Anti-Whaling Pirate Ship Attacks Japanese Ship (Video)
The battle between Japanese whaling ships and radical anti-whaling activists continues:
An anti-whaling group’s boat and a Japanese whale-spotting vessel collided in Antarctic waters Monday during violent clashes over a pod of whales, conservationists and Japanese officials said.
The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said a 3-foot gash was torn into the hull of its ship, the Robert Hunter, by the Japanese ship Kaiko Maru during the clashes in iceberg-strewn waters far south of New Zealand.
Japanese officials accused the group of attacking the whaling ship Kaiko Maru “like pirates.”
It was the latest high-stakes clash between Japanese whaling ships and Sea Shepherd activists, whose self-stated aim is to “harass, block, obstruct, and intervene against” Japanese ships hunting whales in Antarctic waters.
Hideki Moronuki, a senior official at the far seas fisheries division of Japan’s Fisheries Agency, said Sea Shepherd’s two vessels attacked the Kaiko Maru on Monday morning.
The Kaiko Maru issued a distress signal to try to get help from another Japanese whaling ship in the area, Moronuki said. No one aboard the Kaiko Maru was injured and there was no serious damage to the ship.
“The attack was like that of a pirate, with people on one boat throwing warning flares and a rope in an attempt to entangle our ship’s propeller,” Moronuki said. The Kaiko Maru was forced to stop, he said.
But why reading a boring news article when you can watch the real thing, filmed from the perspective of the Japanese whalers:
This video was uploaded by the YouTube user koe2006, who has labeled it as “Sea Shepherd Attacks Japanese Whaling fleet. Feb 09, 2007.” Judging from the contents of the video, I would guess that it is in fact an attack on a Japanese whaling vessel, although the date of the video is not certain. Koe2006 has uploaded several other videos of this attack, and his comments indentify him as a someone sympathetic to the plight of the Japanese whalers.
As I’ve stated before, I sympathize with those who oppose Japan’s whaling, but certainly there are better methods out there than violence. It might seem safe or even funny to see those Sea Shepherd activists chucking non-lethal stink bombs onto Japanese ships, but maneuvering dangerously close to other ships is far from non-lethal. I have to agree with the Japanese who call Sea Shepherd pirates, as they are doing little more than trying to intimidate Japanese whalers through their reckless and dangerous tactics.
