I was not suggesting the Australians move naval assets in the region.
I was responding to someone saying the Aussies should impound their ship for crimes on the high seas next time they dock.
You have noted the Aussies are cool with the Sea Shepherd and not cool with the whalers. So it makes sense the government leaves them be.
Bet anything if the Sea Shepherd ever docked in Japan they’d lose their ship. 
Does anyone know the origin of the “security” vessel? Not even the ships near Somalia or Malacca hire security vessels (other than regular navies) AFAIK. It’s not as though the world’s shipping lanes have a regular market for private nautical bouncers.
So where did it come from? What special “security” capacities does it have, if any? Who crews it? Ex military types? What is their brief?
As to those ascribing blame to one vessel or another, it seems to me that both parties were playing chicken, and therefore any action by one vessel can be interpreted as either aggressive or anticipatorily defensive depending on who you back in this fight. But if you play chicken, this is what you get, and both have to wear responsibility.
The SS people don’t get to cry “poor me” when this happens, and it makes them look like spoilt children when they do, no matter how just their cause. And their cause might well be just.
I think it is bad marketing to pretend that this was a case of “there I was, minding my own business…”, and to feign shock and outrage. No-one believes that the SS people aren’t deliberately provocative. For them to provoke a response and then say “You see how evil the whalers are?” is counter-productive. Those tactics worked for 60s street demonstraters, but it just doesn’t work in this context. If your shtick is that you are heroically going to war with Satan, don’t bitch when you get a bloody nose. It’s not a good look. The tactics should be to hang tough and get someone credible to bitch for you.
No at 11 seconds as the whaler’s bow rises it has already straightened. At that point it is aiming to just miss the Ady Gil. What dooms the Gil is that at that time Ady Gil goes hard ahead. If you look at the other video, from the whaler, it’s even clearer. At 16 seconds in the whaler is going to pass clear. That is passably clear from the video but even more telling is the fact that at 16 seconds the guys standing on top of the Gil aren’t even panicking, they are just standing there (because they think it’s just going be a close quarters thing, which is what they’ve been doing all day).
Then the master of the Gil goes hard ahead and dooms her. He panicked.
You are attributing extraordinary strategic powers to the master of the whaler. Presumably he’d had mysterious and cunning martial arts training. Or he was just aiming to give a near miss and the Gil skipper panicked and went ahead.
I once investigated a collision in which a small highly manouverable vessel capable of 40 or 50 knots and turning on a dime rammed straight into the side of a Panamax bulk carrier that it knew was there through confusion and panic. (I’ve been involved in marine casualty investigation for 20 years, come the 28th of this month, by the way).
I’d be reluctant to attribute to malice and cunning what appears to have been just a panicked mistake.
I don’t think the whaler would deliberately ram, on video, any more than the Gil would.
The Shonan Maru 2 is owned by Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd of Tokyo. It is Japanese flagged. It is listed in my source as a “whale catcher”. I can’t find anything else on public records.
I doubt it has any particular capacities. All it seems to be doing is close quarters manouevres and aiming its fire hoses. No doubt they would say in self defence.
It may help to use this video which gives a split screen view of the two perspectives. I do not know how well/carefully the person doing it matched the times of the two but seems pretty close.
In that video we can see at 15 seconds, from the Japanese POV, the Ady Gil is idling. Due to pitching it is hard to tell but at the 18 second mark we can see stern wash from the smaller ship and presume it is trying to move.
At that point, we can see in the top video, the security ship is just righting itself and showing evidence of reversing its turn and going to port.
At 22 seconds we hear the crunch of collision.
So, 4-5 seconds from idle to moving to crunch.
Hardly enough time for the Ady Gil pilot to have gotten anywhere.
Also consider reaction times. Reaction of the people, reactions of the boats’ ability to maneuver.
I have never driven anything remotely as big as the Japanese vessel but I have driven stuff as big as the Ady Gil (bit bigger actually). Boats have a distinct delayed response. The bigger the boat the bigger the delay. You can spin the wheel to the stops and sit there and wait for the boat to actually turn. Or put on power and wait for engines then boat to respond.
I would say the Japanese crew apparently did think they were ninjas…ninjas with a 700 ton ship.
Question…if the Ady Gil never moved do you think the security ship would have hit it? If not then the crew was going super ninja to make such a close pass with such an awkward thing in high seas. At the very least exceptionally brazen and dangerous and reckless. That or they wanted to hit the ship. Looks to me, if the Ady Gil never moved, they would have been hit anyway.
Now consider it from the Ady Gil side. You are the pilot. Remember response times and consider your view of the situation (plunging prow of a ship looming above you and bearing down on you clearly turning in to you). Backing up would not seem an option. High seas, vessel is light with low fuel (which from my earlier quote seems to be stored in the bow so the bow was now light). Powerful engine. Put full power backwards in high seas and you are going to ship water in a major way over the transom. Heck, with that much power and a light front I wonder if you could flip it backwards. Plus your initial impression is the other ship is turning in to you so going backwards will still get you hit.
The other ship may not be apparently shifting direction from their POV. May seem clear to us…I bet it is a lot harder to read from their perspective. So, the pilot puts on power to move forward. Makes sense. Again though response times. We are talking seconds here and the time is not there. More, the security ship reversed its turn. Indeed I wonder if the pilot didn’t put the boat flat out realizing at the last moment doing so would have gotten them hit in the stern where the people were which would have been a lot worse.
Final analysis though suggests that there is no way the pilot intentionally sought to get run over. Even if they were suicidal there is no profit in that unless their ship was a bomb or something.
So, panic? Best they could do? Hard to say but considering the time frame not sure a panicked person versus a perfect response could have made a difference. Maybe but think we are splitting hairs in what was a hairy situation. 
Perhaps only having said it three times I haven’t been clear. Yes, if the Gil had done nothing the whaler would have missed. You can see that in both videos as I’ve pointed out. Yes it would have been close. I don’t doubt that the whaler and the Gil were behaving recklessly. I just think that there is no evidence of intent to actually collide on either side. The fact that the Gil went forward but lost a metre or two of bow means that if it hadn’t gone forward it wouldn’t. It’s that simple. So the master of the whaler wasn’t aiming for the Gil. And the fact that being run down by the stem of a whaler while in a lightweight speedboat is suicide means the master of the Gil wasn’t intending to be run down.
I might also point out that even on your own comments you support what I say. You point out that the whaler had started to turn to port, and you also point out that the delayed response of a vessel the size of the whaler means that this must have been initiated a few seconds before. So the master of the whaler intended to turn away, and did so, and formed the intention to do so well before the collision. The whaler couldn’t have turned back onto the Gil, even if he’d wanted to. The sudden movement from the third party video, where the Gil isn’t, then suddenly is, directly in the path of the whaler can only be because of the Gil.
Sorry but not seeing it this way.
You want me to believe, had the Gil not moved, that the Japanese ship would have harmlessly passed a few meters in front of the other ship. Perhaps it would have but everyone else was supposed to know that?
You want me to buy that the security ship pilot really did believe in their ninjaness to pull off such a thread-the-needle-in-high-seas-with-a-700-ton-ship maneuver and it is the other guy’s fault? It is unimaginable to think of being able to maneuver with such precision in such high seas in a ship that size unless you are God.
Too much to swallow.
Plus, I cannot fault the Ady Gil pilot. From his perspective he saw a monster ship turning in to him. He had to just hope they didn’t run him over? He should just have sat there and figured they wouldn’t do that? From his perspective I bet the other ship looked mighty big and menacing and headed straight for them. Not his bow even but for a good bit at them. Stand still in that situation? Gotta be kidding me.
The first thing is that I don’t care what you believe but yes the whaler would have missed. That’s what the video shows, and if you don’t believe that, then you have to ask yourself why the guys standing on the deck of the Gil, with the ship metres away, in a box seat to be able to see exactly where the whaler was heading, only scramble aft when the Gil starts to move forward.
Secondly, you really need to get straight what I am saying and what you seem to be doing your best to confuse. I haven’t spoken about blame. I think the immediate cause was the skipper of the Gil going ahead in a panic. I don’t particularly blame him for this, I just think that’s how it happened. What I have spoken about is intention to collide, which I don’t think is evident on either part.
To add:
I think you need to keep in mind the perspective from the Ady Gil. I am no expert mariner but I have spent enough time on boats, and around big ships while on those boats, to know things look very different up close than they do from a safe distance. Also remember this whole thing plays out in (maybe) 20 seconds from the turn towards the little boat to crunch time. In that situation, in high seas, that is pretty fast.
Panic?
I looked at the split screen vid again. Big ship notably begins its turn into the other ship at 8 seconds. Crunch time is at 22 seconds. So, 14 seconds start to finish.
From the safe perspective big boat notably reverses its turn at 17 seconds.
So, even assuming perfect knowledge on the part of the Ady Gil pilot he is 5 seconds from getting rammed. I bet from his perspective the turn away was not apparent to him at that earliest moment.
Would you sit still? From the little boat perspective you are moments away from getting mushed.
Frankly the big boat’s nimbleness is remarkable but I would not have bet on that in that situation. Maybe you could sit still and hope it all turns out well but I think most people’s instinct would be to take some action. And not a panicked action but a reasonable action given what is known at that moment. Given all of 5 seconds not sure more can be expected while in a boat.
I should address this more closely I think.
I see what you are saying but I disagree…somewhat.
I cannot see the Japanese ship reasonably expecting to pull off a near-miss (or to channel George Carlin a near hit). Had the Ady Gil not moved they might have passed a few meters in front of it.
Perhaps you know, I don’t, but I find the notion of them expecting to be able to maneuver a ship that size to pass insanely close to the little ship without hitting it while in rough seas to be absurd. I have no doubt the crew is adept at handling their ship but such finesse with such a ship in those conditions? Just to scare someone? Beggars belief.
So, with the premise that the intention was to just scare them dispensed with, my only other thought is they meant to hit the little boat. The above is the ninja move. To turn in then turn away is the move to mush the little boat and less ninja like. The little boat could go forward or backwards. Backwards is slow and not terribly viable and considering their impression is the other boat turning in to them they could not escape that way. The big boat people would know this. Turning in it is reasonable to assume the other boat would seek to escape forward. So, to stop that, you reverse your turn.
Pinned the little boat nice and neat. Certainly clever seamanship on the part of the Japanese crew and they get points for out witting the other guy.
Bottom line though, it seems to me, they meant to hit the little boat. At my most charitable I would say they were criminally reckless.
Look to get something straight which perhaps doesn’t come across in my posts: by describing the last second actions of the skipper of the Gil as “panic” I don’t intend particularly to criticise. I just mean he took a last second action in a great hurry which, as it turns out, didn’t turn out to have the result intended. The only point I want to make is that I don’t think there was intention on either part, and I think the immediate cause was the skipper of the Gil going ahead, for whatever reason.
Your theory about how the whaler had sufficient mad skilz to manouvre precisely enough to trap the Gil’s skipper and the Ady Gil like Kasparov playing out an end game while not being able to manouevre precisely enough to arrange a near miss is noted but needless to say I find it far too self contradictory to be taken seriously, frankly.
Actually, the security ship is probably trying to aim its water cannon. From what I’ve read here they are stationary and the only way to aim them is to maneuver the ship. Look at it from that point of view and you’d see why the bigger ship was going back and forth like it was. IMHO, of course.
In the article listed earlier the organization admitted assaulting, damaging and sinking ships. If Australia tacitly approves of this action then Japan should overtly deal with them as pirates.
Watson said it but he’s a blowhard who knows how to rattle off a snappy line that will make news. His posturing doesn’t constitute admissible evidence of wrongdoing, and you can bet that if Watson was pressed he would say that he was exaggerating and/or that Sea Shepherd’s actions were in self defence or whatever. I haven’t heard of them doing anything that constituted a clear cut significant crime, in circumstances where it could be proved.
Self contradictory how?
Clearly the Japanese ship steered towards the Gil. If the Gil never moved the big ship would have probably missed. What you have not answered is what you would have done were you the captain of the Gil.
Could you have sat there, seeing what they saw, and just done nothing hoping the security ship would not run right over you?
Obviously I’m not a witness but it is my understanding that they routinely try to disable the rudder or drive screws of ships.
Actually I think they want their day in court. This may give it to them. I think (don’t know of course) they’d like to use an international court as a soapbox. Considering all the hassle they cause the Japanese without the Japanese making an international case out of it I think that makes sense. Japan does not want to go there.
I’m not surprised that the Gil’s pilot was an inferior seaman who likely made a mistake, and drove his ship in front of the whaler. If you watch the show, it’s fairly clear that the only one onboard who has any decent nautical skills is the Captain. But, I think he’s reckless, lazy, and on a misguided quest. He routinely puts his crew in harms way. His crew is undertrained, and ineffective in what they are trying to do in the first place. I can understand dedication, but without skills, it’s just foolish. The show also shows a pattern of crew leaving, not because they need to return to their lives (though that is often what they give minor lip service to), but rather that they see the flaws in the ship’s operation, and flee. Must be the lack of meat in the crew mess.
And of course, the Captain is always yelling at his crew to do exactly this, and always refuses when someone asks if he’s going along on the mission.
This is exactly what they do, over and over. They throw things at the Japanese ships, then he runs down to his cabin, and calls a reporter on a sat-phone when something gets thrown back. I’ve seen these same people before. In grade school, they ran in to tell the teacher that “Jonny was throwing snowballs at us,” and neglecting to say that he, and 4 of his friends started the fight.
And then, in full crybaby mode, complain that the Japanese ships are using potentially harmful sonic weapons to keep them away from their ship! Would the outcry be so fierce if the SS boats disabled a Japanese ship, in the middle of the ocean, potentially endangering the Japanese crew?
Sorry, but if a bunch of bicyclists are riding around you and your semi truck and you decide to play demolition derby with the bicyclists, you’re attempting murder. Pure and simple.
Stink bombs and gumming up your rudder is vandalism and harrassment - which they cop to quite happily. Destroying an occupied boat - IN THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN - is attempted murder.