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