In the past blogs I have written about PETA and gave a brief introduction into SSCS or commonly known as “Whale Wars” the TV show on the History Channel, and on the AFL which is an extremist group that will stop at nothing to “Save” animals. This blog post however is going to focus on SSCS or Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and their tactics on saving marine ecosystems.
The SSCS mission statement is “Established in 1977, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization. Our mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world's oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species. Sea Shepherd uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately-balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their survival for future generations” (Society, 2011) . Now I don’t know about you but the part that states “…take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities…” (Society, 2011) to me reads that they will do anything that they can to disrupt anyone who gets in their way of saving marine life. The rules and laws don’t seem to apply to them as much as they do to anyone else. They believe that they are in the right no matter what illegal act they commit and it’s pathetic.
In the show “Whale Wars” Captain Paul Watson blindly sails his crew down to the southern ocean to hunt for Japanese whaler ships and disrupt the Japanese from conducting legal activities by harvesting a number of whales that is legal for research. Now, with this argument I am not saying that the Japanese are harvesting over or under the number of whales legally allowed because I am not arguing that, but I will assume that the Japanese fleet is keeping within the quota of whales allotted to them each year because I feel that international authorities would take over and shut the whaling fleet down if they were not following the law. With this said, the Captain and leader of the SSCS still takes action. But I thought that they weren’t supposed to take action if it wasn’t illegal right? I mean it’s stated in their mission statement. I guess those are more of guidelines than actual rules. If you have seen the show you have seen the activists do some amazingly bold acts against the Japanese Fleet. They have thrown stink bombs, shot projectiles out of an air cannon, and tried multiple times to prop-foul, or disable the prop of the opposing ships. These are acts that I would feel are acts of violence and pirating toward my vessel if I was Captain of one those ships.
I would like to use the example to try and understand what I feel is happening in the sea. This example is only a generalized version of what is happening. So imagine you are driving down the freeway looking for your favorite steakhouse. View your car is a ship, the freeway is the ocean, and the juicy steak you are about to order are the whales. Bare with me this example is just to put it into terms that people may be more familiar with. So you are cruising down the freeway minding your own business when a black truck with big skull and crossbones painted on the side rolls up next to you with a number of people with masks on, inside the passenger compartment and in the bed of the truck. All of a sudden the start hurling objects at your car and try and force you to get over by ramming you. Now are you going to pull over and see what they want? No, because chances are, you think that they are nuts, Right? You are going to do whatever you can to get away from them and save yourself and hopefully you can grab your cell phone and call the police to arrest the idiot in the truck. So say the cops come pull the people over and arrest them. You finally feel safe right, even though you were scared for your life and your car has been vandalized and is barely drivable? This was all because you wanted to go do something perfectly legal and get your steak. Now I know it might be a stretch but apply this to how the Sea Shepherds tactics aren’t any different on the ocean. They throw objects onto the deck of the other ship along with ramming them and firing projectiles out of cannons at the ship trying to get them to stop legally whaling. However, the Japanese do not have the cops to take care of the problem so they take care of it on their own accord.
If someone were to do that to me on the freeway they better be prepared for quick justice because I would feel that my safety is in jeopardy and would take action on them, whether it would be ramming them back or whatever I would have to do to make them stop. I have the intention of being able to go home at the end of the night whether they do or not. Some may say that this is a harsh approach to the situation but I feel that the Japanese and I are on the same side. They will make sure that they get their ship home and we saw that when one of the Japanese vessels ran over the Ady Gil, a Sea Shepherd vessel, in one of the episodes. This was justified in my eyes, since the Sea Shepherds are the ones taking the illegal actions by threatening the safety of the crew members on board the ship.
How is the safety of the crew members being jeopardized by the Sea Shepherds, I can see someone asking? That’s easy because when you hurl a glass bottle at someone or shoot an air cannon that has hundreds of foot pounds of force behind it, the objects have the potential to critically injure or kill someone. I found this on CBS News website “Berry was shot in the face, looking down the barrel of a home-built contraption called a spud gun. When it fired a frog, it blinded him. "If it would've been anything else it would've killed me," he says. Spud guns fire potatoes like light artillery” (Holguin, 2003) . Now this is just a homemade spud gun that uses an accelerant to fire the weapon, an air cannon is the same principle but uses compressed gas to fire. This link is a YOUTUBE video of the Sea Shepherds firing such a weapon at the Japanese. http://youtu.be/nYkeH32maDo This is illegal because you are firing a WEAPON off of a moving vehicle at a person or vessel which would constitute me, if were involved to fire a weapon back at you in self defense.
I believe that I have adequately shown that the logic that these people think is right and lawful is actually not. There is still more evidence that can be seen on the web about how the Captain and leader of the SSCS builds his own world that has no regulations or needs to follow any law except his own. They use tactics that I feel would constitute the Japanese taking lethal action against the Sea Shepherds. So are we handing criminals the funds necessary to keep up their illegal acts to stop legal acts? These additional links are to prove my point even further and will show on video that Captain Watson has his own reality that he works under.
Additional Links
Holguin, J. (2003, May 8). Jaime Holguin. Retrieved April 2011, from CBSNews.com: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/08/eveningnews/main552978.shtml
Society, S. S. (2011). Who We Are. Retrieved Febuary 2011, from Sea Shepherd Conservation Society: http://www.seashepherd.org/who-we-are/
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