Cav's Place

I must shamefully admit that I first heard of Sea Shepherd a few months ago, when I happened to stumble upon the last few minutes of an episode of Whale Wars on Animal Planet. Actually, at first I was simply amazed that such green warriors exist and that, instead of dealing in secrecy and fearing discovery, there’s even a show about them. The embarrassment came a little later, when I tried to find out more and realized they’ve been doing this for over 30 years and that the show wasn’t exactly new either.
My embarrassment aside, this is the kind of people we need if we are to get anything done for the environment and the other species we share this planet with. Petitions, speeches and peaceful protests only go so far, and unfortunately we’re long past the time when we could afford to wait for such methods to work. People have made it clear that they won’t listen if you talk to them nicely, so such methods, and far worse, are what’s required now and I’m very pleased to see that at least a small number of people are willing to do what needs to be done.
As for Paul Watson himself, he does seem to have egocentric and even dictatorial tendencies and openly advocates making up facts, figures and stories when you need to draw attention to an issue and persuade people to agree with you, which makes him less than trustworthy. In an ideal world, he’d be a real problem. In this world, however, it makes him the right person for the job, because his attitude means he’s trying to beat the powers that be at their own game and may even have a chance to do so, or at least a chance to win as many victories as any one man can.

But the recent major event is the ramming of the Ady Gil, one of Sea Shepherd’s two new vessels which were supposed to take part in this year’s fight against the Japanese whaling fleet and potentially their “secret weapon”, considering the capabilities of that ship. That article includes the video captured from aboard the Japanese ship, and there are two other videos available, one captured from aboard the Ady Gil and the other from aboard the other Sea Shepherd vessel that was in the area at the time. There is also a side-by-side comparison of the two relevant videos, since the one captured from aboard the Ady Gil ends just before the impact, as the cameraman scrambled out of the way.
What is obvious is that the Ady Gil turned on its engines just before the impact, which the Sea Shepherd statement said was an attempt to get out of the way by going in reverse. However, it appears to be going forward a little at the last moment, thereby making the impact even more damaging. For me, that wouldn’t be so surprising, firstly because I’m not even sure how well can such a specialized vessel go in reverse, making an attempt to end up alongside the Japanese vessel by steering sharply away while going forward sound likely, and secondly because it’s very hard to both make up your mind and make your orders understood when a much larger vessel is seconds away from ramming into you, while under water cannons and through that dreadful noise generated by the Japanese vessel’s LRAD. Yet there are others who claim that the Ady Gil deliberately caused the collision in order to have something else to blame the Japanese for.
Another thing that seems pretty obvious is that the Japanese vessel did indeed steer towards the Ady Gil, which should make those claims I just mentioned quite pointless. In order to observe this, you should ignore the videos filmed from aboard the two vessels involved, because they can only reveal one ship’s movement relative to the other, and focus on the one filmed from aboard the Bob Barker, which is the other Sea Shepherd ship that was in the area. If you look carefully, you can see the Japanese vessel steer towards the Ady Gil before the Ady Gil starts moving forward, and that’s made obvious by the fact that the Japanese vessel starts leaning in the opposite direction, which is how large vessels behave while turning.

But let’s take it from another angle and look at what each side would have to gain and what would they have to lose from this.
Sea Shepherd is certainly gaining a lot of publicity and support, while they also manage to tarnish the Japanese fleet’s public image even more. That would seem like a lot, but the price seems to be too high. The loss of a very special vessel, worth two million dollars, on its first mission doesn’t sound like something desirable, especially when this would require the owner of said vessel, who donated it to Sea Shepherd along with his services, to basically sink his own masterpiece and risk six lives in the process. But the greater loss is the loss of potential, because the presence of the Ady Gil meant that they had the upper hand on the Japanese whaling fleet for the first time, as the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker could have kept the two Japanese security ships busy, leaving the rest of the whaling fleet open to attacks from the very fast and maneuverable Ady Gil, which would have had a very good chance to destroy their nets, jam their engines and cause all sorts of other problems.
The Japanese, however, seem to have very little to lose as a result of this, since their public image is bad enough already, the risk of being held accountable for the action appears to be pretty low and the large difference in size between the two vessels made the ramming about as safe as any such operation could ever be. On the other hand, making sure that the Sea Shepherd fleet does not outnumber their security vessels is a huge gain for them, preventing just the scenario I described at the end of the previous paragraph.

Taking everything into consideration, I can conclude that, while the Ady Gil did make things worse by trying to move at the last moment, the Japanese vessel had both the motive and the intention to ram them. On the other hand, I also have to admit that I will not stop supporting the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society if I’ll later find out that they somehow staged this whole incident. I’ll say it was a very stupid move, considering what they could have used the Ady Gil for, but I’ll forgive them simply because they are on the right side of a good fight and this world needs many more like them.