Sea Shepherd stopped the whaling - - my feelings:

A question from a reader:

Hi Ted

We talked about Sea Shepherds a bit on the South Georgia trip. I probably

was commenting more on the tactics than principle of their mission ... of
course, supporting the intent of stopping whaling, and this is great news!
It makes for interesting television too, especially last season.

A friend of mine stayed at a B&B in Bar Harbor, ME last summer and the guy
running the place was planning on sailing with Watson and company this year.
He didn't have much to say at that time, other than being willing to take
the risk.

So Watson makes a good point ... people may not like his tactics, but he is
the only one really doing anything effective as he's proven this year
especially. What are your thoughts? Does he go too far and actually break
laws and endanger the Japanese in a way that should be prosecuted? And what
about the Japanese captain who got away with intentionally turning and
running down the Sea Shepherd boat sitting dead in the water in broad
daylight posing no threat?

My feelings on Sea Shepherd:

For one, they are bold and brave saying absolutely no to whaling, and willing to back it with their lives, where so many just accept things as they are, feeling powerless. A better world is made by that kind of spirited but ardently disciplined peaceful activism.

And good on 'em for being effective. Nothing else has been and the impotence of any other route to reducing whaling makes the best argument for their tactics I can think of.

Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd Conservancy says the whaling is all about $. I disagree, rather I think it's mostly about nationalism (happy to share a great essay to this end if anyone is interested). But if Sea Shepherd is disruptive enough to render it a huge financial hole for the Japanese government, it makes whaling much more difficult to support politically. Reports show that Sea Shepherd slammed the total catch this year :)

As to laws.... well each in turn, the whalers and the anti-whalers are breaking laws. Just depends on which set of laws you put more stock in. Geopolitics are stronger than difficult to enforce laws governing behavior on open oceans. Witness the discussions that wikileaks revealed about Japanese whaling (I posted on this back in January). Japan is breaking marine sanctuary laws that only apply to Australians and New Zealanders. The only laws Sea Shepherd runs afoul of are maritime safety and commerce laws, and after the Ady Gil was sunk, this got tested.... Australia's courts walked the political tightrope by saying it was mutual fault, mutual reckless endangerment but nobody was specifically criminally negligent. Read: Japan is a #1 trading partner, yet Australians love whales. It's all shades of grey, but laws in this case are hardly the point, as the battle is being waged over nationalism and PR.

What's the ultimate goal here? To me, it's having healthy oceans with full populations of all the oceans wonderful critters. Thus to me this is one little piece. Stop all whaling I say except possibly where there is deep-rooted cultural sustenance at stake. And, no, the argument that whaling is a tradition in Japan doesn't hold water, not at all. There was no pre-WWII open ocean whaling out of Japan. It's no more a tradition than the US dropping atomic bombs on Japanese cities is a tradition; we will likely all agree that needn't happen again. When white people go whaling, though, we tend to ignore it compared to when Japanese go whaling, but Iceland shouldn't either:

https://secure.nrdconline.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2143

More information:

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jreynolds/sanction_iceland_the_worlds_whaling_outlaw.html

My perfect little world: whaling stops, or at least slows dramatically, and the many thousands who have been motivated by cries to save the whales grasp the larger issues of ocean health. Whaling is one piece, but no less are issues of marine mammal entanglement and ship strikes (with serious potential to drive the Northern Right Whale extinct), fisheries depletion, noise pollution and climate change. What is nuts is that there were once probably 20 times current numbers of whales on this planet, and while whale populations are in general recovering, they're unlikely to get to that level thanks to all the rest that we're doing to the planet. I want to see Cumberland Bay in South Georgia so full of living whales that it looks like we can walk to shore on their backs!

A diversion: crazy Yellowstone bear and bison incident

Total diversion, but this is crazy amazing... posting from one of those ever circulating emails:

Alex Wypyszinski had just dropped off his wife at work and had a few hours to kill one morning last April.

Wypyszinski says he likes to spend his free time in the morning snapping photos of wildlife in the park. Of course, he usually has to search the animals out.

It all started when he was driving in the Fountain Flats area, located between the Madison Junction and Old Faithful , when he heard an unusual sound.

But Wypyszinski says any noise is unusual on that particular highway at 7am.
"I thought it was a horse and carriage," said Wypyszinski. "That was the kind of noise that I heard."

By the time he turned around, the two fuzzy brown images were racing quickly toward him.

Wypyszinski pulled out his camera quickly, thinking he was going to catch two moose racing down the highway.

He quickly learned he was mistaken.

"I thought I was having a hallucination or something," said Wypyszinski. "I couldn't believe what that buffalo looked like"

It was a bison, badly burned from an encounter with one of the numerous hot spots in Yellowstone National Park.

The sight of such an injured bison alone is rare, but what Wypyszinski saw next was once in a lifetime.

"Never, ever, ever," said Wypy szinski.. "I've seen plenty of bear, and more buffalo. But I've never seen anything like that before."

A grizzly was chasing the buffalo (which was practically cooked already) and gaining quickly.

Wypyszinski stopped his car on the desolate highway and took out his camera.

"I stood along the car as long as I thought it was safe."

The two beasts passed the man by without paying any notice.

We pick our tale up where the photos end.

Wypiszinski says once in the safety of the woods the bison out maneuvered the grizzly, escaping to live exactly one more day.

Park rangers had to put the bison down due to the injuries it sustained from the hot springs.
Wypiszinski said the whole event was over just as quickly as it happened.
Just another day in Yellowstone National Park!

We just had our own wonderful Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris trips into Yellowstone... I'd say join us next year but we're full ;) http://www.cheesemans.com/namerica.html#yellowstone

It's official: the Antarctic whaling season has ended early... hopefully for good!

Yes my friends, Japan has called a halt to it's whaling season in the Antarctic:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-18/japan-abandons-whaling-hunt-following-clashes-with-sea-shepherd-nhk-says.html

"The whalers caught 170 minke whales out of a planned 850 and 2 fin whales from a planned 50"
This failure was thanks to the aggressively interruptive tactics of activists from Sea Shepherd Conservancy. Impressive results, whether or not you agree with their MO!

Big news from Antarctic Whaling

This bit of breaking news may not hold... we shall see, but if in fact the whaling is done for the season, that's cause for celebration:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/16/3140867.htm

Photo from AAP: JoAnne McArthur/Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Activists cautious over Japan whaling halt

Anti-whaling activists cautiously welcomed news that Japan was suspending its annual hunt near Antarctica as a result of their harassment campaign.

"If that's true then it demonstrates that our tactics, our strategies have been successful," Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson said by satellite phone from the ship Steve Irwin after being told of the suspension.

"I don't think they've gotten more than 30 whales from what I can think, certainly they haven't got many whales at all," he said.

Mr Watson was reluctant to claim a victory over the whalers, but said "every whale saved is a victory to us, so we've gotten a lot of victories down here this year".

Japan's fisheries agency said it had suspended operations on the Nisshin Maru factory ship and was considering an early end to the annual harpoon mission after harassment from the conservation group.

"Putting safety as a priority, the fleet has halted scientific whaling for now. We are currently considering what to do hereafter," Fisheries Agency official Tatsuya Nakaoku said.

"We are now studying the situation, including the possibility of cutting the mission early," he said, but stressed "nothing has been decided at this point".

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's top spokesman, chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano, confirmed the temporary suspension and said the "Sea Shepherd's repeated sabotage is extremely deplorable", Kyodo News reported.

Sea Shepherd activists have harassed whalers in recent years, moving their ships and inflatable boats between the harpoon vessels and whales and throwing stink and paint bombs at the whaling ships.

Japan introduced scientific whaling to skirt the commercial whaling ban under a 1986 moratorium, arguing it had a right to watch the whales' impact on its fishing industry.

The fleet, consisting of some 180 people on four vessels, is aiming to cull about 850 minke whales in Antarctic waters this season, which is scheduled to end around March.

In the same period last year, Japan killed 506 minke whales, well below its planned catch of around 850.

Last year, Australia filed a complaint against Japan at the world court in The Hague to stop Southern Ocean scientific whaling. The decision is expected to come in 2013 or later.

A Sea Shepherd activist was given a two-year suspended jail term by a Japanese court in July for boarding a whaling ship, while one of the group's ships sank last year after a collision with a Japanese whaling ship.

Here's to Shackleton!

Happy 137th to the boss:
http://www.google.co.uk/

And the story:
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/38576/earnest-shackleton-birth-google-doodle

:-)
Ted

Sea Shepherd charges after the whalers

You've seen it here first, soon to be on Whale Wars. The zodiacs running alongside are from Sea Shepherd, trying to throw butyric acid (which is basically rancid butter) onto the deck of the whaler's ship, to interrupt the whaling. Don't know how they've done this season but last season they managed to dramatically cut the number of whales killed.

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8152587-sea-shepherd-crew-continues-operation-no-compromise

Ice caves on Mt. Erebus - Imagine the silence

Whether storms rage outside or skies are crystalline and clear, silence and stillness only persist in these ice caves. That is, I suppose, except when Mt. Erebus is erupting - http://bit.ly/fIbp9R

Our ship in the ice

Sea Ice is just such an otherworldy space, a very very inhumane place. That is, unless you sail to Antarctica onboard an icebreaker :) Check out this footage from January 2010: http://bit.ly/hjvmL0 (thanks Phil!)

Beautiful illustrated trip report from our 2009-10 Antarctica voyage

Our good friend Phil Colla took a year to produce this 144 page trip report from our 2009-10 Antarctica, South Georgia and Falkland Islands voyage, illustrated with his photography. Great stuff --- be warned, it's a 22mb download: http://bit.ly/fQpxcC

Polar Star discovers a new rock, driving by braile :(

You may have heard as it is making its rounds in the news, that the Polar Star bumped a rock a few days ago. By my reading it is on the scale of a fender-bender as far as vessels go, but the body shop is inconveniently on the other side of the Drake.

The story in very brief terms: she was just off Detaille Island, about 30 miles south of the Antarctic Circle, when she hit a rock while traveling at approximately 1 knot. The outer hull was breached but the inner hull remained intact, and after an assessment she traveled up to King George Island where divers from one of the research stations did more detailed inspections. They decided to offload all passengers onto three other tour vessels before heading across to Ushuaia. She's in the Drake now, and they have cancelled their next voyage which had been scheduled to depart February 6. My speculation is that industrial divers will seal the outer hull with a solid but temporary patch so that she can complete the season, then in drydock between the Antarctic and Arctic seasons the plating will be replaced in a permanent manner. I'm not one for the sensational story, so you'll see here no words like 'rescued', 'stranded' or other such things because nobody was ever in danger, and as it turns out incidents like this happen about as often as accidents happen anywhere. What is important is that safety is managed, and that there is a self-sufficiency created by the network of IAATO that allows us to operate safely in extremely remote waters. Long live the Antarctic!

If you'd like the full details in more accurate form than any newspapers are reporting, read the IAATO press releases: http://www.iaato.org/press.html

This does in no way compromise our next voyage onboard Polar Star, December 2011 to January 2012, but it does for me highlight the expedition nature of any travel into a place so remote as Antarctica, and make me glad that we are not scheduled to get onboard next week.

Google map link to the location of the newly discovered rock: http://bit.ly/hSELsD

Albatross lovers rejoice: a Short-tailed Albatross is born on Midway

Great news, in a nutshell: A couple weeks ago a Short-tailed Albatross egg hatched on Midway, a major step towards the recovery of what was once the most abundant albatross in the North Pacific. Yes I know this is not Antarctica, but a recovery milestone for Albatross easily justify the divergence. Before we humans wreaked our havoc, there were some 1,000,000 Short-tailed Albatross nesting on a handful of islands off Japan. These were eaten and ravaged for their feathers, totally wiped out and thought to be extinct after WWII until in the early 1950s 10 pairs were found breeding on the island of Torishima, an active volcano (read, dangerous!) in the Philippine Sea south of Japan. Fortunately for the survival of albatross species, some birds are always at sea for years, and were conveniently absent when the killing sprees took most individuals. From these 10 pairs, through long efforts the birds now have several small colonies, numbering an estimated 2364 birds. Great efforts have been ongoing for some years with decoys and recorded calls trying to get breeding pairs to settle on Midway, and after several years of hopeful signs we now have a live chick. It's a long road from there to a viable colony, but there's that old adage, about a single step and a journey of 1000 miles.

Endangered Bird Hatches on U.S. Soil for First Time in Recorded History
http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/stories/110124.html

An informative background on Short-tailed Albatross
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-tailed_Albatross

Albatross forever! (have I said that before?)

Big happenings on South Georgia

South Georgia, the island that is simply my favorite place in the world, is abuzz with activity, and hopes are running high. The great rat eradication will begin late this month, and, if successful, this will be the largest rat eradication ever. This is a wonderful thing, making possible a vast expansion in prime seabird nesting habitat. The energy going into this effort is evident in South Georgia Heritage Trust's recent newsletter: http://sght.org/documents/SGHT%20Newsletter4.pdf

So many Cheesemans' Ecology Safaris travelers have helped us in supporting SGHT to date that we recently received a very kind note from these good folk thanking us for our efforts. Great stuff! http://sght.org/donations.htm

On a more historical note, some of the Grytviken Museum collections online now: http://ehive.com/account/3408
But of course it's always far better in person; you can join us south! http://www.cheesemans.com/antarctica.html

Albatross forever!