Posted under Whaling
The Sea Shepherd vessel the Steve Irwin has now been chasing the Japanese shaling fleet for 3 days and the weather is getting worse. Rough seas, ice bergs and a howling gale are their only allies in protecting the whales from the ruthless Japanese explosive harpoons.
According to Sea Shepherd, the satellite tracking devices they had planted on the Yusshin Maru No.2 are working correctly and they hear the signals loud and clear. Either that is miss information or the trackers are on a timer system and have recently activated. The tracking tags could have been placed months earlier when the ships were in port, or when they boarded the vessel in January to deliver a letter to the Captain. I did wonder why the video of the boarding was “edited” by Sea Shepherd.
Two thousand miles from Australia, we are alone down here with eight outlaw Japanese ships. The Japanese whalers have not found our satellite locators and where and how we planted them will be undetectable although we imagine they are ripping their ships apart trying to find them. But, the signals are coming through loud and clear and on schedule. We have them and they know we have them and we don’t intend to let them go.
It’s not the first time satellite tags have been used to track the whaling fleet. After all, it’s a small step from tracking a whale to tracking a ship.
What a race! The dark blue of the water opens up to reveal half sunken bergy bits the size of houses or cars. If we hit one of those at full speed we could split our hull open and so the watch keeps their faces glued to the bridge windows, peering through the mist and spray, the sleet and driving snow, to find the ice before the ice finds us.
As we race along the Albatross and the Petrels fly like protective air squadrons beside and above us.
Meanwhile we have Australian politicians warning us that what we are doing is dangerous. Of course it’s dangerous. Racing through treacherous, freezing, waters filled with chunks of ice, threading our way around mountainous tabletop bergs, pursuing vicious armed killers that out number us and being pursued by armed Japanese Coast Guard two thousand miles from the coast of Australia. Please Stephen Smith, you may be the Foreign Minister but tell us something we don’t know.
The truth is, Mr. Smith, that we would not be down here risking our lives to protect whales if your government had simply kept its promise to do something to kick these Japanese whale poachers out of these waters.
Instead of telling me, a deep sea Captain with decades of experience, how dangerous these waters and the situation is, why doesn’t your government send down a ship to arrest these poachers for flagrant violation of an Australian Federal court order that specifically prohibits the killing of whales in the territorial waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory?
Within weeks the ice will begin to form down in the Southern Ocean and the winds will blow stronger and colder and the seas will rise into a foaming angry cauldron of stinging frozen brine. The whaling fleet will be forced to retreat back to the land of the rising sun as the sun begins to disappear in the land of the midnight sun.
Between then and now, every hour and every day Sea Shepherd (and NOT Greenpeace) prevent the harpoons from firing will be a victory and every day that the whaling ships are running is another day that whales will live that would otherwise be twisting in mortal agony at the end of a steel cable.
