Japanese Whaler Rams SSCS Ady Gil (ex-Earthrace)

Post Reply New Topic

I just watched it once. The Sea Shepherds are obnoxious nuisances at best and pirates at worst. They have no legal authority to do the things they do. Also on the High Seas all resources or open for harvesting or exploitation. That includes the flesh of whales. The Sea Nuisances do not own the whales and they have no right to interfere with hunting or harvesting of these beasts.

Having said that, I am not fond of whale hunting, but I see no principled basis for any private party to interfere with whale hunting. Last I knew, the whales have not asked humans for protection.

ruveyn

Of course they can't, but if they could, I bet the whales of the world would be saying something along the lines of "dear apes, would you mind awfully staying on dry land? we don't think this is working out..."

The Ady Gil has sunk while being towed to port. One person was asleep when it was "rammed", and may have broken bones. I think Ady Gil crew claim to have video filmed on board, of the ramming. They are seeking charges to be laid, including attempted murder.

Right. If whales could talk they would complain. And if my grandma had testicles she would be my grandpa.

ruveyn

Of course, it was totally not the anti-whalers fault for positioning themselves in such a place where they were putting themselves in harms way, right?

I, too, am sick and tired of the anti-whaler's rhetoric. It's not like the whalers would have cried to the media if their ship had been rammed by an anti-whaler ship.

Let us just keep things going...

Like stop eating whale meat yeah and ignore all the calls around us...

Except, probably, donating money to Haitians? And our wonderful website, too.

Had the collision occurred while the Ady Gil was making a pass to throw butyric acid or towing a prop-fouler, I'd say you have a point. The problem here is that the video shows they stopped far away from the nearest whaling ship and out of its line of travel, which isn't exactly in harms way. Based on the footage of the incident, it looks like the crew of the Shonan Maru 2 bear most of the responsibility for the incident (they approached the idling speedboat and made a sudden turn towards it immediately before the collision). Any culpability on the part of the speedboat's crew will depend on when they realized they were in danger, what actions they attempted to avoid a collision once they realized this, and what sort of evasive maneuvers the Ady Gil was capable of performing (the speedboat was clearly fast, the world circumnavigation record is a testament to this, but one thing that's popped up in some of the discussion I've seen is the trimaran's long, slender hull design meant that it couldn't turn as quickly as you might expect for a boat of it's size and tonnage).Now, the whalers might argue that the Ady Gil's simple presence posed a threat (based on previous harrassment). I'm not sure how that defense will fly with any of the investigative bodies currently looking into the crash; it will depend on the how the severity of the collision and the risk to both crews it entailed is weighted against the danger posed by the Sea Shepherd's harassment tactics.



You're kidding, right? The ICR is as bad with overblown rhetoric as Watson is (just go to their website and read some of their press releases). If the collision had involved the Steve Irwin instead of the Shonan Maru 2 and a whaling speedboat instead of the Ady Gil. they'd be calling for the immediate execution of the entire Sea Shepherd crew for terrorism and piracy.

How sad, I hope the Japanese can have artificial whale meat...

Which whale population? The research on sperm whales I have read doesn't involve killing them. If you want to know about their migration routes, you don't kill them. If you want to know about their health, you can take tissue samples without killing them. Out of all the research you could do on whales or even whale populations, very little of it makes it necessary to kill them, and no agency that funds scientific research would finance a fleet of ships for that purpose.

I just looked at the first 20 papers that showed up on a scientific data base when I used the search word "whales" and that are concerned with research on extant species of cetaceans. I found one that got its data through Japanese whaling, and that doesn't have anything to do with the biology of whales. Here is the abstract:

It's a purely procedural paper. It compares a few different ways to preserve whale sperm. It doesn't tell you anything about whales. I count that as 0 out of 20 for contributions to knowledge about whales from Japanese whaling. If this is all a research programme, then the funding body isn't getting value for money.

On further reading, the Japanese are allowed to take 1200 a year of the smaller whales.

They do eat them.

It was what it took to get a worldwide deal, an agreement was made, so stick to it.

Hunting whales for oil has ended, that was the point, and it worked.

Those who complain about dolphins taken as by catch while fishing tuna are on the wrong side, protect the tuna. Over fishing is the problem.

We have people who object to all meat eating, and to wearing leather and fur. Hunting of any kind makes them angry. They also object to killing people who have been convicted of killing lots of people. Even drinking milk has lead to autism protests.

Protest is one thing, taking action another.

In this case the helm did the right thing, seeing a boat ahead crossing from starboard to port, they turned to starboard to pass behind the boat. That it stopped, is its own fault.

The Law of the Sea supports lawful use by all, obstructing navigation is not a lawful use.

Ships do not turn or stop very fast.

It is the same as someone who does not like speeders running out on the Interstate, a car changes lanes to avoid hitting them, but then they stop, and get hit. Cars do not change course that fast.

Death by misadventure covers it.

I look forward to what the insurance company will say about the Ady Gil, I don't think they will pay.

They won't pay but they will say, 'good job, at least you saved the day (by not catching the whales).

I was pointing out that it is implausible that the Japanese whaling programme is motivated by science. That they eat the whales doesn't make it any more scientific.

Now the collision:

That is not what I see on the two videos. The one taken from the Shonan Maru 2 doesn't give much information about its heading. The other video does. At the beginning of the video taken from the Bob Barker the Japanese vessel turns clearly to starboard, towards the Ady Gil. It was that turn by the Japanese that brought the two vessels close enough for a collision. Just before the collision, the Shonan Maru 2 starts to turn to port again, across the bow of the Ady Gil, not trying to pass behind. At the last moment the Ady Gil starts moving a bit faster. Looks like without that the Shonan Maru would have cut in front of the Ady Gil so closely that the Ady Gil would have hit the Shonan Maru's side unless she managed to reverse very quickly. That wouldn't have damaged the Shonan Maru and would have damaged the Ady Gil, though less severely. But then that small acceleration by the Ady Gil was enough to get her right under the bow.

Guessing at intentions I would say the Japanese helmsman was trying to get the Ady Gil in range of the water cannons, but wasn't trying to sink her. If you want to claim the helm of the Ady Gil intended the collision you have to claim he/she didn't care about the life of the crew below. One possibility I have not yet seen mentioned is that the helm of the Ady Gil stumbled against the controls while under the water cannon. Whatever may have happened before the events in the video, this is not the Ady Gil approaching a slower moving vessel and quickly zooming under her bows before she can turn to avoid the collision.


Depends on both size and design. The Shonan Maru 2 looks like a harpoon boat, and those are built to be fast and easy to turn for their size. On the video the Shonan Maru 2 does turn fairly quickly, but doesn't demonstrate an ability to turn so quickly that the helm should ever have brought her that close to the Ady Gil. Remember that the initial turn towards a collision course was made by the Shonan Maru 2.

No --- I think it's more of that the Japanese' customs really make them think, 'we'd been eating whale meat all along so why shouldn't we now?' Lol

well, I don't know from steering ships, but I've spent decades in motor boats.
If it's a high-speed boat, it's also a lot more maneuverable than the ship. The boat is able to (and probably do) run rings around a ship. If they had really wanted to avoid being hit, they could have done so.

Whether they wanted to be environmental martyrs, or just plain stupid, we may never know...

Last edited by pakled on 21 Jan 2010, 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Environmental martyrs?

From what I know, green politics include helping to keep our ecological diversity as well as achieving non-violence in world peace. I do not think these martyrs really help the cause of many environmentalists like the Greens...

Resurrecting an old thread with some new news. Maritime New Zealand has released its report on the collision, available in pdf format here. It's an interesting read.