Sea Shepherds; Innefectual self-important dipshits

The BBQ Pit
1

So, I just watched Whale Wars for the first time.

There is a ban on commercial whaling. The Japanese still whale for “research,” but they are really just killing as many whales as they can for commercial purposes. The lie offends me. The flaunting of international law offends me.

Apparently the Sea Shepherds are a badass splinter group from Greenpeace that go out there and put themselves on the line to stop the whaling.

I tuned in expecting that it would be pretty cool and admirable, like the Deadliest Catch but with justice.

What a bunch of dipshits these guys are. The Whalers killed four whales right in front of the Sea Shepherds, pulled them onto the processing boat and processed them, no problemo.

The Sea Shepherds have this big beautiful boat called the “Steve Irwin.” It seems like it has every amenity. That Captain’s cabin is sumptuous with tasteful art and expensive wooden furniture. There are beautiful murals throughout the boat. Everybody wears cool Patagonia clothes. They have cool symbols with skulls and crossbones where the crossbones are whaling harpoons. They have a cool helicopter with a retractable hangar.

There’s a whole bunch of handsome guys and attractive hippy women looking all concerned and talking about their emotions and feelings. They cry when the whale gets killed. They talk about how they will never get past it and how it sticks with them forever. They comfort each other.

I dated a hippy chick for a while, and I know the drill. All the sensitivity and emoting and drama and pretending at purpose, like they’re the only ones who understand, and then the comfort sex. That’s why all the handsome guys stick around.
That’s thing that pisses me off. The fact that they believe their bullshit. They drive around on a big old comfortable boat paid for by donations from people they’ve convinced that they’re actually doing something worthwhile. They even believe that they are committed and that it’s worthwhile. They really don’t admit to themselves that it’s just plain fun to be a privileged and attractive young person going off and having fun adventures in exotic locations.

Rich non-hippies usually go off on adventures, spend lots of money on self-indulgent things and don’t do anything more worthwhile but at least they don’t pretend they’re serving a higher cause doing it.

These guys and girls were all talking about how committed they were and how they would rather risk their lives and die if necessary than see whales get killed. Apparently they never did before tonight. The whalers thought it was bad PR to kill whales in front of the Sea Shepherds. Tonight though they just ignored they just ignored the Sea Shepherds for the innefectual pussies that they are and whaled right in front of them.

The Sea Shepherds didn’t do shit. They talked a big game about following the processing ship and trying to stop the transfer… but they did nothing, risked nothing. They tried to get close and throw some Butyl acid onto the processing ship to spoil the meat, but the Captain got all nervous when they got close and the guys couldn’t reach .

Oh, the Butyl acid. They have these little bottles that they try to throw. Idiots! This is a perfect example. Let us say that I convince people to give me 20 or 30 million so I can buy a nice luxury boat and spend pleasant months cruising around having fun with attractive people and… Stopping whaling.

But… I can’t stop the whaling because there’s a fleet of vessels and one processing ship and I have only one boat, so yes, I can interfere with one harpoon boat but they have several and while I’m occupied with one the others hunt. So, in the event a whale gets killed I have a contingency plan. I’ll block the processing ship ramp… Oh, but I’m too scared (notice the harpoon ships have no problem getting close,) so I have a backup plan. I’ll throw butyl acid onto the ship to spoil the meat and make it useless.

When you come to think of it, besides the intimidation factor of having a bunch of attractive hippies on a party ship nearby, the butyl acid is really the only actual meaningful deterrant they have.

All this money and effort to be there and do something… and they have some few bottle that they are trying to toss at the ship by hand.

Idiots.

I mean, if you’re serious about this, and you know they have water cannons, than maybe, just maybe, instead of having an extra helicopter bay, or a designer desk, maybe you spend a couple of hours in the machine shop and make an air cannon out $10 worth of PVC pipe so that you can accurately shoot your butyl acid at range instead of trying to lob it by hand.

Maybe you take more than a couple of dozen little bottles. You know, so you can do something meaningful.

Hurling glass is dangerous and innefetcive. Maybe you fill a bunch of paintballs with butyl acid, load them into a sabot made out of ten cents worth of stryrofoam and completely and assuredly saturate the processing deck a a safe distance.

Maybe you take some of the butyl acid with you in the helicopter and while the harpoon are stopped for twenty minutes with the dying whale… maybe you drop the butyl acid into the water on the whale from the helicopter, destroying the meat before they even have the chance to process it.

If I was on the ship, that would have been my plan. I could have built it myself. I could have fired it myself. If I was on that ship right now, I’d be smoking week, and getting all kinds of sex from hot hippy chicks who thought I was wonderful for saving the whales.

But they didn’t take me. They didn’t ask me to go. They didn’t ask me what they should do. Instead they took Gunther some tall good-looking bearded nordic dude, and when the whales got killed Gunther emoted about how tragic it was and how much it affected him and all the hippy girls cried and hugged him.

The Captain went downstairs into his spacious well decorated cabin and sat behind his very expensive looking custom desk, to be alone (but the film crew came with him to film his solitary reflection.) He was so disturbed he didn’t answer the phone when the bridge called him (because you know, like, another whale was being killed and processed.) The filming of his solitary reflective moment was too important to be interrupted by anything as mundane as trying to interfere with whaling (which I thought was the whole point of this multi million dollar floating hippy party.)

But the film crew was there to film his solitude. That’s what was important.

Give me a break.

Perhaps they’ve had better days, and performed admirably. You wouldn’t know it from this episode.

That’s the problem with these fucking hippies. It’s all about how they feel, how they look, the style and what have you.

I’d rather be an evil conservative and focussed on actually getting shit done. That’s what I do. I get shit done. I don’t fuck around if I’m doing shit. I do it. I don’t worry about how it makes me feel. I don’t ponder it’s significance, or try to place a metaphysical context around it.

You want to stop the whaling? Put Dick Cheney on the boat. Put me on the boat. Doubtless the attractive hippy chicks won’t want to be on the boat to have sex with us because we’d actually working to accomplish something rather than getting in touch with our feelings. Probably they’d be too horrified to have sex with us once we started capturing japanese whalers and waterboarding them to find out the location of the fleet.

We might not have a lot of sex, but we’d piss off the whalers and do some damage.

Besides the two shamefully blindingly obvious ideas of making the minimal effort to use the butyl effectively, here are some more ideas good ideas they could use if they were seriously interested in doing something besides floating around pretending to be important and having fun:

  1. Foul the propellers of the whaling ships.

  2. Get some harpoons yourself (why are the whalers the only ones with harpoons?) When the whalers kill a whale shoot it with a harpoon filled with butyl acid and destroy the meat.

  3. Get some water cannons yourself. The whalers are pretty effective keeping the Sea Shepherds away by shooting water cannons (because they are competant and professional.) If you had water cannons you could shoot them at the guys trying to harpoon the whales or at the bridges of the ship making it impossible to steer accurately. You could do all kinds of cool stuff.

  4. The whalers have a detterant noise weapon they shoot off when the shepherds get too close that makes it hard for the Shepherds to do anything (again, because the whalers are competant.) Whey don’t the Sea Shepherds invest some of their furniture and pot money into a noise weapon to interfere with the whaling?

  5. I understand that there is a sonar type thing that whales don’t like and run away from. WHy don’t the Sea Shepherds buy one of those and use it near the whaling fleet to chase the whales away?
    Bunch of idiots.

2

Gawd,

What a perfect post :slight_smile:

It works best if you read it aloud in Cartman’s voice.

3

Flaunting means something different to flouting.

4

Why do you hate whales?

5

His post made me so irritated at the whale savers that it makes me want to root for the other side !

6

Well said. As a guy with strong hippie leanings, I just cannot stand people who feel too much and do too little. If it really matters as much as you go on about it, then start getting practical about how to solve the problem!

And, on a related note, do research and spend your time working on effective solutions and lifestyle changes, not just the ones that look good on TV, impress other hippie-minded people, or feel good but actually do very little.

7

Butyric acid, dipshit, butyric acid !

CMC fnord!
Oh and if you’d actually watched the series from the start you’d know that the butyric acid attacks were effective. That’s why Japanese whaling vessels have water cannons and anti-butyric acid bottle netting.

8

Maybe we can meld it with Junkyard Wars. Each week, both “teams” have to scrounge up parts to make something bigger and better, to stay one step ahead of the other side.

Too bad the Mythbusters Brown Note didn’t work, thay would be fun to watch.

Sorry Scylla, but the one time I tried to watch that Whale Wars show, it just put me to sleep. I mean, at least the snow crab fishermen actually DO things.

9

You do have some points, but some of your ideas and arguments have significant flaws as well.

Air cannons. Exactly the same thought I had watching this and previous episodes. Any highschooler could put one together in a weekend. Why aren’t they? Dunno.

Prop fouling. They tried it in an earlier episode and the gear was cut up by the prop. Maybe they’ll have better luck next time they try it. I question their choice of materials. heavy nylon rope. While stronger than steel in tensile strength, it is much easier to cut.

Water cannons. The Steve Irwin isn’t large enough to mount really effective ones.

Sonic weapon. The LRAD. Again, it’s a matter of relative target size and numbers of targets. If they had one ship to harass each of the harpoon ships it might be an effective strategy. The factory ship is too large to engage and if they go after one harpoon ship, there are still three to operate unimpeded.

Whale scaring sonar. Same problem. More hunter ships than harrassers.

Dropping butyric acid from the helicopter. Not sure, but I think they’d run afoul of aviation regulations. Pilot loses license and they lose their best recon tool.
But I do agree, they aren’t nearly as effective as they could be.

10

The hippies have their own navy now?! Great, what’s next, a balloon armada protecting the forest from lumberjacks by draping giant AIDS quilts over the trees?

11

I"m actually watching this right now-my husband DVRed it I guess from earlier. I was thinking many of the exact same things. I mean, that’s a LOT of work for very little payoff, by the looks. Wouldn’t time and money be better spent documenting what is happening and lobbying for the “research” loophole to be closed?

The new episode just came on and they almost hit their own helicopter with a flare. Um…WTF? Wake up!!

12

How DARE you suggest spending pot money on whales! Let the whales get their own pot. They could smoke a helluva splif through that blowhole, I wanna tell you!

13

I donate money to the Sea Shepherds, and I’m glad they piss you off. If they didn’t, I’d know they were being ineffective. As long as they’re still pissing off the squares, they have my support, moral and financial. How it must gall you to know that Paul Watson isn’t seeking your approval, and that he has the force to back up his beliefs. People like you are doing our job for us, driving otherwise “moderate” liberals into the arms of ELF and the Sea Shepherds – who don’t give a flying shit what you think of their methods.

You can’t stop them, they aren’t listening to you, and it seems to me that it’s you who is useless and ineffectual.

Rub your mad spot.

14

“The squares?” Are you one of those people who pierced his ear 6 times to make a statement?

15

Hire one of the Somali pirating ships. I’m sure they’re sick of getting killed by marines and hacked up by Egyptians by now. They’d totally kill some whalers.

I agree though. These guys annoy the hell out of me and I laughed when they were crying about the whales.

16

You are precious.

17

So your plan is to give people money whose ineffective use of it will anger those who would like to give money to support the same cause but won’t now that they see how it’s used in order to… raise money for the people you gave the money to in the first place? I’m not an activist, but that seems like a Moebius Strip of logic right there.

At least when you die, you can look back and know that your life wasn’t wasted: you annoyed people. Can all of us say the same?

18

I annoy people all the time for free. I don’t have to pay others to do it for me.

Hmmm, I wonder if there is a business opportunity here?

19

I’ll believe that when I see the restraining order.

20

You can add my voice to the roar of approval for the magnificent OP. That might be the best-written Pit OP I’ve ever read.

SmashTheState, dear, the specific reason the OP doesn’t like the Sea Shepherds is because they don’t accomplish their mission. Your post is no more than a three-paragraph meditation on the words "Nuh-uh!!!