Voice from the Deep!

The Sea Shepherd crew are now heading South to catch up with the Yusshin Maru No.2 hunter/killer harpoon vessel. They have a tracking device onboard her and it was only a half a days sail away.

Captain Paul Watson:

At 1200 hours, Sea Shepherd changed course and began to head due south, as the Nisshin Maru continued westward. Contact was broken off with the Japanese factory ship at 63 degrees, 42 minutes south and 124 degrees, 56 minutes east.

“We have chased the factory ship for a solid week as they ran full out, back and forth across the Southern Ocean,” said Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd.  “After a chase of 1,776 nautical miles and three confrontations, I’ve decided to go investigate what the Yusshin Maru No. 2 is doing. We still have a working tracking device on that ship, so we know that it is less than half a day away and probably up to no good.”

The whaling ships cannot kill whales without having the Nisshin Maru around to process them, and the Nisshin Maru cannot do any work without harpoon vessels to kill the whales. So knowing where the Yusshin Maru No.2 is allows the Steve Irwin to break away from the Nisshin Maru and continue to foil whaling efforts. 

The Japanese must be going nuts trying to find the tracking decive onboard their ship.

Sea Shepherd has had an independent film crew onboard, filming on behalf of Animal Planet, since the beginning of the campaign. In a statement issued today from Silver Springs, Maryland, the network said: “The events that have taken place were all captured by Animal Planet’s producers and will be presented through the documentary series WHALE WARS, slated for U.S. broadcast this fall. Animal Planet is thankful that all parties to these conflicts over the last three months to-date are safe and unharmed. The network will showcase these events with a strong journalistic lens that spotlights this global conservation issue that has several nations at odds over the practice of whaling in oceanic territories.”

That series will be one to watch.

Also, Sea Shepherd, have released a photograph and an enlargment pruporting to show a muzzle flash from onboard the Nisshin Maru.

Yusshin Maru factory ship - Look just above the website banner.

No way is that a muzzle flash.

It’s about the right place to be for a shooter but I very seriously doubt it’s a muzzle flash. I’ve fired and seen fired many weapons when I served in the UK army and that doesn’t even look like a muzzle flash. Under closer enlargment with Photoshop it looks square”ish”.

If I was the camera man who took that photograph I’d phone home right away and get some lottery tickets because that would have to be the most luckiest photo ever to be able to catch a muzzle shot with out expecting it!

Since Sea Shepherd say it “maybe” (a big maybe) a muzzle flash then they should at least put the RAW picture file available for download on their website for independant analysis. Also they are filming constantly in HD video so there should be video footage somewhere of the same area of the Nisshin Maru to coroborate the photograph.

Only time will tell.

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The Sea Shepherd report on the matter.

SYDNEY (AFP) —

The captain of a protest ship harassing Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean said he was shot in a clash Friday and his crew members pelted with flash grenades, injuring one.

The captain of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship, Paul Watson, said he was shot in his bullet-proof vest, although Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Japan had informed him only warning devices were fired.

“What hit me was a bullet, it wasn’t a flash grenade, we pulled it out of the vest,” Watson told ABC radio.

He said the crew of the Steve Irwin was throwing stink bombs at the whaling ship the Nisshin Maru when coast guards posted on the Japanese vessel responded with flash grenades.

He said he felt a thud during the confrontation and later found a bullet lodged in his kevlar vest, which he said hit with enough force to bend a badge he was wearing under the protective device and bruise his chest.

“If I wasn’t wearing the vest, it would have been pretty serious,” he said.

Watson did not detail the injuries of the crew member he said was hurt by a flash grenade.

Smith said Japan initially advised Australian officials that shots had been fired but later clarified details of the incident.

“Japanese officials have now advised the Australian embassy in Tokyo that during the incident in the Southern Ocean this afternoon, three warning balls — also known as flashbangs — had been fired,” Smith said in a statement.

“Japanese officials have advised that these devices are designed to make a loud noise but not to injure, and that no gunshots had been fired.”

The latest high-seas clash comes after Sea Shepherd activists on Monday hurled stink bombs on the Japanese whaling ship, slightly injuring three crew and coast guard members onboard, according to Japan.

The Sea Shepherd said it threw rotten butter that does not hurt anyone. Japanese officials described the substance as butyric acid, which is stinging to the eyes.

So.. what looks like a mortar being fired from the Steve Irwin was more than likely a flashbang grenade thrown from the Japanese ship and you see the smoke of it’s detonation onboard the Steve Irwin.

Dr. David Page was videotaped prying the bullet from Captain Watson’s Kevlar vest. “You have been hit by a bullet,” he said. The Kevlar vest and anti-poaching badge effectively saved Captain Watson’s life. Additional injuries were sustained by crewmembers Ashley Dunn and Ralph Lowe. Dunn, 35, from Launceston, Australia suffered a hip injury when he tried to get out of the way of the exploding grenades. Lowe, 33, from Melbourne, Australia received bruises to his back when one of the flash grenades exploded behind him.

It’s inevitable that with armed personnel that things will escalate into a shooting match at some time. That’s the reason why all the Steve Irwin crew nearly always wear bullet-proof vests when on deck at confrontations.

In the aftermath of a confrontation between the crew of the whaling ship Nisshin Maru and the crew of the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin, the Japanese public relations flacks are working overtime to get the spin right.

Here is the audio interview from ABC Australia.

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Whales everywhere and not one to kill.
Whalers run like frightened school girl.
- Sea Shepherd

Currently the Steve Irwin is shadowing the Japanese factory ship, the Nisshin Maru. They are hundreds of miles away from the rest of the fleet of hunter/killer boats. No whales have been killed since Sea Shepherd returned to protect the whales. They stopped for a while here  (Links opens in Google Earth) and are now moving Eastwards, back to the main fleet I guess.

Where is Greenpeace in all this? Their ship is in dry dock in New Zealand for an over haul. The only direct action Greenpeace took was to have their photo taken!

Captain Paul Watson:

No one appears to know what the Japanese whalers are doing – including the Japanese whalers.

Last night, after leading the Steve Irwin on a chase 750 miles to the west, the whaling fleet factory ship Nisshin Maru did a 180º turn and headed back east again.

The Yushin Maru No. 2 is hundreds of miles to the east with the rest of the whaling fleet.

But without the Nisshin Maru, there can be no whaling operations, which brings us to the twelfth day since returning to the whale sanctuary that whales have not been killed.

Meanwhile, the Japanese government has shifted into high gear public relations mode to disseminate misinformation, including asking the ambassadors of the Netherlands and Australia to call for the condemnation of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

They can lie and say anything they like really, we don’t mind, because the bottom line is that Sea Shepherd is succeeding in preventing the Japanese whalers from killing whales. They have yet to reach the halfway mark on their kill quota, and they have only about 10 days left to do so.

The media in Japan has gone into overdrive with regards to Sea Shepherd throwing stink bombs onto the decks of the Nisshin Maru.

Some of the stories in the Japanese media have been way over the top, but many believe what they read in the newspaper or see on television, and we can’t control gullibility. Still, in a strange sort of way, these stories help us to be effective.

In the last few days, Japanese media have reported that we fired over 2,000 containers of chemical acid onto the decks of the Nisshin Maru. They claim that two crew and two Coast Guardsmen were injured in the “attack.” They claim we have a missile launcher to fire the containers. They claim that we are firing corrosive acid that is damaging their ship. In the most bizarre claim, they have reported that our crew boarded the factory ship and directly squirted acid into the eyes of the whalers and attacked them on deck with broken beer bottles.

All really dramatic stuff, but all of it over-exaggerated and grossly inaccurate.

The fact is that my crew delivered two dozen VB beer bottles filled with rotten butter acid, which stinks terribly but is less corrosive than orange juice (citric acid). The crew also delivered two dozen paper packets of hydroxy propyl methyl cellulose. This is a non-toxic food grade product that is used to coat pills, making them easier to swallow. It is very slippery in water.

The strategy behind this is to make conditions on deck uncomfortable for processing dead whales. The decks stink and it is difficult to move around. I personally witnessed the impact of every container, and not one container landed in close proximity to any person on the Japanese ship. All containers were thrown by hand. There was no missile launcher.

No Sea Shepherd crew members boarded the Nisshin Maru, and there was no hand-to-hand fighting or crew members squirting anything into the eyes of any of the Japanese crew. The four armed Japanese Coast Guard officers would certainly have some explaining to do if we had boarded the ship and they had not apprehended anyone.

In all of the video footage distributed by the Institute for Cetacean (marketing & product development) Research, there is no video shown of any injuries. If there were indeed injuries, the video would be there for sure – this video footage does not exist, because the injuries were fabricated. It’s all just spin-doctoring in an attempt to make the public feel sympathy for whale killers.

Although looking at the video from the Japanese side of the encounter you can clearly see a failed attempt at an improvised mortar launch from the Steve Irwin. See the video here and look at around the 28 second mark.. You can clearly see a device being fired from the Steve Irwin. I think this is a poor decision to make on behalf of the captain and crew and could escalate the conflict into an armed one. The Japanese Coast Guard could try and justify firing back with small arms.

Mortar fired at 0:28 seconds… ?

The Japanese government are trying a different tactic to get Sea Shepherd to stop interfering with the illegal whale hunting

The Manichi Daily News reports:

The Japan Coast Guard (JCG) has launched an investigation into an attack by members of the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd on a Japanese research whaling vessel on Monday, officials said.

The JCG is considering forming a case against the members involved for forcible obstruction of business and inflicting bodily injury. JCG officers will cooperate with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in identifying those involved.

The JCG and the MPD will ask the Dutch government through the Foreign Ministry to cooperate in their investigations into the incident because the Steve Irwin, the vessel carrying the activists, is registered in the Netherlands.

What utter drivel!!! The Dutch government should reply with an order for the Japanese to obey the Australian Federal Court ruling forbidding the hunting of whales to continue.

The pirate image of Sea Shepherd works well at scaring the hell out of the Japanese, and when the whalers, sealers, and shark finners begin to believe their own exaggerations about them, it works in their favor.

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Just came across this on the web… sung by Bindi Irwin, Steve Irwin’s little daughter.

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