So you believe that what I would do is piracy but what the Sea Shepherds do is not piracy? Care to count the angles on that pin for us?
I think SSG Schwartz is fully aware of that. I believe he is saying that it’s a bad thing that the SS presents people with the opportunity to knowingly volunteer to do something dangerous.
Many jobs are dangerous including whaling. In the show they have never lost a crew member and the whaling fleet lost a man at sea, so I guess based on that it’s more dangerous to be a whaler than an anti-whaler no?
As far as piracy. You were talking about firing on another ship. They don’t fire on another ship. The Japanese have now outfitted with sonic guns and those aren’t firearms either. But as far as it goes the Japanese DO consider the Sea Shepherds to be pirates, eco-terrorists.
If you fired on the Sea Shepherds then the Australian government (who are the big kids on the block in that region) might think the same about you. If you can’t dock in Hobart or anywhere in Oceania, what do you plan to do then?
I’d agree with the Japanese, but I have a very low tolerance for Tree Huggery in general.
Look, we know and have seen more about the Solar System than we do (and have) about what lies under our own seas. As that well-worn out meme here so frequently recounts, we’ve been to the very bottom of the oceans only once, in 1960, and were there for a mere 20 minutes*. For all we know, there could be several species of Arcturan Mega-Whale down there.
If the Japanese (and anyone else) want to harvest whales for commercial sale, then as long as they do so responsibly (ie, don’t deplete the stocks completely), then I honestly fail to see a problem with that.
Chile isn’t that far away and I really don’t see the local customs people in the Tierra Del Fuego being too concerned about some rich Gringo in his yacht resupplying there.
The Sea Shepherd has quite a bit of support from Activist Students and that sort of thing. Your “Average” Australian, I think, really doesn’t have a strong opinion on the matter one way or the other.
I will say that I suspect the Sea Shepherd ships would have considerably less public support if they were going after, say, American or British** or Canadian ships instead of Japanese ships. The fact Norway and Iceland still whale commercially doesn’t get a lot of airtime- the focus is always on the Japanese.
*There have been two unmanned vessels that have been there as well since then, though.
**Yes, I know those countries no longer have a commercial whaling fleet
Martini Enfield Those latin countries are often very intolerant of any ship that is armed docking in their ports. In Mexico you can get jail time for having a starter pistol.
Actually for all we know there are not whales at the bottom of the ocean at all. We know this to be true in 100% of cases because whales breathe air not water, and therefore swim generally at depths of 500 feet or shallower.
And the problem is there is no guarantee that the Japanese will not hunt the whales into extinction, they are already flaunting current laws regarding it. The whole idea that they hunt 1000 whales a year for ‘research’ is laughable. The focus is always on the Japanese because they kill more whales every year than Norway like twice as many, and the Sea Shepherds are considered criminals in Iceland too. So Japan who did sign the IWC kills more whales than Norway who didn’t.
And when you say Chile is near, I hope you realize that by near you mean more than 3000 miles away.
The IWC estimates that there about 700,000 Minke whales in the Southern hemisphere. The annual Japanese catch of 600-1000 Minkes amounts to what, 0.1% of that?
If the IWC established (realistic) quotas for whaling, I think the Japanese would obey them.
I’m aware of that. But it’s the same distance (more or less) from Hobart to the Ross Ice Shelf as it is from the Tierra Del Fuego or the Falkland Islands to the Ross Ice Shelf. And it’s not a vast distance further from to Cape Town, either.
Many of the Latin American countries have fairly strict arms laws, true. But if you’re rich enough have your own private armed yacht I really don’t think that sort of thing is likely to be an issue for you.
And we know there aren’t any species of Whales like the ones we know about at the bottom of the ocean. True, whales breathe air. But what if there was a species of whale that could breathe water and lived miles below the surface? We’re just getting into pointless hypotheticals here. The real issue is that 96% of the world’s population has never seen an actual whale before, and so they only care about the issue because it’s “trendy” or “the done thing” to care about whaling, IMHO.
Arguments against whaling include:
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The whale population cannot sustain the hunt, which puts them in danger of extinction.
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Whaling disrupts the ecosystem and has consequences throughout the marine food chain and maybe beyond.
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Whales are intelligent animals.
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As whales live a long time and are at the top of the food chain they accumulate high concentrations of heavy metals such as mercury that make their meat unfit for consumption.
To this, the following rebuttals may be proposed:
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It’s true that several whale species had been hunted to the brink of extinction prior to the ban. However, it does not necessarily follow that properly managed and regulated hunting of certain non-endangered species puts them at risk too. Even if it does, however, this is not a problem specific with whaling. Unsustainable fishing is a major issue, but people don’t seem to be as enthusiastic to defend bluefin tuna as Minke whales.
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This is related to #1, and the (admittedly contentious) argument proposed by pro-whaling lobbies is that large whale populations negatively affect stocks of fish down the food chain, which has economic and ecological impacts. Again, this issues is not specific to whaling and is part of the global problem of sustainable oceanic resource management.
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This argument appears in several degrees. There are those, like PETA, who are opposed to any exploitation of any animal. Then, there are those who are opposed to the killing of animals who are seen as having intellectual faculties beyond a certain threshold. It’s difficult to counter the first group as any argument will boil down to a matter of ethical opinion. For the second group, however, questions may be raised as to what constitutes an acceptable intelligence threshold, and how it may be measured. Are Minke whales really more intelligent than pigs? What about octopuses and other non-mammals?
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This is an argument that is not seen quite as often as the others possibly because it is a local problem concerning only the few countries where whale meat is eaten. I believe it is the most convincing argument against whaling, but one could say that as long as consumers are well informed it is a matter of personal choice on their part. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that in some regions whale meat still sometimes appears in school lunches.
I think that to those arguments, we need to act the important factor that unlike pigs, or tuna, whales are not generally considered as food in many countries. This is similar to the opposition to dog meat that is also frequent in the west.
There are no whales that breathe water, if it breathes water then it’s not a whale.
Trendy, what? Do you have a point here? The validity of an issue is not dismissed by the fact that there is a related trend.
As Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
The point I’m making is that most people really, really don’t give a shit about whales.
But if someone says at a party “Oh, it’s horrid how those beastly Whalers keep killing those poor whales”, most people don’t want to look like Horrible Beastly Whale-Killers, so they’re hardly going to say “Actually, I think we should kill every last one of them so tree-huggers stop talking about the bloody things”, they’re going to say “Yes, indeed, quite horrible. Another canapé?”
Believe it or not, I don’t hate whales or want them all to die or be turned into exotic dishes for people in other countries. But the fact that these things do happen doesn’t really bother me either. There’s a lot of crappiness in the world and frankly I’d rather see more effort made to tackle child neglect and poverty in “civilised” countries than time, money, and energy being put into harassing the Japanese for killing a stasticially insignificant number of a maritime creature most people don’t think about anyway.
Pretty much, there has been very very little responsible use of the oceans food resources, and the Japanese are among the worse in abusing fishing. Thus, there is about 0 chance they will harvest whales responsibly. The Japanese are cheerfully fishing several species of tuna into extinction.
Funny that considering the number of children starving in civilised countries are an even more statistically insignificant number. 
6.5b of us, and you’re saying 1000 out of 700,000 is insignificant.
That being said, it’s not an issue I am highly passionate about, but my heart goes out to the Sea Shepherds.
Actually, I said child neglect and poverty, not starvation. There are a lot of kids (and adults) living below the poverty line in “civilised” countries and suffering because of it. And not just “What, you’ve only got a PS1? Pfft, that’s so 1998” suffering, but “having to wear school shoes held together with duct tape” or “The family can only afford one meal a day” sort of suffering. That, IMHO, should be a higher priority than pestering Japanese sailors in the Southern Ocean.
Do you think the number of children suffering from neglect and poverty is greater than 1% of the population?
Have you dedicated your life to this cause you are so passionate about or do you just expect others who have dedicated their lives to a different cause to do so?
This is an idiotic distinction.
Yes, actually, quite a lot greater.
(Not to take a side in this argument, just a bit of nitpickery.)
Take it up with maritime law.