is about as pointless as your comment about words in my signature.

Nice of you to edit your post 16 minutes after just to add a shot at my sig, very pathetic james and totally useless grow up.

Edit: Also if you're going to take a shot at it, at least spell the name right, it was right in front of you, read with your eyes open remember, that's the key to seeing what's in front of you.

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The_Jazz

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

silent_jay

...

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shakran

This is a thread about whale wars. Either discuss the topic at hand, or find something else to do. Kirk didn't need to bash your signature, and you didn't need to respond to him. Both posts derailed this thread. That's what's going to stop. "Now."

If either of you have further commentary about this, PM staff.

silent_jay

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james t kirk

Glory's Sun

---

-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+- Ok. so here's the deal if you want to talk about how you feel about Omar Khadr then make a thread about it. If you want to talk about a television show about whales then do it here. This is getting beyond stupid.

I haven't seen the show, but now I'm curious.. I don't have any real position on whaling and it's practice so hopefully I can watch it for the benefit of developing one as well as entertainment value.

shakran

heh. I'm watching an episode right now 'cause I got curious too.

I don't really understand why they're throwing acid and pipe bombs at the whaling ship. Why don't they just stick a sonar transducer in the water and broadcast recordings of a whale in distress? No whale is going to come to a place where another whale is screaming it's head off that it's being murdered. Drive the whales away and you shut down the whaling ship.

silent_jay

Got one right here for james to talk about Khadr so my thread can stay on topic.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...guatanamo.html
My thoughts as well, all they're doing throwing acid at the ships is making the deck slippery for a time, and the bombs well, that's just stupid to throw. Seems to make more sense to use what you mentioned and try to scare the whales away from the scene because as you put it "No whale is going to come to a place where another whale is screaming it's head off that it's being murdered."[COLOR="DarkSlateGray"]

---------- Post added at 09:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:07 AM ----------

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Glory's Sun

wouldn't a sonar transducer be expensive? perhaps the anti-whaling bunch has extremely limited funds and resources to fight these whaling ships.. pipe bombs are cheap..

/me goes off to find an episode

silent_jay

I reckon that's what it is, cheap is better than expensive, although cheap also looks more like eco terrorism than expensive as well, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with them, they enjoy looking like cowboys, albeit really dumb, dangerous, hippyish cowboys.

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shakran

Eh, they have enough money for a large ship, with a helicopter, and a Zodiac. . .You'd think they could stick a speaker in the water

silent_jay

The helicopter surprised me on that show, must be quite the cost to fly that on their 'missions', I also wonder if their 'pilot' is an actual pilot, as most other crew have no qualifications, especially Paul Watson who calls himself 'Captain' yet he isn't a captain..

The Zodiacs were funny as hell, they launch them late, in rough seas with the Japanese way far ahead, they they try to fly over these huge swells, just a matter of time before someone goes overboard, then we get to see how they really have no clue what to do as they try to mount a rescue.

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Hektore

Well, that would require like a millisecond of forethought, which is probably the main reason they haven't done it. Even if they did, I'm inclined to think they would dismiss it cause it's boring and doesn't get you on TV where you can pretend to be a hero.

I'm honestly a tiny bit surprised Japan hasn't sent an escort ship along with their vessel - for when the Sea Shepherds start in on the pipe bomb and flash-bang garbage I would imagine a few rounds from a 50mm across the bow would amply make Japan's point and send them packing.

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shakran

Dunno how much it is for that little whirlybird of theirs, but at my old station the pilot of our chopper told us it was a grand just to start the engines. An average flight was easily over $5k.

Yeah, but flying helicopters is hard. Takes actual instruction. Dunno if his license is current, but he was taught at some point how to fly.

Hegemon1414

Reading this thread has been fun. When the moderators show up it's like the Buddha's Palm from the end of Kung Fu Hustle. Resistance is futile...

Anyway's back on topic.

What the Sea Shepards are doing is definitely pretty extreme. I'm not sure we should label it terrorism however. Some of what has been said on both sides had been right. Kirk's point about the acceptance of vigilantism on the open see is technically true. As are some of Jay's points about the Shepards overall ineptitude, and general disregard for safety. These people really are pushing it at times. However the producers & editors of the show are guilty of seriously over-sensationalizing the events their cameras capture. A casual viewing of the show makes this much immensely clear.

As for the actual whaling going on in the Southern ocean it is pretty clear that if your country is a signatory of the IWC treaty and you are collecting/hunting/killing whales in the status quo you are breaking the law. Unless you are of course a native/sustainable harvester, then you get a quota.

There is a sort of wishy-washy research loop-hole that Japan tries to use to make it's whaling look legal. I believe what has been said earlier about the Japanese having no problem hunting whales to extinction is probably false. They don't want that; they like whale meat to much. However what has been said about whales being a particularly vulnerable species due to their biological/reproductive cycles is also very, very true. That's why the IWC enacted the international moratorium in the first place.

The Japanese insist that a sustainable harvest is possible. Others do not see it that way. Part of the research the Japanese are in fact doing is striving to have a more complete understanding of whales to see if this is possible. Whether or not they get any where remains to be seen. Whether or not the amounts the Japanese take is excessive is up to debate in my mind. I'd like to know more.

As far as I'm concerned though the Sea Shepards ought to go fight the Norwegians. They're the ones who are all "F--- IWC we will whale if we want to, We practically invented whaling" (Which they didn't). At least Japan maintains a pretense of membership in the IWC and a stated desire to settle out everybody's differences.

-Cheers