"Ady Gil" sunk by whalers

[Alan]

The Sea Shepherd boat "Ady Gil" has been sunk by Japanese whalers in Antarctica.

While Sea Shepherd has in fact sunk some whaling ships that were operating illegally in the past, they have strived to keep their operations legal, which means that this is something of an escalation.

Both sides, however, have taken care to avoid loss of (human) life.

The Ady Gil held the record for fastest circumnavigation of the earth. I had a chance to visit the boat and talk to one of the crew while I was in Auckland late last October. It was quite the little boat.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/austral...at-cut-in-half

[Paul Ward]

An escalation indeed. I read on the web that SS has sunk 10 whale boats over the years though not sure how true this is?

Shame about the Ady Gil, as much as anything a very cool looking boat.

One report I read describes the boat as minding its own business and then being rammed but a pic shows the whale boat with a taught line presumeably to a whale with the Ady Gil below the bow about to be run-over. More transparency and less bickering would help methinks.

[flighter]

I am interested in legal aspect of both what SS does and what whalers do (to each other)... Someone must be responsible. What if someone died?! I guess next thing will be that SS obtain radio-controlled mini submarines with torpedoes or charges

[drummy]

Interesting that You Tube has pulled the video!

Drummy

[Carys Torres]

Hopefully this link will work http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...nks-antarctica - the video can be seen here.

[Paul Ward]

Found the picture - my mistake it wasn't a line to a whale but a water cannon from the whaling boat being turned on the Ady Gil

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/s...24-911,00.html

the one I saw originally must have been cropped as you couldn't see the water breaking up and looked like a line.

I guess there's no real come-back however with both sides now using the open-ocean get-out for action taken.

[fast eddie]

That's such a shame...Those "research" whalers need to be put out of business, pay 'em to go catch anchovies or something...

[flighter]

It is interesting how "scientific" whalers are allowed to use extreme force to do what they want to do. At the same time, Sea Shepherd's crews must be law abiding. If not for legal barriers, it would not be a problem at all to stop any whaling vessel... pemanently.

[flighter]

Just arrived via CNN:

Peter Bethune of Sea Shepperd has been brought to court in Japan.

According to CNN, it may take up to 3 years to finish the trial.

CNN article

[Alan]

Sounds like typical police tactics: attack a person you don't like, then charge them with assault.

I would say that ramming a man's ship counts as an attack.

But I can see how there would be differing opinions on this, as International Law is clashing with Japanese Law here.

As far as I'm concerned, the relevant question is whether these whales are sentient, and there is pretty good reason to believe they are. If they are, then the whale hunts qualify as murder as far as I'm concerned, and the fact that this is a serious field of inquiry suggests that the Japanese fleet ought, at the very least, restrict such kills to actual research. If the Japanese fleet had an annual catch of 3 or 4 whales, the "research" defense might be tenable - but with an intended catch of 1000 whales it is laughable.