I missed the show a week ago so I had to catch up last night, and only became aware after seeing the commercials that those were the two last episodes of the season. The use of the Kevlar prop fouler seemed like a good move, but even when it was successful it didn’t seem to immobilize the whaler for very long. When the small boat guys fouled their own prop I thought I was seeing some instant karma.
I don;t know what the routine on the Steve usually is, but the captain seemed strangely surprised when he was informed that the fuel was low. I would have expected him to have a better handle on consumption. His untimely departure seemed to free up the two whalers just in time to interpose between the Barker and the factory ship. Either some creative editing made the interception look closer than it really was, or the Barker had the absolute worst luck in the world to be so close and still headed off.
I thought the Japanese use of prop foulers was pretty clever. The SS captain (or is he the First Mate?) radioing them to stop their harassing behavior struck me as being a little ironic.
Compared to some of the other seasons that I’ve watched, the SS’s didn’t seem to have a very successful cruise. The disabling of the whalers by the Irwin didn’t seem to matter in the end, although the crew seemed happy to consider it a victory that the ships that were tangling with them weren’t off whaling somewhere else. Peter’s final interview suggested that he believed their presence in the area of good weather was affecting the operation of the whaling ship. I was ready to dismiss that idea as a face-saving measure until the final graphic that reported the whalers giving up early and coming in way under their goal. They seem to have blamed the SS’s for their season’s early end, so I guess I won’t second guess. I did notice that Paul got in a final suggestion that next year they need MORE ships and MORE resources to get the job done.
I’d be interested in knowing the facts about the obvious increase in expenditures by Japan in making their fleet bigger and better for this year’s whaling season.
Paul Watson repeatedly mentioned that the Japanese government used funds donated to tsunami relief for the various improvements we saw in the Japanese whaling vessels. Is there any factual evidence that this occurred, or is he speculating?
I didn’t see that episode yet, but did the SS pull that move again? That’s like the third or fourth time. Those guys really have no clue whatsoever what they’re doing on the water.
Watson? He’s always “strangely surprised”. Like last season when the chopper pilot said he couldn’t fly because it was snowing too hard - “It’s snowing out?” during a goddamn blizzard. I’ve read that he’s not the captain of record (he’s not the “master”), and may not even have a captains license sufficient for that size vessel. He does seem to spend most of his time in his cabin writing self-serving press releases.
After dropping several prop fouling lines, the Japanese ship finally became entangled in one and started backing up to try to get free. One of the small boats saw the opportunity to cut under its stern and drop another fouler directly into the backing propeller. As they were making their approach, just as they were almost directly behind the ship, they ran over one of their own chewed-up lines and ended up dead in the water with the larger ship backing down on them. I don’t know how close it really was, but the video made it look quite close when they got themselves unfouled.
In seasons past they really did get in close with the factory ship and at least seemed to interfere with its taking whales aboard. This year the bar for success simply seemed to be getting the factory ship in sight, which was followed by self-congratulatory statements about how the whalers wouldn’t dare come back to that part of the whaling grounds once they knew the SS’s were there.