You’ve all undoubtedly seen the news reports about the Sea Shepherd’s ship, the Ady Gil, colliding with the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru No. 2. Andrew Bartlett has a post on the issue. His opening paragraph contains the following claim:
The news that a vessel of the Japanese whaling fleet has deliberately rammed and sunk a small vessel of the Sea Shepherd fleet in the open ocean will lift this issue to a whole new level. It could well lead to serious harm to diplomatic and other relations between Australia and Japan.
Whether the collision consisted of deliberate ramming or not is, of course, the question, There are two pieces of video footage, one shot from the Shonen Maru 2, and one from another Sea Shepherd vessel, which shed some light on this.
The first piece of video shows the view from the Shonen Maru:
The second shows the view from the second Sea Shepherd ship, the Bob Barker:
The first thing I’d note is that both captains were irresponsible in the extreme playing chicken in the Southern Ocean. The Ady Gil was the far more manoeuverable vessel; with a 13 ton displacement and twin 540 horsepower sterndrives, that thing can accelerate surprisingly quickly and can turn in its own length, and has a top speed much higher that of the Shonen Maru. So the only reason that the Ady Gil was in the firing line is because the captain deliberately put it there – it could have been taken out of the firing line virtually any time up until the last few seconds before collision. That’s sufficient grounds to take the keys off the Ady Gil‘s skipper, in my view.
However, in the last few seconds before the collision, the videos show three things happening, the relative timing of which you can see in this split-screen version of the two videos:
The first is that the Shonen Maru appears to turn to starboard (clockwise), towards the Ady Gil. It’s the Shonen Maru’s primary responsibility to avoid the collision, as explained on page 13 of the (internationally recognized) rules on avoiding collisions at sea, and as far as I can tell it should have done so by turning to port. Whether this was an attempt to deliberately ram the Andy Gil is unclear; it might just represent an attempt to buzz. At a minimum, it appears to represent something that should result in the skipper of that ship having his keys taken off him.
The next thing that happens is that the Ady Gil, which had been stationary, engages its motors and accelerates directly forwards. According to the regulations, the “stand-on vessel” should “keep her course and speed”. However, the regulations also state “When, from any cause, the vessel required to keep her course and speed finds herself so close that collision cannot be avoided by the action of the give-way vessel alone, she shall take such action as will best aid to avoid collision.” The ultimate outcome makes it clear that the actions of the Ady Gil didn’t exactly aid it in avoiding collision; on first glance, either reversing or turning to starboard would appear to have been better options. Whether the decision to accelerate is indeed considered a collision avoidance attempt, whether it was a reasonable attempt to do so in the split seconds left to avoid collision, and whether evasive action should have been taken earlier, will undoubtedly receive more scrutiny.
The next thing that happens is the collision, at which point the Shonen Maru turns violently to port, the evasive action they should have taken earlier.
Finally, the laws of the sea were never designed to cope with ships deliberately impeding each other’s progress for political purposes. The Southern Ocean is far too dangerous a place to be playing games. Both Sea Shepherd and the ICR were taking stupid risks, and their actions should be made explicitly illegal.
UPDATE: In comments, another video has emerged. This one shows fairly clearly that the Shonen Maru made a fairly hard turn towards the Ady Gil (on which the crew were lazing about), one that doesn’t seem to me to be in any way a plausible result of trying to maintain a course in a rough sea (it wasn’t particularly rough, for that matter). The Shonen Maru‘s skipper has a lot of explaining to do.
Robert,
The interesting point in the split screen is (IMHO) at around 14 seconds, when the Shonen Maru turned towards the Ady Gil. The skipper of the Ady may well have been unsighted by the water spray from the high pressure hose, meaning that he (or she) would not have been in a position to take appropriate action to avoid a collision as he (or she) would not have known that a collision was on the cards. If so, the fault clearly lies with the Shonen Maru’s captain.
I agree they were both taking risks, though. The question is whether those risks were justified and one of the skippers had an agenda of doing more than just trying to make a political point.
“The Southern Ocean is far too dangerous a place to be playing games. Both Sea Shepherd and the ICR were taking stupid risks, and their actions should be made explicitly illegal.”
Could not be better said. Hopefully some sanity will prevail in the face of the media scrum for this story.
The question in my mind is how a whaling vessel could possibly ram a speedboat without that speedboat wanting it to happen?
I mean even if the whaler had every intention of ramming, surely a speed boat could keep out of the way – poking its tongue cheekily as it did so?
I am sure that the Japanese media will portray it as the irresponsible Sea Shepherd ‘playing chicken’, and those sympathetic to SS will portray it as those ‘wicked whalers’ having their way with a totally innocent speedboat.
Neither portrayal, of course, will do anything more than entrench the positions on both sides.
As to what really happened, there has been plenty of discussion of videos on other boards, with people claiming the same videos validate polar opposite conclusions. eg side 1: the Japanese ship deliberately veered toward the speedboat. Side 2: the Japanese ship veered to miss the speedboat while the speedboat was moving, but the speedboat stopped dead to then ensure a collision.
There is no “both” sides to this.
The Japanese are going about their business.
The Sea Shepherd, who have serious form when it comes to sinking ships, are there to make trouble.
Looks like they got some!
We need to call independent witnesses.
Could we have some whales come forward please?
As one who earned his living on deep water for a few years (and this included rule-of-the-road fun as a matter of routine), I am qualified to comment on this, with caveats.
What do the regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at sea say?
OK. Does a risk of collision exist?
Yes. Most definitely. Please note 7.d.i & ii. Note that the bearing of black vessel is moving RIGHT at the start (2nd video): ie, it is being overtaken by Shonan Maru BUT the range is closing rapidly. The black vessel is underway and making way. She is not stopped. We’ll get back to this.
Now look at Vid 1 from the SS second vessel (vid 1): Shonan Maru is behaving typically of a small vessel in a seaway where the vessel is steaming in to it, she is yawing about her course and the helmsman therefore has to keep working the helm to keep her on course.
She defintely alters to starboard too late to avoid collision.
However, who is responsible for the close quarters situation here?
The black vessel is. She is interfering with the Japanese, who are lawfully engaged in fisheries activites on the high seas.
Here, both captains can be criticised. Neither took positive action in ample time to avoid collision.
Again, both can be criticised here
We do not need to consider part f i to iii
The Black vessel’s owners will make their case on Rule 15. They will claim that Shonan Maru did not give way in a crossing situation. However, there’s a real twist to this sorry piece of stupidity, below)
Again, the Captain of the black vessel will make a case based also on Rule 16, that Shonan Maru did not take ‘early and substantial action’ to keep clear in this ‘crossing situation’.
But hang on a minute. The black vessel DID NOT obey Rule 17.1. She DID NOT keep her course and speed. So, do we actually have a crossing situation? Shonan Maru now has a case to say ‘no’.
Again, the black vessel, if her captain thought her in a crossing situation, DID NOT obey this regulation.
And again, the black vessel did not do this.
Caveat – this is open. The black vessel may or may not have altered to port just before impact.
(
This means that [b]IF [/b]the Shonan Maru was the give way vessel, she should have given way.
Now we get to the really interesting bit. On the video from Shonan maru (Vid 2), look at the black vessel.
How did she get there? Everything depends on this question.
How did the black vessel get to her position on the starboard bow of Shonan Maru?
Caveat: Assumption. The video does not show how the black vessel obtained her position – but Shonan Maru is not doing more that 10-12 knots, not yawing like that into a head sea.
IF the black vessel obtained her position by overtaking Shonan Maru, then most of the above is moot, because Rule 13 applies:
Note this rule very carefully. IF the black vessel overtook Shonan Maru, then [i]she is completely at fault for this collision (part d).
You cannot convert an overtaking situation into a crossing situation.
Looking at the wake of the black vessel, she is underway, making way, and I believe there is a strong chance she was the overtaking vessel.
It is also obvious that her captain was deliberately not obeying COLREGs – indeed he deliberately created the close quarters situation that led to the collision. The Japanese captain (who will be facing a formal investigation into the collision) does appear to have been following COLREGs.
I hope this goes to an Admiralty Court. It could establish some useful precedents in Admiralty Law. IMO will be following this closely.
MarkL
Canberra
Yikes! Sorry about the attenuation!
PIMF.
MarkL
Declaration of Interest: I am a financial suppoerter of the Sea Shepherd and support its broader work. I oppose whaling.
However one attributes proximate cause for this collision, the ICR is clearly to blame. It has no legitimate business to transact in the SOPuthern Ocean and is harvesting in contravention of treaties. It’s presense is a violation of Australian soverignty. As its activities are criminal, any injury occasioned by the activity hwoever caused is also felonious.
There can be no doubt that if Australia enforced its rights the Japanese ocean miners would not be there and this collision could not have happened.
There’s also no room to doubt that the skipper of the ICR vessel wanted this collision. He changed his bearing in the direction of the Ady Gil and before during and after the collision continued to pound it with high pressure water.
Now personally, I regard the actions of the skipper of the Ady Gil as foolhardy at best. Clearly, he had the resources to avoid a collision if he had been determined to do so. Doubtless he thought the ICR vessel would turn and hand his crew a psychological victory, and when it became clear that the ICR skipper meant harm, it was too late to evade. The Ady Gil’s mission was to harass the whalers not get his vessel sunk. So the ocean miners have got the best of the encounter, which is disappointing. Courage is all very well, but discretion was also called for and it wasn’t shown here.
SATP, if a truck driver veers and runs over a pedestrian in the course of a job, does that constitute “going about their business”?
Robert Merkel, to clarify, the Sea Shepherd are an international pirate organisation.
They are there purely to start trouble & cause a ruckus. They have never done anything else.
They are an international pariah organisation, limited in the number of international jurisdictions in which they may safely enter.
It is to Australia’s shame that we allow such a disgusting bunch of vermin to enter our waters.
They get what they deserve.
Passion and fool hardy courage is required when fighting a high powered opposition. You cannot play chicken and run. You play chicken and win. It’s (thankfully) only the loss of a boat. Well met Any Gil. Whaling and all other forms of human activity that desecrate the natural world need to be checked and new measures of compassionate and sustainable human activities must be adopted. It’s a big picture and a long struggle. Fight on!
What you mean Robert, is if a truck is going about its lawful business, and a pedestrian, brandishing a “no trucks” poster, jumps in front of it, who is to blame?
Hmm… not hard to work out.
Both sides would seem to deserve each other.
If the truck deliberately veers towards the guy holding the no trucks poster and runs them down, it’s a criminal offence, SATP.
So Steve at the Pub. You have a child and that child of yours has unusual characteristics. That child goes to school and is bullied by other bigger kids who find his character flawed and flimsy. Now your kid is just trying to hold their line. Do the bullies have the right to persecute your kid? Does your kid have a right to their position? Should your kid give up, take their bat and go home and hide? btw SATP…Any Gil didn’t jump out. It sat still to port.
First time I’ve seen a “still” boat churning foam from the rear.
Validity or otherwise of their capers, the smaller boat was in the wrong. Considering the size of the ship they took on, they had a lucky escape.
Me, I’m glad to see those who cause violence to be the ones to suffer from it.
All misfortune to the sea shepherd mob.
Does anyone know where the case would go, if someone died as a result?
Who has jurisdiction over those waters?
Who decides right and wrong?
More to the point Robert, what if a truck driver involved in trafficking in harvested organs from third world children runs afoul of some people who want to disrupt the trade and then veers into a protester.
Shouldn’t the citizens consider boycotting Japanese stuff?!!? This is dangerous stuff and Julia Gillard was just mentioning that safety was a major concern in these isolated waters only the day before on the 7pm project(I think?!!?)!
The Sea Shepherd Press release includes a photo showing a large bow wave on the Shonan Maru 2 as it apparently started up at the Ady Gil, whose crew are standing on the back deck and no-one is in the cockpit.
SSCS and the Japanese boats had come to halt until the Japanese vessel charged the Ady Gil it seems.
According to those who were actually there.
21 Australians among the 77 from 16 countries on SSCS boats.
Pointless and expensive industrial exploitation of natural biological resources and diversity (the web of life within which all creatures survive on planet earth), and lawful activity in a contemporary legal sense, are ultimately incompatible.
SSCS have recognised that for a while, and this is the basis of their campaigns mostly. Protecting the Galapogas Is from illegal poachers amongst their many activities. Who else would do that?
Industrial scale hunting of whales for food, industry or anything other than ‘scientific purposes’ is illegal I believe, according the IWC, which Japan is a party too, if at the same time undermining the whole thing.
This is a fantastic metaphor for the whole whaling situation really:
A stupid activity that could easily be avoided by both sides, and yet rather focussing on compromise, they prefer to focus on the grand-standing that plays well to their base; ignoring the position of the other party to the detriment of everyone involved.
My reading of those videos is that the Ady Gil was travelling alongside the Shonan Maru on its starboard side (and far too close) being plied with water cannon. It then accelerated ahead of the Shonan Maru and turned hard port, directly in front of the bows of the oncoming Japanese vessel. It slowed, playing chicken, and then accelerated as the Shonan Maru approached. The Japanese skipper tried to turn to port to avoid collision, but the Ady Gil was too close and the Shonan Maru was unable to steer clear of the Sea Shepherd trimaran. A collision ensued and the Ady Gil was cut through mid-way through its bows.
Either the skipper of the Ady Gil was incompetent to drive anything other than a child’s tricycle, or the whole thing was deliberately set up by the Sea Shepherd. My money’s on the latter.
I’m not sure what you’re claiming Patrickg?
What are you proposing?
I hadn’t seen the footage yet, so thanks for an excellent run-down on this, Robert. I agree with the last sentence, as well as patrickg’s comments @ 19.
Odd, too, that the Sea Shepherd camera crew seem to think the whole thing’s a huge joke.
SATP – get back to the kitchen, please – mine’s a whaleburger!
Seriously: there’s no need to kill whales for real research any more, and only a tiny minority of Japanese are particularly interested in eating them. And it’s not an old tradition, having been stimulated largely by the US after WWII. These days, the industry just exists for the sake of existing, doing massive damage to whales and the international reputation of Japan in the process. At the political level, negotiation should probably go along the lines of persuading the Japanese government that maintenance of national pride/”face” rests with cessation of whaling asap.
And that in the meantime, pirates who raid our waters simply must have their vessels impounded and be prosecuted. As with any inadequacy of policing, if the RAN don’t do this, it temps worthy vigilantes such as Sea Shepherd to take matters into their own hands, maybe to excess.
The telling thing for me is that the Shonan Maru kept the water canon on the Ady Gil as the situation escalated, and even after the collision. Doesn’t seem like the behaviour of a vessel trying to avoid a collision to me.
Another point is that, according to the Japanese, the Sea Shepherd vessels had been trying to disable the whaling ship and escort by fouling their propellers and rudders with ropes and grappling irons. If that’s so (I don’t believe the Sea Shepherd has disputed it), I think the Japanese were entitled to respond not just with water cannons, but lethal force. I wonder what the Law of the Sea has to say about such attacks.
Fran @ 16:
“More to the point Robert, what if a truck driver involved in trafficking in harvested organs from third world children runs afoul of some people who want to disrupt the trade and then veers into a protester.”
I didn’t realise that japanese whalers where harvesting organs from third world children as well? OMG!?! WHY USE NOBODY STOPPING THEM?
To contend that whaling is on par with harvesting human organs from third world children, you must by extension believe that eating other forms of meat is also on par with harvesting human organs from third world children. You may very well believe this, but I think you’ll find it difficult to convince the rest of the population.
Position decleration:
Killing endangered animals = Bad.
Sustainable harvesting = Not so bad.
Current Japanese whaling practises: As best I understand it, bad.
Whaling = Not necessarily bad if quotas are sustainable and properly enforced. Senseless hyperbole implying that people who don’t agree with my position are baby killers = Self-marginalising and damaging to the cause.
Typo alert
USE should read IS
*sheepish*
I’m with SATP on that. It seems to me the real issue ignored in this is whether it’s legitimate to wander around hassling other vehicles for a living all day every day, often dangerously. The only reason this is considered acceptable is that Australians happen to like whales (unlike many of the far rarer species of sea animals which I could buy at Victoria Market any day of the week to eat), unlike the Japanese who evidently find them tasty. If a bunch of Hindus started spending all day everyday hassling farmers of cows, no-one would have the slightest bit of sympathy for them if their vehicle had an accident with some else’s in dubious conditions, or if I started hassling, say, Sydney Ferries all day everyday because I don’t like them for one reason or another, no doubt the police come an arrest me for it.
Conrad, the Japanese don’t find them tasty, and there’s apparently little commercial market for the whale meat.
The subtext here (which strangely never gets mentioned by Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd) is that Japan keeps up its whaling program to avoid pressure being put on its other fishing activities, many of which are highly environmentally destructive. See this earlier post.
How do these Sea Shepherd guys know where to find the Japanese? The Southern Ocean is very big and it is not as though the whales are all in the one spot.
Fran what I’m saying is that, rather than devoting time to activities that could actually reduce whaling, Sea Shepherd et al spend their time doing things that are guaranteed to produce _the exact opposite result_. Namely: Pissing off the Japanese, endangering themselves and others, ignoring the actual pr issues in the country doing the whaling and the politics of international relations (which this surely is) & national identity and culture, instead choosing to waste their time on expensive, aggressive, dangerous, grandstanding and ineffectual activities that play very well with people that already want whaling stopped (to see a similar strategy, see Abbott, Tony).
I’m not letting the Japanese off the hook here; they are doing exactly the same thing from the other side, but I given your comments I think it’s clear where your sympathies lie.
Big swinging dicks on both boats, I think. However, the Japanese were probably more in the wrong than the Sea Shepherd people. (But not by much.)
My sympathies are very much with the Sea Shepherds, but running the boat forward just before the collision was pretty fucking stupid.
As I noted later in my post and comments, whilst argument will continue about the immediate matter of who bears how much responsibility for the specific collision, I think there are other potentially quite significant issues which will come out of this.
As has already become obvious, people looking at exactly the same footage appear to be reaching completely different conclusions about who did what – perhaps not surprisingly usually coming to a view which tends to reflect their pre-existing view on the whaling issue and/or on the Sea Shepherd folk. I believe it’s called ‘confirmation bias’ – Graham Young did a post aimed at calling out the media on this, although in my view I think he did just as good a job of displaying his own (I’m not biased myself, of course). The point being – in the absence of some legally definitive Court case brought by one side or the other regarding damages – I suspect the ‘issue’ of who rammed who and whether it was deliberate will never be agreed on/resolved. (Personally, I can’t see how anyone could look at those videos – especially the second one – and still hold a view that this wasn’t a deliberate or at ‘best’ recklessly indifferent act by the whaling vessel, but I can’t see the point arguing about it when people clearly aren’t going to agree). This will just become – has already become – another component which both sides will try to use in their ongoing PR/propaganda battle, which is just as significant a contest as their actual physical manoeuverings on the high seas.
I think the potentially much larger issue will be the consequences that will flow from the situation having now been ramped up to this level – including the strong antagonism about whaling held by a significant majority of the Australian public. I am sure that a key part of why the Sea Shepherd folks have got such strong public sympathy – even though many still disagree or uneasy about their tactics – is because they are seen as standing up to the ‘bad guys’, whilst our government (both past and present) have made lots of noises reinforcing public opposition/antagonism/disgust at whaling but have done nothing concrete about it.
Existing international conventions and agreements have also been blatantly flouted for years with impunity (as often occurs of course). Unfortunately, even if it is the case that there’s not much else of practical use our government can do (beyond the usual diplomatic channels, which are of even less use than international law), both major parties have created an expectation that they can and will take ‘strong action’. When they then don’t, people will look to and support someone who will – even if they are seen by some as breaking some rules/laws in the process, this is likely to be seen as more forgivable/acceptable because they are confronting a (larger) adversary who has been doing plenty of blatant rule/law flouting of their own for a number of years (e.g. the laughable ‘scientific’ whaling scam).
It’s hard to see how things won’t now become even more heated, and I’m not sure what mechanism is available to turn the temperature down. I don’t know where things will go from here – or who is likely to be happier when the dust settles (if anyone) – but I’m not sure anyone else can be sure either, which is not an ideal state of affairs.
Perhaps it will all just quickly fade into being tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappers (or whatever the 21st century version of that expression is) like most issues do.
Andrew, I take your point, but I also can’t see how an 80-foot, 13-tonne, 45-knot-capable speedboat with twin sterndrives (which gives it additional low-speed maneuverability compared to a ship with rudders) couldn’t get itself out of the way of a lumbering 1000-ton ship probably capable of little more than 20 knots unless it wasn’t making any serious effort to.
As for the diplomatic consequences, there are three issues. Firstly, the Ada Gil is a New Zealand registered vessel. Second, I could be wrong, but I don’t think either NZ or Japan recognizes our economic zone claim.
The second is, as I’m sure you’re all too well aware, both major parties bleat about whaling in public but have no intention of pushing the Japanese too hard on it.
The third is that nobody was injured or killed (obviously, I’m very thankful for this, but it’s worth considering the politics if such a tragedy had occurred). If somebody had, I’d think the popular outrage might have real legs. Without it, my guess is that the fuss will die down fairly quickly, particularly as I doubt that either the Australian or New Zealand governments will want to keep the issue in the spotlight.
MarkL: assuming it’s a crossing situation, might the captain of the Ada Gil argue that they maintained their course and speed until it became obvious that doing so would have resulted in a collision, and that their subsequent maneuvers were a failed attempt to avoid such a collision.
While I can understand a Sea Shepherd boat attempting to play chicken with a whaling vessel, the idea that they’d deliberately orchestrate a collision given the inevitable outcome of such a collision – little damage to the whaling vessel, severe damage and very substantial risks to the crew of the Ada Gil.
As to the actions of the Shonen Maru‘s captain , surely this is the key point:
Putting aside the question of whether the apparent movement to starboard was deliberate or merely the result of attempting to maintain the course in a rolling sea, surely they’ve violated this rule rather blatantly?
I don’t beleive the Shonen Maru did turn to starboard (right) before striking the Andy Gil. Early footage of the video from the Shonem Maru shows the Bob Barker also crossing the Shonen Maru’s bows roughly parallel to the couse of the Andy Gil. This provides context to footage from the Bob Barker. Due to the Bob Barker’s motion, the Andy Gil appears stopped and the Shonen Maru appears to be veering to starboard towards the Andy Gil. It’s an optical illusion. As its wake shows, the AG accelerated forward immediately before the collision. I reckon it’s a set up.
Robert,
Not being a sea lawyer I have no real ability to cover that area well and just have to assume that MarkL has it right – it certainly looks like a good analysis. That said, if one had an agenda merely to annoy and the other wanted to ram another vessel then at the very least the moral responsibility lies with the latter.
As MarkL notes it would be an interesting legal case if it ever gets a proper hearing.
Hrgh@28
I was merely drawing an an analogy that underlines that these people were not engaged in business that most find legitimate. Truck driver mostly are legitimate in what they carry. An anti-truck protester protesting against something not held widely to be ethically objectionable and illegal in most places does not stand in the same relation as someone who is protesting something that is illegal and ethically objectionable in the eyes of most.
Once upon a time, poor children were made the victims of medical experiments. In Egypt, once upon a time, crops were air sprayed and children were tested for poisoning. These days we’d think that appalling and if someone buzzed one fo the aircraft with a motorised hangglider we’d probably blame the sprayer if we commented.
For the record: I don’t agree that eating whale meat is as ethically objectionable as harvesting the organs of third world children. It’s still appalling though.
.
Andrew @ 35 and Robert @ 37
Sadly, I predict that Sea Shepherd’s efforts will not spur Governments to bring whaling to a close, regardless of the public pressure brought to bear. More likely, they will force IWC Parties (primarily the US and Europe) to finally make a deal with Japan that gives them legitimized access to whaling somewhere else. If this happens, the battle will truly have been lost.
Robert (I assume you were addressing me, not MarkL), my understanding is that an overtaking vessel has the responsibility to keep clear of the vessel being overtaken. It should have travelled further forward and followed an arc in clear view of the Shonan Maru. Clearly, the Ady Gil did not. It turned sharply directly in front of the vessel being overtaken and, given they were so low on the water, it’s possible that the Shonan Maru’s skipper couldn’t even see them, even if his camera crew could.
I’m prepared to believe they were just idiots, and/or incompetent sailors. But I’m also prepared to believe that the publicity from the world’s uncritical media would be worth more than the $2 million that this particular Batmobile cost the Sea Shepherd organisation.
One thing is for sure. The Sea Shepherd claim that the Ady Gil was peacefully dead in the water 75 metres away from the Shonan Maru when it went about and arrowed down on them while they hung around and waited for it to hit (the Shonan Maru could raise 12 knots and the Ady Gil 45 knots, remember) was an outright lie, as demonstrated by the videos.
“If that’s so (I don’t believe the Sea Shepherd has disputed it), I think the Japanese were entitled to respond not just with water cannons, but lethal force”
Yes well, that’s not really very civil is it? I mean is that how you would deal with someone who poured sugar in your petrol tank, go over to their place and ram you other car through their front room? I prefer the courts. You’d probably prefer 14th century France.
Excuse me Andrew while I confirm my bias…
@SteveP
The Shonan Maru No. 2 is manoeuvring left and right in the second video, you can see clearly down one side of the vessel, then the other, then back to the first again. All the while the Ady Gil remains oriented almost exactly the same way throughout. This couldn’t be an illusion produced by the movement of the Bob Barker – parallax error doesn’t spin objects around.
It’s hard to say what was going through the Ady Gil captain’s mind as he maintained his direction, but with 3 or 4 crew members in insecure positions above deck and over 1 million dollars worth of strong-as-matchstick boat, I think it’s pretty safe to say that he wasn’t expecting to be hit or he would have done something about it earlier.
We can see a few things from the Japanese (first) video which suggest that the Ady Gil captain may not have been very aware a collision was imminent due to the lack of visibility caused by the water canons. This is clear when the position of the bridge on the Ady Gil is taken into account.
When the forward water canon takes aim at the Ady Gil at about 0:05, within one second the front half of the Ady Gil is invisible, so from the bridge of the Ady Gil visibility of the Shonan Maru No. 2 would be very poor or none. At 0:09 there is a wall of white between the Ady Gil’s bridge and the whaler. This wall doesn’t abate until 0:15 when the Shonan Maru No. 2 is practically on top of the Ady Gil. The next time we can see the wake of the Ady Gil about 2 seconds later it appears to be accelerating.
Hitting the gas may have been a simple gut reaction, it may have been an attempt to make a manoeuvre. But claiming it was an attempt to scuttle the boat for media coverage is a stretch, especially considering what an asset that boat was to their efforts.
As for the suggestion that the Ady Gil captain should have helped to avoid the collision, I think it’s clear that he has no such duty of care if the collision was a deliberate act by the “give-way” vessel. The Ady Gil captain also has no duty of care when he is being deliberately disorientated by water canons from the “give-way” vessel.
Two big assumptions here: first, that the fishing is lawful; and second that it is the high seas and not Australian territorial waters.
Both assumptions are not legally tested and that’s why it will not be easy to get this incident into a courtroom.
Robert @37: I’m not sure about New Zealand but Japan (and many other nations) certainly don’t formally recognise Australia’s territorial claim in Antarctica (or those made by other nations to other parts of Antarctica). That’s why they can hunt whales in ‘Australia’s’ so-called ‘Whale Sanctuary’. Which creates the situation where whaling there is a clear breach of Australian law (in the EPBC Act) and has been found to be so by a Federal Court ruling, but the law is in effect unenforceable (at least without pursuing the matter through international channels, which has unpredictable consequences).
I suspect Margi @42 could well end up being proven right. Although that could well not be enough to stop ongoing Sea Shepherd type action – could well escalate it instead.
Sam @45 – it doesn’t look biased to me. Looks completely objective and spot on
The captain of the Sea Shepherd is to blame. He maneuvered his smaller, faster and more agile craft with intent to impede passage of the slower, larger and less maneuverable Shonen Maru. In doing so the chances of collision increased to the point where it was inevitable that such an event will occur.
The captain and the planners of this incident intended to keep the psychological pressure on the captain of the Shonen Maru in order to intentionally push him over the edge and (hopefully for them) force him into a series of actions that also inevitably contributed to the collision.
The captain of the Sea Shepherd’s actions is blatantly reckless (not to mention naive) and irresponsible, and endangered the lives of his crew.
If members of his crew did die in this incident, and it went to court, the Sea Shepherd’s captain will definitely be found to be at fault.
Whaling is disgusting, but so is reckless endangerment of crew and vessel. IMHO It was a stupid, pointless exercise that won’t stop the Japanese from Whaling in our neck of the woods.
…And forget about calling in the Navy. The RAN don’t have enough ships anyway. We only have 8 light frigates, 4 Guided-Missile Frigates, and 6 Collins Class submarines, which are our primary striking force. They’re too important (and are tied up doing more urgent duties) to be wasted in policing duties like this. And forget about the Armidale Class. There’s not enough of them and they don’t have the endurance for extended patrols.
If you want to protect Australian territorial waters, then you have to pay for it, with more ships and air/surface/sub-surface surveillance/strike/policing assets and related technologies. Nothing comes cheap if you want the job done! And if this sounds to militaristic then you may as well stick with the political option, which is best handled by those in government obviously.
Just looked at the split image clip again, and it definitely seems to me that the Sea Shepherd thottled up to MAINTAIN COLLISION COURSE with the Shonan Maru!
Now it is said that the Sea Shepherd has radar absorbing material applied to it’s above-water surfaces. Imagine if they tried this at night. The small vessel would be (i imagine) hard to detect anyway on surface-search radar even without the stealth paint. It’s obvious these guys were asking for trouble.
Holy shit I can’t believe I’m going to be agreeing with Steve at the Pub but…the video makes it clear who was to blame. Now we can guess at the reasons, intentional or mistake but to my eyes it looks like the smaller ship is at fault.
Also…it’s clearly flying the pirate flag. Their ships always fly this flag. Doesn’t this legally state their intent?
I oppose whaling and I think Japan (along with other countries) just ignore Australia when it comes to fishing in our waters. But this wasn’t an Australian ship that was attacked. It was a pirate ship interfering with a Japanese ship.
What is the current legal status of pirate vessels flying the skull and crossbones?
That is clearly a case of intentional ramming. The Shonen Maru appears to be a very responsive vessel. Most ships cannot alter course as rapid as it does in the videos, but being a vessel designed to hunt and kill whales it has been given the exceptional manouverability clearly evident in both videos. The Japanese captain cannot claim that the position of the Ady Gil was unknown to him as he had both water cannons and camera men directing their attention straight at the vessel. This could well be the first videod example of Sea Rage.
@45 Sam Bauers
Sam, the SM is not manoeuvring left and then right. Early in the footage of the 2nd video we can see down the starboard side then the port side of the SM. Finally after the collision the SM heels hard to port and we see the starboard side again. This is what we should expect of a view from the Bob Barker as it moves accross the track of the SM. The extent of the illusion caused by the relative motion of the 3 vessels is highlighted by speed the AG appears to make in reverse after the collision.
Agreed that the water cannon and panic by the AG’s skipper may have contributed but I’m not prepared to totally rule out deliberation on the part of the AG’s skipper. From its wake the AG apears to accelerate at the 14sec mark (1st video)and again at about 17secs immediately before the collsion. Cost isn’t an issue. They are funded by fools of which there is no shortage.
What a contrast to Catallaxy where the ‘Greenies’ have been ‘proven’ guilty already.
I believe we should get behind Bob Brown’s claim that the Australian government should compensate the SSCS. They should also make whatever facilities and human resources are needed available to replace the vessel and seek recovery for this cost from the Japanese.
All the evidence and statements seem to support the SSCS position. The Shonan Maru 2 appears to purposely turn towards the Ady Gil and ram it.
None of the apparent armchair experts aroyund here were there.
I actaully find it pretty pathetic that some folks here are so quick to jump up and down about the SSCS, and tacitly support the industrial assault on whales in the southern ocean? What would happen if the SSCS weren’t there?
Volunteers, funded from their own pockets, and from thousands of other people all over the world. Going down there and taking on an industrial scale operation that the vast majority of Australians are strongly against.
In contrast to armchair experts, easy judgements and words around here at times. There’s much more real to recognise of human virtues in those who go down there with the SSCS than anything on this blog. Words are cheap and ignorance is free.
At least for some around here, the fact that people do stuff and the japanese whaling operation is front page news, the effectiveness of SSCS as activists, appears to be their real problem. The SSCS is rightly a more significant player in this issue than anyone here.
If only the Rudd Government would take as much interest in the illegal activities of the Japanese whalers in Australia’s territorial waters as they do people smugglers then perhaps we might make more progress towards ending this unnecessary bloodshed.
Maybe we should start calling them “whale smugglers?”
If the Rudd Government had done its job properly and sent the RAN down to AUSTRALIAN waters at the beginning of the whaling season and escorted the illegal whalers back to an Australian port, where they should have remained impounded for the duration of the southern whaling season, this wouldn’t have happened. Mind you, I’d die if I held my breath waiting for Rudd and Garrett to pluck up the guts to take such action.
SteveP52,
Your fantasizing with the relative motion comment. Even the most violent movements of the Bob Barker, even taking into account its path, speed and the duration of the incident, would add only a very small part of a degree to the viewing angle over the distance apart of the objects. It is entirely clear that the Shonen Maru makes a tight turn to the starboard from the video shot from its own deck, let alone the video from the Bob Barker. This was a malicious act, there is no other conclusion. I’ve no doubt that computer modelling of the incident will absolutely prove this beyond any doubt. Think of the Adi Gil as another fishing boat rather than a force of conservation to see the real nature of the Japanese motives here.
Robert Merkel said:
The Shone Maru was not endeavouring to ram the Ady Gil. It turned to starboard in order to get its water cannon in range. The SM wanted to give AG a good hard blast of water to send them on their way.
That is still not a good enough reason to increase the risk of collision. Water cannon at best are defensive weapons, designed to repel threats (fire, pirates?). So the captain of the SM was acting recklessly and dangerously.
Robert Merkel said:
The AG only accelerated when at the last moment, way too late to nip in front of the SM’s bows. The captain of the AG was either trying to ram to AG or had no idea of the relative position of the boats. Either way he was a fool and deserves to lose his licence.
Paul Burns,
Japan doesn’t recognize Australia’s claims down there.
You’re asking for the Australian government to declare war on Japanese whalers – and, in effect, war on Japan.
I would have thought ramming a NZ registered boat in an action in which 21 Aussies were involved was an act of war.
Having another look I estimate that the Sonen Maru is able to change direction by 45 degrees over a 20 second time frame and that includes a complete change of direction from starboard to port, meaning that the entire rotational inertial of the vessel has to be arrested then produced in the opposite rotational direction. The equivalent of braking to a halt then reversing backwards in a car. The video from the Bob Barker is through a telephoto lense, making the ship seem a lot closer than it is. The distance apart of the vessels can better be seen from video taken from the Shonen Maru. There is no doubt about what happened here.
I’m quite happy myself to wait for the outcome of the investigations – I’m not qualified, and certainly not based on the footage as it stands – to work out what exactly happened.
I did however want to make two brief points and apologies if someone has already brought them up -
from the Japanese footage you can observe that they are using water cannon and it’s unclear how that affected the operator of the Ady Gil, but it certainly would not have helped with the captain making an appropriate decision.
The Japanese footage also demonstrates that they were directing their sonic sound weapon thingy (sorry forgotten proper name) at the Ady Gil, which causes nausea, deafness and disorientation. Between the water cannon & the sonic weapon I would think this would impair the Ady Gil’s crew ability to take appropriate action.
I also wanted to point out that whoever was at fault in causing the collision, the Japanese from their own footage continue to use both weapons on the crew of a vessel in distress, and did not answer the SOS. Whether they are found to be culpable for the original collision or not, I certianly hope that is subject to the same level of scrutiny and if appropriate, charges.
The Rudd Govt. has no hesitation in pursuing and deporting those caught fishing illegally in our Northern waters, and destroying their fishing vessels. Most of the illegal fishers in Northern waters are impoverished Indonesians.But when it comes to protecting the great whales in our Souther waters the Rudd Govt. appears to be encouraging the Japanese on their annual slaughter. So much for the election promise in 2007. Obviously the Japanese are too important to take action against and this is yet another example of Rudd Inc. putting money before all else.
JackS59,
The Shonen Maru is a ship (and crew) customised for hunting. It is clear from news footage that it is a short vessel to make it manouverable. I would expect it to have rotateable shrouded propellers similar to tugs. This is a vessel that has to chase whales, harpoon them, then pull up quickly to bring the catch along side for transfer to the factory ship. Short form: this is a fast responsive vessel with a highly skilled crew. They knew what they were doing.
“The Japanese footage also demonstrates that they were directing their sonic sound weapon thingy (sorry forgotten proper name) at the Ady Gil, which causes nausea, deafness and disorientation. Between the water cannon & the sonic weapon I would think this would impair the Ady Gil’s crew ability to take appropriate action”
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I’m sure it wouldn’t have been too hard for them to turn around and stop deliberately (and constantly) provoking the Japanese fleet. If they want to fix the problem, they should take it to court, in which case they’ll lose and find out no-one cares about Australia’s claims to Antarctica. This would suggest that the Japanese are doing nothing wrong, and telling them not to kill whales is simply cultural imperialism.
robbo @64.
That’s exactly what I think. Rudd’s too scared to upset the Japanese.
I think a thread like this should be opened up for every contentious video referee try in the bledisloe cup.
The idea that the Sea Shepherds deliberately endangered their $2m vessel a day into its maiden voyage for a publicity stunt is ridiculous. Do those people holding this view also think that the Sea Shepherds eat babies, and invoke satan to protect whales?
While I don’t think that the Sea Shepherds are in a position to complain about “illegal ramming”, it seems pretty likely to me that this was deliberate and whether partly aided by poor piloting by the Sea Shepherds, it’s pretty much blown away any self-righteous claims the whalers will make in future about being illegally rammed. Their main defense against the Sea Shepherds has always rested on their being victims.
I don’t approve of this additional posturing by the Sea Shepherds – buying a stealth boat seems to me like macho dick-waving. I understand the logic of their claim that they have to use direct action (even ramming boats) because govts won’t enforce treaties, but this doesn’t mean they have to go paramilitary. I read Steve Watson’s biography, it was very inspiring but it’s also clear he has a macho ego problem. His new anti-radar penis is further proof of this.
I live in Japan now and I have to say, Australia’s anti-whaling position doesn’t seem to influence ordinary Japanese peoples’ view of us one iota. They seem to see it as a legitimate difference of opinion between peoples, mostly.
I’m sure it wouldn’t have been too hard for them to turn around and stop deliberately (and constantly) provoking the Japanese fleet.
In the context of this incident conrad, the Ady Gil is clearly idling and not pursuing the Japanese boat. In fact both footages confirm the whaling vessel approaching the Ady Gil.
Before myths become legends, here are 2 articles that help to put some things in perspective
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Ady-Gil/photo//100107/photos_wl_pc_afp/2948b23b426338f0ca919df00b0bacb7//s:/afp/20100106/sc_afp/australiajapanwhaling
Take the time to scan through the 69 photos in the gallery. These will show that
the Shonen Maru did not flee the scene
the Shonen Maru’s water cannons had more than enough range to reach the Ady Gil without the need to swerve to starboard.
the noise was more likely being generated from the Ady Gil rather than the Shonen Maru
the sea was relatively calm
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2009/02/japanese-whalin.html
this shows the relative size of the Shonen Maru to the factory ship.
BilB, what a load of crap. A 1000 ton displacement vessel can have nowhere near the manouvreability of a 13 ton sterndrive-powered trimaran; ship designers cannot disobey the laws of physics. Don’t forget that seaway makes it impossible for a displacement vessel to steer straight because ships yaw in it.
I too am astonished to find myself agreeing with SATP. Using a highly manouvreable “stealth” boat to evade radar, get as close to another ship as you can and try and cripple it is clearly piracy, and the ship so attacked has every right – indeed duty – to respond appropriately.
The point with civil disobedience is that you ought to be willing to suffer the consequences of the law you are disobeying (a point Gandhi often made – he famously argued for the maximum sentence when he was tried). Even if the civil disobedience is morally justified it is hypocritical to complain of its consequences.
On the broader issue of whaling I’m with hrgh: if we can get people to harvest them sustainably then I’ve no issue with it. But that’s not what either Sea Shepherd’s or the Japanese goals are. Not for the first time, conservation goals and “animal liberation” goals are quite opposed; it’s a fact both sides in this issue have an interest in obscuring.
dd, australian (and sea shepherd) opposition to whaling is not an “animal liberation” goal. Australians (and the sea shepherds) in general oppose whaling because they think whales are special (watson makes this point in the first page of his autobiography, and from my recollection he eats meat, or used to – he has some anti-vegetarian comments in his bio). It’s not even about sustainable harvesting for most people. This is why Japanese don’t understand our anti-whaling position, because they don’t get the specialness bit.
I think there’s a fair amount of guilt in our position too – it was the US and UK which originally depleted whale stocks, and we want to protect whats left after our rampage. The Japanese rightly see this as a case of us denying them the right to do what we did in spades.
It’s worth noting that the sea shepherds also do a lot of work about other issues, such as sustainable fishing. They aren’t just about anti-whaling. It’s just that Watson needs to wave his willy about, and leaves the other things they do in the background.
Derida, it is all clearly there in the videos, the Shonen Maru turns to starboard then to port through a total of about 45 degrees in just 20 seconds defeating its yaw in the process. Even for a maxi yacht that would be impressive, let alone a small ship. If you could see an ocean going tug out of the water you would see how designers cope with the problems of manouverability. Shrouded propellers that swivel like an outboard allow very large vessels to perform like row boats. This will give you some idea
http://www.olds.com.au/marine/maximizing_propulsion_efficiency/
Wot Paul Burns said:
“Mind you, I’d die if I held my breath waiting for Rudd and Garrett to pluck up the guts to take such action.”
Garrett is pissweak. There is immense domestic anti-whaling support in Australia. What is he waiting for? Take it to court.
“In the context of this incident conrad, the Ady Gil is clearly idling and not pursuing the Japanese boat. In fact both footages confirm the whaling vessel approaching the Ady Gil.”
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Look, here’s an analogy for you. I personally hate 4-wheel drives. Their main purpose in big cities appears to be killing pedestrians, cyclists, and wasting fuel. Now if I really wanted, I could get in the way of them on my bicycle, slam my brakes on, and get hit by them. That would be their fault legally. However, if I did this, no-one would have much sympathy for me. Alternatively, I could try and get the government to charge large vehicles more to register, etc. . This would get them off the streets legally, and all the people that hate them like I do would probably think it’s a good idea. Now, back to real story, given that most fisheries in the world are basically screwed, I’m sure if people want to do something good for the ocean, there are far more sensible places to start and far cheaper ways to get further.
I doubt there is any law about that anymore. In any case it is a skull, cutlass and shephards crook. They have in the past also flown sponsor’s flags.
The amazing thing is that the Sea Shephard’s motives get questioned in legal terms while the legality of the Japanese activity gets a pass. The facade of research is a long discredited joke and most supporters of the whalers don’t even argue on that point anymore. Quite simply if it isn’t “research” then the whaling is illegal under international treaty. So supporters of the whalers here ought to show why those international laws (of which Japan is a signatory) can be legitimately ignored by this Japanese fleet.
Any vessel needs boatspeed before it will answer the helm.
The ADY GIL was built for the specific purpose of a Round the World record attempt.
It has a long waterline; will float in a bath-tub, and has twin spear rudders on the outriggers. The rudders are not placed for low speed manoeuvring. The props are of high pitch and situate on the central hull. I do not know if the configuration allows for an immediate selection of reverse.
The implications are obvious. It has been claimed that the Ady Gil was fast and highly manoeuvrable. It would a sitting duck whilst stationary; perhaps unable to reverse; needing boatspeed for steerage; all the while being bombarded with LRAD and blinded by spray from water canons.
This will see the Japanese captain relieved of his licence and charged with criminal negligence.
It is sad that the boat was attacked by the Japanese. Why do they need to hunt whales? They should stop this. If left they would keep killing for ever.
Dags! Come back! All is forgiven. We urgently need your expertise in YouTube analysis on this thread.
Your analogy fails Conrad because (while I share your disgust at UAVs) all of the activity takes place within a well-policed jurisdiction where legal writ has effect.
That’s not the case in the Southern Ocean.
“all of the activity takes place within a well-policed jurisdiction where legal writ has effect.”
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Apart from Australia, who else recognizes Australia’s claim to the Antartic? Not the US, not China, not anyone that will matter in the 21st century as far as I can tell. It seems to me all of this is happening in what almost all of the world thinks are international waters. In any case, if it were Australian waters, there must be laws against deliberate harassment, which would take both sides out.
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It seems to me that the reason nothing gets done is not too many people really care about a few whales (certainly not enough to close down shipping lanes etc. where they get killed also — why not start there we they don’t even get eaten?). I imagine when it will become more of an issue is when some big country decides it wants to break the mining ban currently enforced there. That really will make for exciting times.
Beginning with SATP, a lot of commenters have made wild claims that SSCS actions amount to ‘piracy’. A moment’s thought reveals this depiction to be hyperbolic rubbish, akin to describing Ghandian resistance tactics as ‘violence’ because they impede business as usual.
There is a clear historical parallel for the SSCS’s campaign to stop a marine harvesting practice of dubious legality in waters subject to territorial dispute – the UK-Iceland ‘Cod Wars’ of the 1970s. Icelandic trawlers and patrol craft routinely played ‘chicken’ with British fishing trawlers and naval vessels, while settlement of the territorial claims proceeded with glacial speed through the various international fora. A favourite Icelandic tactic was to cut trawling lines, causing the British fishers both inconvenience and expense. However, while British political bloviators harumphed about these ‘piratical’ acts, they wisely restrained the Royal Navy from firing upon or otherwise sinking the Icelandic harriers. There would have been no such restraint if the Icelanders had been actual pirates.
In the event, the Icelanders won the bloodless standoff politically in much the same way SSCS is trying to do – by embarrassing the Brits into submission. As a result, they still have a fishing industry to support themselves following the collapse of their banks. The British cod fishery by contrast is no more, as a result of precisely the same environmentally irresponsible overfishing they wished to visit upon the waters around Iceland.
There’s a neat video of Cod War events remarkably similar to this week’s contretemps on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQrbkYLirEs&NR=1
Rob @43: “…publicity from the world’s uncritical media would be worth more than the $2 million that this particular Batmobile cost the Sea Shepherd organisation.”
If their (Ady Gil’s) intention was to have the collision, then they would have to have calculated a possible loss of life/lives. What price those lives?
Those waters are damn cold, and people only last a matter of minutes in freezing cold water. The sea temperature of the Southern Ocean varies from -2°C to 10°C. With a water temperature near zero, people lose ability to swim in less than 2 minutes, and lose consciousness in less than 15 minutes.
In those seas, with a crippled or sinking boat, anyone thrown overboard would stand a high chance of dying before they could be rescued.
Given that the Shonan Maru was filming the entire event, they knew that they had severely crippled the Ady Gil. The jolt of impact could have caused people to fall overboard. With a slightly different point of impact, they could have sunk the boat completely.
Regardless of whether the Shonan Maru intended to ram the Ady Gil, their continuation of water jets while driving into the boat, and then subsequently on people clinging to a crippled craft suggests a malicious intent to cause loss of life.
The whole thing stinks, and it is time that the Rudd government stopped pussy-footing around on this issue.
Rogue countries like Japan are not just killing the whales that we have come to love. They are also systematically destroying the fish stocks of the world.
The problem is that there are no effective laws governing the harvesting of the sea once you get beyond recognized territorial waters. Perhaps some of the effort going into saving the whales would be better spent on arguing for international laws and policing aimed at protecting the international marine environment and sustainable harvesting?
John D, the sea shepherds do a lot of work on other fisheries issues too. Whaling is just their big issue publicity stunt.
I wonder what would have happened to those crew members of the Ady Gil if the captain of the shonan maru had mistaken his point of impact (surely easy to do in that kind of situation) and hit the boat right where they were standing?
It seems to me that the Japanese whalers have everything to lose from this kind of stunt.
sg, the Shonan Maru would have turned to port before the video started if they were “going about their business” thereby avoiding any risk of a collision. The deck crew of the Ady Gill were wearing wetsuits (refer to the SMH article link above and see photo gallery).
wetsuits maybe, I don’t know anything about boats but i can’t imagine the cold would be their first concern if the shonan maru had hit their little boat right where they were standing. It seems a big risk for the captain of the Shonan Maru to take, and I can’t imagine it will benefit his/her side of the debate very much.
[I'm not offering an opinion as to whether or not the collision was deliberate].
I agree, I dont think that the outcome will applauded by the Japanese whaling media office, but I bet there were cheers everywhere else in the organisation. Think Sumo.
Personally, I have more concerns about the krill catch..if you give a hoot about Antarctic biodiversity, look to the little fishes, not the giant graceful mammals….indeed if you care about climate change and carbon sequestration, you also need to worry about the amount of krill being taken from Antarctic waters, they play an important role in sequestration.
Also, BillB’s comment “think Sumo” @ 88, highlights one of the concerns about the whale debate for me – and it’s hard to raise without feeling like it might cause a shitstorm. But I think there is some racial undertones to SOME of the dissent that occurs over Japanese whaling. Maybe it’s idealistic but I think if the Greens were to focus more on the broader ecological issues of fishing in Antarctic waters some of the uglier aspects of this debate would be reduced. It’s hard to see this occuring when the Sea Shepard v Whaling fleet hijacks the debate every year. And if Bob Brown is calling for Australians to compensate the Sea Shepard, I think that is really very unfortunate, I definitely do not support such a notion. BTW: It would be quite nice if just once, in all of his PR opportunities, Sea Shepard’s Paul Watson had highlighted some of the broader issues of Antarctic ecology too, I’ve never heard him do such a thing.
Ha! oops..that should be….”little crustaceans”….oh dear.
Come on, Furious Balancing, there was nothing racist in the “Sumo” comment. That was entirely about attitudes to combat. As for your krill claim, the krill are not the source of the oil that the whales are after, that comes from the ice algae that the krill feed on. The algae are also the source of the omega oils that are so rich in the fish that we eat. It is produced by the algae then accumulates up the food chain in the livers of the fish. It is the algae that produced all of the oil that we use today.
I hope that helps you with your balancing act.
And let me add also that I disagree with the attitude of some here who seem to think that biodiversity is the only issue to be considered. Issues of cruelty are also germane here.
While I am very keen on protecting biodiversity I also believe that to ignore the suffering of sensate beings when we see it is wrong. Sustainable harvest is all very well, but unless it can be done humanely — and I don’t see how it can — then I’m against it.
It’s perhaps worth pointing out that the whalers only went down to the southern ocean with two guard ships – of which the Shonan Maru was one – because the Sea Shepherds were determined to disable the whalers by fouling their rudders and propellers with ropes. This would have left them helpless in the event of high winds or heavy seas. That’s why the Japanese went down with water cannon.
Watson has form for attacking ships, including sinking them (h/t Tim Blair):
BillB – I think you have misunderstood my point regarding krill. Various nations harvest krill from Antarctic waters, I think it’s an important issue that gets lost in the debate when whaling dominates the discussion.
Also – apologies, it was not my intent to accuse you of racism, but to simply raise my concerns about racial undertones amongst SOME dissenters…I capitalised the some to highlight that I think it’s a small minority, I should probably have made it explicit I didn’t include you in that, I’m sorry. Reading your post was just what triggered the thought process today.
Robert: A Response
This is certainly a useful line to take in COLREG terms, but in an Admiralty Court this strikes me as a very dangerous thing to even imply. Look at Rule 17 again and you’ll see why.
Then there’s Rule 2
Rule 2 a:
Rule 2
Responsibility
(a) Nothing in these Rules shall exonerate any vessel, or the owner, master, or crew thereof, from the consequences of any neglect to comply with these Rules or of the neglect of any precaution which may be required by the ordinary practice of seamen, or by the special circumstances of the case.
In this case, ‘any precaution which may be required by the ordinary practise of seamen’ is exactly what the black vessel was NOT doing. This is because it is the ordinary practise of seamen to avoid close-quarters situations – they are dangerous. That’s why most Masters have standing orders to alter course to prevent any ship met at sea from having a CPA (closest point of approach) of less than a nautical mile. The black vessel does not have a leg to stand on here, as they were deliberately breaking this rule.
I’d agree with this. Looking at the way the black vessel is handled is very informative. The master of that vessel is clearly incompetent in her handling, in maintaining a proper lookout, in obeying COLREGs in any way, shape or form. It is clear from the video that his shiphandling is grossly deficient too, how on earth he thought he could avoid collision by trying to cut across Shonan Maru’s bow is beyond me. His best option there (caveat: I do not know the propulsion and steering arrangements and characteristics of his vessel) was probably full power and full starboard rudder.
Both have violated this because a collision occurred. Assigning the proportions of blame is up to a court. Looking at the St Rognvald vs Boy Andrew case (1948) would give comfort to the Shonan Maru’s master. There, the overtaking vessel (in an 800′ wide swept channel) passed too close (100′) to the vessel being overtaken, so that even when the latter altered course unexpectedly and collided with the overtaking vessel’s stern (ie the vessel being overtaken did not keep her course), it was still a 2/3 to 1/3 apportionment of blame. There will be lots of case law precedent here, going back 400 years!
However, if this was an overtaking situation where the Shonan Maru’s Master has kept his vessel’s course and speed (and except for normal yawing from seastate this is what the video’s show me)then assigning much blame to Shonan Maru is going to be pretty tough.
I’d also clarify some points made by some people here. Shonan Maru No.2 is registered as a vessel of 491dwt, and 12 knots. She has a single screw, which implies an unbalanced sternpost rudder, or a balanced spade rudder. So she’s pretty handy, and her helm responses show that. When she yaws to stbd, you can see her regain course very quickly. same as when she puts her helm over to try and avoid the collision.
Studying these again, my personal opinion is that the master of the black vessel was not expert at his trade. I think he saw the starboard yaw and did not recognise it (poor knowledge of the behavioural characteristics of the vessel he had gotten too close to), and I think he assumed it was a turn, panicked, and tried to use his superior acceleration to cut across the turn he thought he saw. Being inexpert at his trade, he may not have realised that Shonan Maru was simply yawing a little, and that she would put port helm on to return to her course. That might explain his (to me) truly inexplicable manouevre.
This is a classic illustration of why close quarters situations at sea are so dangerous. There’s no room for error, things happen very fast, ships respond slowly, and the laws of physics have no mercy.
The black vessel was far too close for ‘prudent seamanship’. If Shonan Maru had had a steering gear failure an actually turned to starboard because of it, the black vesel had nowhere to go. Had I been her Master, you would not catch me within a cable of the larger vessel. Within four points of her bow (that is, forward of either beam), at a cable I would want to be opening the distance by having my course diverging from hers.
From the available video, I think this was a situation where the black vessel was overtaking on the Shonan Maru’s starboard side, then altered her course about 2 points to port to cut across the Shonan Maru’s bow, slowed down too much, got far too close, and caused the collision. I cannot see how this was a normal crossing situation, where the black vessel would have to have been approaching on a steady course from Shonan Maru’s starboard bow.
MarkL
Canberra
Fran, I highlight the biodiversity issues because there are internationally recognised protocols in regard to threatened and endangered species. There is a framework that all countries are compelled to operate under…it’s an area I know and understand, so that is why I talk about it. I don’t think it is the only issue that should be considered.
If you want to talk about the violations relating to mis-treatment of creatures by all means do so. The krill drown on air, I don’t imagine it’s a great way to die either. It would probably be hypocritical for me to talk about such issues, since I advocate the harvesting of kangaroos for meat, and I’m sure many would suggest that the hunting of wild land animals is cruel too.
I don’t disagree with the calls to give more attention to biodiversity. But, I would say that actually a huge effort (probably bigger than is dedicated to whales) goes in that direction, but it is rarely media fodder and hence appears not to be happening.
I agree with Fran @92. This is not a case of sustainability or indeed even conservation. Putting aside who is right or wrong in this incident (for the sake of this comment only) opposition to Japanese whaling is about welfare and ethics – not sustainability. These wild, slow breeding, long lived mammals are just not appropriate as food.
The hunting of them is usually cruel, prolonged and in no way meets basic welfare standards that we generally seek to apply to livestock slaughter (not husbandry or transport) and indeed other forms of terrestrial hunting. Regulation of this hunting is difficult and the debate surrounding the imposition of even basic control of actives by whalers is now intractable.
Even defining what is sustainable is difficult, because these animals are buffeted by so many other threats, and our growing understanding of the complexity of the population structures and the importance of different roles within these populations means that removal of even small numbers of animals can have significant and even terminal impacts on the populations within which they live.
Also, science (not welfare or green groups) is now informing us that these are highly developed species. Studies into dolphin behavior have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans. These studies have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence, the researchers argue that it is morally unacceptable to keep them in captivity or to kill them for food.
So, remembering that these are wild animals, not cattle, really the comparison should be to regard them as similar to the great apes more than other sources of food that we farm.
Perhaps our society is evolving to a point where we now find killing them simply inappropriate. For many people it has reached that point. And, what is wrong with having a morally based position?
Just because something exists does not mean we have to ‘use it’. We have evolved our considerations about boundaries of behavior constantly in the evolution of human society. Perhaps we are now collectively deciding that some things are just ‘beyond use’, in much the same way as we evolved our regard for women, children and humans from different parts of the world.
BilB @91: “…omega oils that are so rich in the fish that we eat. It is produced by the algae then accumulates up the food chain in the livers of the fish”
In their livers???
Do you mean that we are wasting the most concentrated source of omega oils, when we gut the fish?
What about the supposed high concentrations of omega 3 in salmon fillets?
I agree with the concerns about racism that connect to this issue. It is certainly easier for Watson to bash the Japanese in the western press than it is for him to bash the Americans, which he used to do. You don’t have to dig very deep in western discussion of this stuff before you start to find, at the least, flip racial stereotypes, but beyond that also talk of “rogue nations”, asian animal cruelty, etc. I often read or hear people talking about how Japanese will eat anything, which isn’t true but is a common accusation made against Asians in general, and I’ve seen similar stereotypes employed in debate about ecological issues across the region. It’s buried in the discourse.
There is no equivalent to this in popular Japanese commentary as far as I can tell. You won’t find many Japanese expressing disgust at westerners for eating rabbits, kangaroos or guinea pigs; let alone crusading against it on the world stage. I’ve always been suspicious of this sort of thing, especially when you consider the rather tarnished history the west has of telling the Japanese how and what they can do with their maritime fleet.
How come Inuit people don’t get hassled for hunting whales?
to his credit, watson did. There’s a section in his biography about his views on indigenous rights to hunt whales. He went to Russia and got up to some mischief with some Russian arctic indigenous folk too. He also got into some trouble with the Americans in Latin American ports in the 80s (?). But it all seems to have crystallised on the Japanese recently, though that could just be because they’re the most egregious example of modern whaling.
I don’t think Watson per se is racist or anything like it. He’s not like Brigitte Bardot. But the messages do get conflated, I think, and the war at sea meme is a bit unfortunate given the nation it’s directed against.
Phillip, perhaps the Inuits don’t catch very many? They are a rather small population.
Perhaps also, they are poor and don’t have many alternatives in the frozen north?
Yes, Elise, that is how I understood this to be. But the omega oils are in the tissues of the fish as well. The thrust of the comment was, however, that algae are the photsynthetic source of fish oils, and the producers of all of the fossil oil that we presumed would last forever. Krill in the arctic regions feed on algae that grows on the grain boundaries of the ice. There are algae throughout the oceans but the algae that krill prefer are the ice algae. So as the ice shelves recede so does the food source for the krill, so does the food source for some species of whales.
So the obtuse observation of the day is that the thing at the very top of the food chain, the automobile, is entirely dependent on the thing at the very bottom, the algae. And everything in between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_oil
Yes, Elise, that is how I understood this to be. But the omega oils are in the tissues of the fish as well. The thrust of the comment was, however, that algae are the photsynthetic source of fish oils, and the producers of all of the fossil oil that we presumed would last forever. Krill in the arctic regions feed on algae that grows on the grain boundaries of the ice. There are algae throughout the oceans but the algae that krill prefer are the ice algae. So as the ice shelves recede so does the food source for the krill, so does the food source for some species of whales.
So the obtuse observation of the day is that the thing at the very top of the food chain, the automobile, is entirely dependent on the thing at the very bottom, the algae. And everything in between.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_oil
sg, there is no racism in this issue. The sea has been a major source of sustenance for the seabound island nation that Japan is. But just as Americans can no longer hunt down their dinner as protected in their constitution (if every American shot an animal a week how many weeks would it be before there were only humans and rats left in America) the Japanese can no longer eat fish in the same way as they have in the past. There are just too many human beings, regardless of race, and that is the issue.
That most certainly is the issue, BilB, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of the ranting and foaming going on out there in connection with the issue isn’t also driven by or utilising racism and racist language. The concern isn’t that the issue itself is a racist fabrication, but that it is easily conflated with such ideas. Witness Brigitte Bardot’s attitude towards halal meat to see how nasty that conflation can get.
Sorry, sg, in this case I don’t see any of that at all. 30 years ago perhaps that would be more possible, but today there can be, and there are, many clashes of interests between Japanese people and other peoples without any racial overtones. To me this issue is no different to the differences that I might have with the people who want to dig up every last kilogram of coal and burn it somewhere. It is my opinion against a group of people, not a race of people. And I think that there are more people who think that way than don’t. There are plenty of Japanese people against whaling, I am with them.
http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/16-06-2006/82111-whaling-0
I think the one lesson we can all draw from this episode is that if you gonna play cat and mouse on the high seas, it’s better by far to be the cat and not the mouse.
A ship’s captain’s primary duty is the safety of the crew and the integrity of the vessel.
If I was in charge of a boat with a 20 knot+ advantage over its adversaries, no fucking way would I leave it dangling anywhere even near the possibility of being rammed.
Yeah sure, the media visuals probably work better for Sea Shepherd than the Nipponese whalers but the fact of the matter is that the Captain of the Ady Gil deliberately put his boat in harm’s way. In this case harm’s way being a far larger ship crewed by a notorious warrior nation on an equally major ego trip.
Crap tactics by Sea Shepherd and lousy strategy by the whalers. The end result, a lovely boat sunk, slightly less whales than normal killed, all sides further polarised and the media given some great free footage which will slightly advance the anti-whaling cause.
All in all it’s not unlike Operation Market Garden. The war’s already being won. Sea Shepherd, like Monty, just let their ego stage a dangerous and poorly thought through escapade to speed it up.
Shame about the boat though. She was a nice, seaworthy and rather sexy trimaran which is not something you can say of all trimarans.
A “warrior nation”, nabakov? Bilb, I think my point has been made…
“A “warrior nation”, nabakov?”
Well the Japanese have a long history of fighting hard, well and to the death. And often afloat. Only the USN ever beat ‘em at sea. And by the time the USN did, they could have beaten anyone at sea – through a combination of vast industrial power, being stocked with wartime civilians displaying Yankee ingenuity – and like the RN or the Imperial Japanese Navy keeping a certain core cadre esprit alive at the heart.
Unlike Sea Shepherd.
I still can’t quite believe they blew a $2 million super-sexy high speed stealth boat on its first combat outing. It’s like sailing the Prince of Wales and Repulse into enemy infested waters without any air coverage.
Guys, its obvious in both videos.
The Japanese ship turns somewhat towards the AD, hits it and then heels over very quickly to port after the collision (so any arguments about size, weight and maneuverability are out of court – the whaler is obviously maneuverable, it could have performed that that turn much earlier).
The AD is clearly stationary, or pretty nearly, up until just before the collision when they start up obviously in an attempt to get under way to some extent and gain some steerage to avoid being run over. They fail.
You can argue parallax and all the rest until the cows come home, but Robert has analysed the situation correctly. It is beholden on the Japanese ship to veer to port, under any and all circumstances, which they fail to do, the motives of the AD be damned. The Japanese captain didn’t do that, he did the opposite.
In this situation he is not, I repeat not, entitled to hold his course. He should have altered it long before. The AD is on his starboard side, he is required to give way.
JM,
As a ship’s captain, your first and overriding responsibility is not get into a position where a much bigger ship can run you down, regardless of rights of way. Defensive driving, yeah.
Never mind the motives of the Japanese ship, you just don’t lie dead in the water during a serious chop while other boats that have taken an attitude to you are hooning around. You need to get some speed up so you have control.
Regardless of the whaler’s plans or motivations, staying stationary in such circumstances is just asking for it.
The first rule of the sea is don’t play silly buggers.
Or to put it another way, I was expecting the Ady Gil to play high speed psyche warfare not sit there with its thumb up three keels getting passively run over.
“The AD is on his starboard side, he is required to give way.”
And the second rule of the sea is never take anything for granted. The moment you can see anything big enough to sink you, make sure you can underway before they get close enough.
I write this as I suspect one of few people on this thread ever having to have to had abandon a ship beyond sight of land*.
*Turned out to a false alarm based the fact they thought one of the many dozen canisters of propane gas being shipped to Rotuma was ruptured. None the less, it’s quite an eerie feeling bobbing up and down on a clinker built teeny weeny ship’s boat 100 metres away from a ship where the crew is running around with hoses while swearing their heads off. While totally out of sight of any land.
So, sg, if someone in Japan talked about Australia being a “sporting nation” that would be a racist comment? Not.
An ongoing debate I’m sure.
As one who has stood in front of trucks, and bulldozers,and have known many others who have, to protect from destruction what is now recognised as national heritage forests. Which provide numerous ecological and economic benefits to local communities these days. Was a bit phazed by the pedestrian and truck quip from the likes of SATP. Which I’ve noticed being repeated on some comments at news sites… interesting how the right wing spin suddenly gets repeated ad nauseum sometimes.
Some of the natural environment we still have is entirely due to people taking on powerful and destructive interests and industry in the past. Almost entirely as volunteers and at some economic or social costs to themselves. Things have and probably will continue to be that way.
Whilst I wouldn’t count them as a friend, one local (to me) I’ve met a few times at a friends place is down there, they are on the Bob Barker and were interviewed by the ABC local radio yesterday on satelite phone.
It seems that SSCS are already considering a replacement for the Ady Gil, and probably will get the financial and technical support to do that maybe by next year. I’m sure they’ve recieved a lot of contributions since the drama occurred.
News.com reports they have submitted a piracy complaint in the Netherlands concerning the event. Their lawyer seemed confident, but they always are before the fact I guess as well.
An illumination of the topic for me, thanks. Will there be accurate enough GPS data recorded and available to determine the relative positions to the meter?
The Sea Shepherd might have a better chance at success over their complaint if they themselves were not flying a variation of the pirate flag.
(On another note, is there any truth to the rumours that the Japanese ships then refeused aid to those on the stricken ship? I would have thought that even after holing a possible pirate vessel the captain would be obligated to still take survivors on board even if they were locked in the brig.)
Re Nabs:
Re the right of people to interfere with ‘lawful’ activity and defining them as terrorsists.
On the same day the OO runs an editorial slamming the SSCS for interferring with Japanese illegal industrial scale whaling operation.
They run a story about some salt of the earth farmers from the Liverpool Plains and their 17 month blockade of BHP’s apparently ‘lawful’ activity of starting coal mining on the Liverpool Plains and potentially destroying the significant aquifer system that supports the major agricultural sector, not to mention natural ecology, in the area.
They sound just as determined and righteous as the SSCS to see the campaign through.
Hypocrisy and spin concerning citizens rights to protest and participate in the debates and action within society are pretty much all you get from some.
Reportedly figures from the Hunger Summit claim up to six million children throughout the world ill or dying because of hunger and we are worry about bloody whales and pirates! Surely this is all a case of misdirected outrage?
121 e; oso, if there were six million whales ill or dying of hunger we wouldn’t have to be outraged.
See Bilb, I didn’t say it was racist, just that the stereotypes come out quickly. A bunch of whalers playing silly buggers in the antarctic doesn’t have to have any relationship to the alleged “warrior nation” spirit of a country which has non-aggression enshrined in its constitution, and (contrary to Nabokov’s assertions) spent most of its history isolated while the Europeans were invading all and sundry. It’s a cultural stereotype. There are things to be said about Japanese sensitivity over being told what to do on the sea, but they don’t need cultural cliches.
I suppose it’s only a matter of time before SATP says the whaling captain has spirit of bushido or something.
I have read, incidentally, that the AD was running low on fuel and waiting to be refuelled at the time. That might explain its stationary state.
The deliberateness or otherwise of the whaling fleet ship’s collision with the Ady Gil is important, but to me it is mostly about what it will trigger from here in regards to whaling and international relations. People obviously will and have come to their own views – in my view it is patently clear that the whaling ship deliberately turned towards the trimaran and held that line until it hit it, but it even clearer that others will take a different view.
From a lot of the comments here and elsewhere, there doesn’t seem much recognition/acknowledgement of the history of actions by both sides. Capt Paul Watson’s split with Greenpeace and the subsequent core tactics of Sea Shepherd precisely because Greenpeace baked away when the whalers aggression at sea got too dangerous – quite wisely in many ways, as it was clear where things would inevitably lead if you don’t back down in such circumstances. The ante gets upped time and again, as has occurred between the whalers and Sea Shepherd, until an incident like this recent one occurs.
All the arguments about obligations under Safety Of Life At Sea rules/laws are important in one sense, but rather redundant in another sense. These guys have been at each since before Christmas – a key part of the tactics of both sides is to get close to the other. The Shonan Maru 2 (the one which did the ramming) is a security ship and had been tailing and seeking to hinder Sea Shepherd boats so as to keep them away from the whaling boats doing the killing. Ady Gil was specifically deployed to enable high speed chasing and harassing. Is turning a high pressure water hose/cannon onto a small vessel valid under laws of the sea? I would assume/hope not. Neither is deploying the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) (that thing making the piercing squealing noises that can be heard on the video taken from the Japanese ships), which is specifically designed to create disorientation for its target.
I’m sure various actions of the Ady Gil prior to this incident would similarly breach such rules/laws. The point is that it is redundant to see the vessel’s captain has a primary responsibility not to put his ship/crew in danger. The only way the Sea Shepherd folks can do what they see as their job is to put themselves in danger. It’s been that way since the first time a Greenpeace protester put themselves between a harpoon and a whale a few decades ago.
The comparisons made by Quoll @116 and @120 about other direct action/blockade type actions are valid. It is inherently dangerous – people (usually) only do it when they feel all other options have failed. That doesn’t mean we have to agree with them – but if you are against all whaling, what other tactics do people feel would have a better chance of success? Which isn’t to have a go at the lobbying efforts of Greenpeace and others.
The Sea Shepherd hasn’t stopped all whaling – including Japanese – but they have clearly helped reduce the number killed over the last fews, and prior to that they had undoubted success in putting the pirate whalers completely out of business. The tactics they used to do that were very aggressive, but they also worked, and when confronted with lawlessness sometimes people fell compelled to respond in kind.
It’s usually not an approach I am comfortable with, but it is better to understand the reasoning behind peoples’ actions rather than just come out with simplistic insults. Especially – to come back to where I started – when trying to figure out what might happen next and how to respond.
In addition to what Andrew Bartlett said, i would add that Watson in his biography makes clear that he initially attempted to embarrass the US government into acting on treaty obligations and using its trade weight to enforce whaling and fishing regulations which it claimed to stand by. This got quite hairy for the Sea Shepherds – with possible military involvement in latin America, for example – and after a couple of years they could see it wasn’t working so they turned to direct action.
Watson makes clear he just wants the whaling nations to stand by the spirit of the agreements they’ve made. I think it’s clear from his biography that he has tried hard to get them to do this, and direct action is all he feels he can do now. Plus waving his willy about.
“It’s usually not an approach I am comfortable with, but it is better to understand the reasoning behind peoples’ actions rather than just come out with simplistic insults.”
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Andrew, it seems to me it boils down to this: Whether it is legitimate to kill whales or not based on whether you happen to like them. I really can’t see any arguments as to why it isn’t including (a) ecological ones — if we worried about this, we wouldn’t eat many fish available everywhere that we don’t protest about (just go to your local sushi bar); or (b) humane ones. If we worried about this, then surely we’d worry twice as much about the average life of pigs (also quite intelligent creatures).
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So if you think the sort of tactic used by the Sea Shepherd et al. is legitimate, then what you’re really admitting to is that it’s legitimate for people to use violent and dangerous protesting methods for something they don’t happen to like. Personally, there’s lots of things I don’t like, but in the end if we all used crazy tactics to stop them, the world would be a crazy and dangerous place. I’m not saying that some forms of protest of that manner arn’t legitimate for some things, but whales are certainly down the non-legitimate end for me and any logical argument I can think of that could be used against their slaughter. It’s worthwhile noting that in case Australia gets on the receiving end of some cultural imperialists that don’t like the way we kill roos, no doubt the tune people will sing will be entirely different.
I’m good with the Sea Shpeherd tactics. Rule and law breaking is part of an array of tactics and strategies to be used for good moral and ethical ends. If you’ve a problem with that then you need to read at least a little history to understand how social progress has been driven by such actions.
Note to Garrett:
I’ll call you Pissweak
I won’t call you Paul
I won’t hang you up
On my bedroom wall.
Poor thing struggling so valiantly with the compromises that power brings. Feel for you so much.
“I’m good with the Sea Shpeherd tactics.”
I’m not. Never mind the morality, ethics, whatever behind it all, if you get your boat sunk, you’re basically in a position where you can do bugger all except look outraged for the cameras.
The outline by Andrew Bartlett above is a reasonable summary.
I would also agree that on balance, failing to do whatever you reasonably could to avoid a collision with the Shonan Maru while pursuing your main objective — harassing the whaling fleet, was unwise. In the end, the collision was a victory for the ocean miners, as SSCS will now be in a weakened position to harass them.
It’s possible that the skipper of the Ady Gil miscalculated his margin for retreat, but with hindsight, it wasn’t a good look.
Comment just posted at Tim Blair’s in rsponse to a new video clip posted there on this collision.
This video answers the question I posed earlier.
It is now clear that Shonan Maru was the overtaking vessel.
The overtaking vessel has the responsibility to keep clear of the vessel being overtaken. So it looks to me as if Shonan Maru must bear the bulk of responsibility for this collision.
But…if that NZ idiot is the master of the black trimaran… He appears to order his helmsman to close the Shonan Maru or to issue an order which the helmsman may have taken for an order to close the overtaking vessel.
Either is appalling bridge resource management, and highly unsafe. If so, he also shares responsibility for the collision, in that he may not have maintained his course and speed as stand-on vessel (vessel being overtaken).
He did not respond to a developing close quarters situation as prudent seamanship dictates he should have.
However, this video clearly shows that the black trimaran was the vessel being overtaken, and I would expect the master of the Shonan Maru to be found to bear most responsibility for this collision.
My guess would be 50:50 responsibility split on this one.
MarkL
Canberra
One second into the clip the Ady Gil is stationary and the way the Shonan Maru is pointing, will pass in front of Ady Gil well clear by at least 36 metres. In only 7 secs later it is clear that the Shonan Maru has turned sharply and is on a line to hit AG. The AG starts to move forward then in an attempt to get out of the way and the Japanese ship turns again towards the Ady Gil’s new position.
I don’t see that the Ady Gil failed except in being hunted down in a surprise attack. A king hit.
Conrad – there is a very long and detailed debate that could be had about the points you raise. How appropriate (and effective) is nonviolent direct action and resistance, what exactly is and isn’t ‘violent’, when is breaking a law OK, how far do you have to exhaust all other legal and social animals before it is justified to take more confrontational approaches – the sorts of examples that Quoll mentions @116 and @120 provide just a few examples.
There are lots of other examples one could use to contrast and assess ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ types of such actions, although every example tends to have some characteristics unique to the situation., and everyone will have different views about where the line should be drawn – sometimes we have to accept there is a grey area around that line, especially when you get to notions of when does civil disobedience become a duty. We could debate that all day (and it could be very interesting and useful) but I doubt we’d resolve it. It is worth debating, but it is also worth trying to understand the reasoning behind peoples’ actions even when you don’t agree with them.
I am rarely keen on confrontation – partly because it doesn’t suit my personality, partly because I think there are usually better ways which are also more likely to achieve a better overall outcome, partly because once you start it’s hard to assess when it should stop (short of clobbering the other side into submission), partly because it tends to make it even harder for reason to get a look in.
There are enough differences of view just about this single incident, let along the wider whaling wars, so I don’t we’ll all reach agreement about who is ‘right’ here, let alone the appropriate application of direct action/civil disobedience principles in other contexts.
But in any case – in respect of whaling, this is where things are at for some of the reasons I’ve been trying to highlight. We still have a government sharing the majority public opposition to whaling as a ‘bad thing’ but still talking about maybe legal action – later. And no one has any other strategies which are likely to have any effect (if they do I’d love to hear them). Which leaves Sea Shepherd being the only one doing something which is at least partially effective – and don’t forget they have had some very big success in the past in getting rogue/pirate whalers out of business all together.
It also leaves the potential for some wider Australia vs Japan antagonism to spill out in a range of other ways.
Nabakov, I think we’re agreed that you shouldn’t play “silly buggers” on the sea. And we’re also agreed that a pragmatic look at the reality of the event is more useful than close parsing of legal provisions – no captain is going to pull out his copy of the law and reach out to his lawyer when in immediate danger of collision.
However, the AD was there to play “silly buggers” and they assert their right to do so based on a legal theory emanating from a judicial decision in Australia. In their view, the Japanese are the pirates and they have legal backing. (Legal backing that is yet to be tested, but they have a testable view.)
They are entitled in their view to hinder the Japanese, and sitting stationary in front of a whaler is a hindrance. The Japanese are not entitled to run them over just because they are in the way – however inconvenient this may be to Japanese operations.
For me the bottom line is this:- regardless of the motives and legal theories of the AD (however dubious) the Japanese captain has an obligation to obey the rules – which include an obligation to evade a vessel on your starboard side.
He didn’t.
End of story.
Andrew,
I quite understand the reasons behind what Sea Shepherd et al does. I just don’t agree with their tactics. Basically, it’s opening a whole can of worms. In addition, the type of justification they use is essentially the same as what every other group uses in different areas. For example, all those idiots that stand outside abortion clinics and harass people all day justify themselves (and they’re not even violent), people violently destroy scientfic labs and harass their staff if there are animals in them, more recently people harass climate researchers because they don’t say what they want. No doubt they have justifications also.
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Here’s an example for you that hasn’t happened yet. A lot of farming is pretty cruel and nasty — there’s no doubt about that. It would probably be pretty simple to end the Australian farming industry in many places — you could just start fires everywhere in summer and the farmers would go broke. I’m sure there must people that seriously believe that (and the other things I mentioned above). I don’t want see any sort of violent confrontation on any of those things, and personally, I don’t want to see simple non-violent harassment either. If that means I think the Sea-Shepherd shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, then so be it.
Conrad
If someone with an objection to existing farming practice wants to take it to court or pursue the matter through legislative remedy can they expect that any subsequent rulings or reforms will be enforced?
“If someone with an objection to existing farming practice wants to take it to court or pursue the matter through legislative remedy can they expect that any subsequent rulings or reforms will be enforced”
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No — and certainly not in poorer countries. This is of course just like whaling, otherwise I don’t see why someone wouldn’t have done it in the last few decades. You could victimize a tiny country like Iceland to start with if you wanted, and that way you wouldn’t have political problems like with Japan. Yet no-one has.
For a longer perspective, try this YouTube video which includes footage from the deck of the Ady Gil for a longer period, starting about 90 seconds prior to the collision.
The AG crew are clearly relaxing on the deck, and you can see the SM turn quite deliberately (twice) towards them, attack them with water cannon and then run them down.
Certain commenters on this thread should start rethinking their support for criminal actions.
Go after the industry that Japan actually cares about (and one that probably does more environmental damage) – its tuna fisheries.
As for Quoll and Andrew’s point about activism pushing legal boundaries, there is indeed a long discussion there. I’d just make the point that I don’t think the open ocean is the place for such tactics; the risk to life and limb is simply too great.
Interestingly, local Japanese fisherfolk are themselves moving in this direction, as ABC reported in October …
Note that Australia’s current quota of Bluefin Tuna is about 160% of Japan’s.
It’s speculated that Bluefin spawning stock could be at as little as 5%% of 1940s levels
Has been interesting reading MarkL’s comments on this thread. He seems to know what he’s talking about.
From the longer video on the Sea Shepard website that was taken from the Ady Gil it seems that the Japanese were going to pass well clear (as an overtaking vessel should) until they turned sharply towards the cruising Ady Gil. Thus setting up the collision.
It seems that the skipper of the Ady Gil kept his course and speed, probably expecting that the Japanese were simply trying to harras with the sound blaster and water cannon. Japanese stuffed up big time and rammed which probably came as a huge shock to the Ady Gil crew.
Will love to see how this eventually plays out.
Sympathy cash ‘pours in’ for loss of Ady Gil
Robert Merkel,
In the interests of fairness, you need to update this blog to include the evidence of the third piece of footage available, that shot from the deck of the Ady Gil. See post 137. I think it is pretty clear that the Japanese rammed the Ady Gil. What the Ady Gil crew thought they were doing tootling along without a care in the world is another matter.
Robert Merkel at 138 – as I’ve mentioned several times, the sea shepherds do this as well, and the Japanese have been listening to complaints about excess tuna fishing.
Sorry, was busy. Have now added a link to the extra footage, which looks very, very bad for the Japanese skipper.
Well taht last link looks conclusive to me, and the collision was most directly caused by the japanese skipper. And,it goes without saying, most indirectly caused by the Sea Shepherds.
I can’t see how this was a bad thing for the Sea Shpeherds. They are all about media and perception, and losing a boat to those ‘barbarous whalers’ is precisely what they would have wanted. In this case, the whalers are their willing dupes.
More generally, my view on the hunting and killing of common cetacean species is that if you eat meat (beef, lamb, pork) without knowing where it comes from, but can’t stand the thought of whales being harpooned, you’re a damned hypocrite and ought to STFU.
Common species of whales are no more (or less!) sacred than any other large herbivore that we utilise for our own pleasures. IMHO it’s less cruel to hunt whales than to feedlot steers or to factory farm pigs.
You don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat sustainably and ethically, but you do have to think about what you eat.
wilful, it may not surprise you to know that my Japanese friends are a little confused by the hypocrisy you identify, and wonder why Japanese people should be forced to not eat an animal that Australians don’t want them too (when they talk about this with me at all, which is rarely, it not being a significant issue in Japan).
I tell them the only reason that I can think of for the hypocrisy (and I think it’s the real reason): non-Japanese think Whales are special animals, barely even animals at all, and see killing them as on a par with killing people. I’ve had it pointed out to me that this is nitpicking, but westerners tend to be pretty sure of this position. I think Japanese might just think we’ve been seduced by the majesty of the beast, but in any case it’s irrelevant – like the Canadian seal cull, this is an issue in a few key rural seats in Japan, it has nationalist overtones and ordinary Japanese eat so little whale meat that the issue doesn’t even register to them. Which is perhaps why the sea shepherds have to take the path they have, since dialogue in such a situation is unlikely to work.
I also wonder if successive governments of oz have been seeing this issue as free publicity for their legal claims to that stretch of ocean.
Horses are equally sacrosanct for some reason. In the US, there is a big push to legislate to make it completely illegal to butcher horses for human consumption. Which is just plain odd – you’re still allowed to make dog food out of them.
Wilful @146: “I can’t see how this was a bad thing for the Sea Shpeherds. They are all about media and perception, and losing a boat to those ‘barbarous whalers’ is precisely what they would have wanted. In this case, the whalers are their willing dupes.”
I suspect that you may have something there.
People only seem to act when something goes severely wrong, and it hits a nerve. A bad intersection is not fixed, despite complaints, until a fatality occurs. Warnings about near misses don’t cut much ice. Warnings about technical problems with the space shuttle were not heeded until a major disaster and deaths. There are countless examples.
Arguably, if someone on the Ady Gil had died as a result, then the Japanese would be on the receiving end of a lot more global criticism. As it was, it counts as a “near miss”, and probably has negligible financial or moral impact on the Japanese establishment.
The Norwegians had a long tradition of hunting Minke whales in Northern Norway, and did not see a problem until they had a fledgling whale-watching industry (started around late-1990′s I believe). Now there is a counter-voice inside their own country, with a financial stake in getting their negative image changed.
I went on one of their whale-watching tours off Lofoton in 1999 (my tiny contribution in support of the whales), but have not since followed how the dynamics of that has played out. Presumably, it would depend on the level of tourism jobs and dollars for the locals, and expected future growth, compared with the returns from killing whales.
Why doesn’t someone think of making a kids movie (in Japanese) about a Japanese child and saving a stranded baby whale? Let the parents then explain away their actions to their kids….
Elise, I think you’ll find that Japanese people have a fond regard for whales. Right now the show “oceans” is being played throughout Japan and is advertised with whales. They just happen to have the same fond regard for them that they might have for bears, kangaroos, foxes, etc. It’s not as if everyone in England who supports hunting has not seen the fox and the hounds, is it? Japanese people aren’t unsophisticated rubes who know nothing about the environment or the animal world – they just happen not to think whales should be on a pedestal. And their animation industry, particularly, is well capable of making all sorts of movies about relationships between people and animals (of many different sorts – haha).
There seems to be a real inability of people outside of Japan to understand why Japanese people might not credit our claims about whales’ specialness. Until we can convince them of that claim (which is unlikely) we’re just going to have to accept that they want to eat whales. Or at least, they are willing to subsidise a whale-eating industry so long as the rural seats that depend on it have a significant say in their Diet.
Sg, you still missed my point that there is no counter financial or moral driver.
Financial drivers will work as well or better than moral ones, as we know with African poachers.
I think that’s why the Sea Shepherds bought an ice breaker, Elise – if governments weren’t going to enforce treaties and/or provide financial penalties for breaking them, Watson figured he might as well provide the financial penalties at the sharp end of a boat.
Which kind of makes any current bleating about dangerous activity seem a bit lame (though it may be a good tactic).
On a separate aspect, it seems to me that the Rudd government is being highly inconsistent on this business of Japanese whaling. Perhaps I haven’t understood the connections?
Firstly, aren’t they claiming authority over that region and that it is effectively a whale sanctuary? If so, then why don’t they have patrol boats and planes monitoring their territory? Because…???
Secondly, aren’t they claiming that they totally disapprove of hunting and killing whales in Australian waters, to the point that they are threatening legal action? If so, then why are they allowing the use of Australian facilities to aid the Japanese in their allegedly illegal activities? Either they approve or they don’t, surely?
Thirdly, if it is claimed as a santuary under our jurisdiction, then why aren’t they taking action about the killing, regardless of what may or may not be allowed in “international waters” (i.e. BS claims of “research”). Presumably, if it were oil reserves or our edible fish stocks that were being plundered, they would be doing more than jawboning and public posturing?
Totally inconsistent – pure spin, as far as I can see.
After 9/11, the public has lost any patience with groups using force to try to trigger force against them. If the Sea Shepherds had any legitimate legal position, they would be in court. Obviously they do not, so they try to be little-almost-terrorists and try to trigger a reaction.
The Whale War TV show is a show about hate.
Right, because squirting acidic smelly stuff on whales to spoil their deliciousness and wallowing around the ocean to disrupt Japanese whalers’ task of carrying out unnecessary killing for a consumable of dubious value, but not exactly hurting anyone, is … exactly like Mohammad Atta flying a plane into an enormous skyscraper full of office workers.
It’s the dubious legal position of the whalers that they’re trying to draw attention to, and the refusal of successive Australian governments to do anything about it.