Tonight begins the second season of "Whale Wars" in which a scruffy band of eco-crusaders, the Sea Shepherds, go to war against the evil whaling ships, by any means necessary. The reviews for the first season were great. Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times writes: "Whale Wars splashes across the increasingly exhausted genre of people-at-work reality series like icy seawater, jolting you awake with a frothy, briny burst of -- well, you get the idea. This is one spunky show."
What's not to like? The show is action on the high seas; ocean combat to save the whales! Everyone likes whales. I like whales. Who doesn't like whales? What great television for those bored with shows about fishing off Alaska, Ice Road Truckers or the Real Housewives of Duluth!
So what is the problem with "Whale Wars"? The problem is that it is cheap exploitation in praise of what is nothing less than eco-terrorism. It is the glorification of vigilantism on the high seas. And oh, by the way, the Sea Shepherds do almost nothing to protect the whales where they really do need protection.
While "Whale Wars" presents a simplistic case of us against them, the noble environmentalists against the evil whalers, the reality, of course, is not so black and white. By international agreement with the International Whaling Commission, the Japanese were allowed to kill up to a nine hundred minke whales and fifty fin whales in 2007/2008 in the Antarctic ocean for "research purposes." Critics claim that this is thinly disguised commercial whaling. Whatever it may be, minke whales, in particular, are not considered to be particularly threatened. Estimates have placed the minke population in the Southern Hemisphere in the range of 200,000-416,700 whales.
Negotiating international agreements may not make for rousing "reality TV" but it has made a significant difference in actually "saving the whales."
The Sea Shepherds on "Whale Wars" are abolitionist animal rights activists. They believe that every whale is sacred and should be preserved. On this basis, they justify aggressively interfering with and attempting to disable whaling ships in international waters, including pelting the ships with bottles containing butyric acid, which recently injured four Japanese crew members. Their zealotry is strongly reminiscent of anti-abortion extremists. (Both groups share a fondness for butyric acid attacks.) The Sea Shepherds also attempt to maneuver Zodiac boats in between the whalers and their prey. More seriously, they have taken to ramming Japanese whalers with their ship, the Steve Irwin. (They deny this but several videos of the Irwin ramming a whaler are widely available.) Members of the Sea Shepherds have also boarded whalers at sea and in one case the Sea Shepherds interfered with the search and rescue of a Japanese sailor washed overboard. (The Sea Shepherds deny they interfered but that is not the opinion of those conducting the search and rescue.)
The Sea Shepherds fly the Jolly Roger flag of piracy. I think that they should be more accurately described as eco-terrorists.
''You don't beg criminals to stop doing what they're doing,'' Mr. Watson said in the first episode last season. ''You intervene, and you physically and aggressively shut them down.'' Of course the whalers, whatever you may think of their activities, are operating legally. It is Watson and the Sea Shepherds who are the criminals.
And where are these self-described pirates or eco-terrorists, call them what you will, based? In Friday Harbor, Washington. Given their arguably illegal and dangerous antics, I am surprised that the group, as well as the producers of the television show and the Animal Planet Network have not been swamped in lawsuits.
But do the Sea Shepherds make a difference? Not in any significant way. The WWF estimates that 90% of non-natural whale deaths are due to collisions with ships, followed by "by-catch," whales becoming caught in nets, and then lastly, by fishing. Only this week, an oil tanker bound for Valdez apparently collided with a humpback whale and dragged the carcass into the harbor on the bow of the ship. Special shipping lanes have been set up off Cape Cod to reduce collisions between ships and the extremely endangered northern right whales, which migrate through the area. It is hoped that these collisions will be reduced by an estimated 74% during the migratory season. Changes in shipping lanes around the world and the development of new technologies are making a real difference in reducing the number of whales who die needlessly, which also does not make for entertaining television.
In the end, "Whale Wars" is a highly dangerous sideshow, which may make for diverting "reality TV" for the couch-bound, but has nothing meaningful to do with "saving the whales."
Whale Wars : Sea Shepherd, Whales, Whaling : Animal Planet
Whale Wars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Whale war controversy continues as authorities board Sea Shepherd ...
Japanese Whalers "Enraged"
The Institute for Cetacean Research has released their 2008/2009 kill figures in the Southern Ocean. They slaughtered 679 Minke whales of their targeted 935 and they only took one endangered fin whale from their targeted 50 whales.
Sea Shepherd this last season has saved 305 whales. The Japanese Fisheries Agency is blaming the failure to reach their quota on disruptions by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
The Japanese whalers extended their whaling season by two weeks in an attempt to recover losses. Despite this, they took only 2% of their fin whale quota and 72% of their Minke whale quota. The estimated loss of profits is in the tens of millions of dollars. With costs increased due to security measures, the Japanese whaling industry needed to secure 700 whales to break even financially. They have failed to secure their required 700 whales.
Once again the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has negated the profits of the Southern Ocean whaling fleet.
"We continue to speak the one language these whale pirates understand," said Captain Paul Watson. "Profit and loss: we need to keep their losses up and their profits down. We will eventually beat these killers with aggressively applied economics." I am delighted that the Japanese whalers made zero profits this year and most of all I am delighted that we saved 305 lives. That is three years in a row we have negated their bloody profits.
1.) "By international agreement with the IWC, the Japanese were allowed to kill up to a 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales ... for 'research purposes.'" FALSE. There is no such language in the agreement. The ICW bans all commercial whaling. A limited number of whales may be killed in international waters for research. ICW rules say nothing about excessive numbers like this -- the "950" number is made up by Japan. No marine biologist worth his salt says that killing 950 whales per year = "research." These ships are whale-meat canneries. They are violating the ICW, whether or not they -- or YOU -- say they are.


2.) They are whaling in Australian territorial waters. The Australian courts have outlawed this, and ruled that the Japanese are illegal poachers. No amount of lawyering or ICW loopholes can change that. This is Australia's jurisdiction.


3.) ICW allows for private citizens to enforce the ban if they witness whaling. Sea Shepherds are therefore acting within the law. They've never been charged with a crime in relation to their anti-whaling campaign.


4.) "Eco-terrorists" are environmental activists who commit crimes against innocents. Since the Sea Shepherds are not legally criminals, and according to the Australian courts the Japanese whalers ARE criminals, the term "eco-terrorist" is a shock-value exaggeration.
Secondly, the crew are all volunteers. There's just not as much money is saving whales as there is in killing them and cutting them to pieces.
So... yes... they are amateurs. But they have saved many whales and harmed no human beings in the doing of it.
In the meantime, if there is some group - started by you perhaps - who'd like to work with the whalers to find them alternative streams of income, then you should do it. Conservation International works on a similar model.
But until that day - many innocent lives are being taken and the Sea Shepherd does good work to save as many of them as they can.
particularly as the whaling is in illegal waters and the governments of the world are not policing it.
You can read about it on Greenpeace's website.
Gosh I truly wish people would find out the facts before they formed opinions.
i am on the edge of my seat each time they clumsily load the Zodiac into the water and a ragtag band of inexperienced volunteers race at full throttle in high seas into the salty spray only to almost immediately forget where they were going, lose their bearings, forget to maintain communications with the steve irwin and invariably return after much hand-wringing with someone injured due to inexperience or incompetence. i don't know how many hours of footage went into the editing of the roughly 45min of each episode, but i'd like to think that these embarrassingly clumsy, disorganized, inept and dangerous to your peers escapades were not continual occurrences.
i suspect the issue, like most issues, is way more complex than the easily digestible and mass-market-appealing good vs. evil that is clumsily-portrayed in the series.
the real way to stop the whale harvest, if that is truly the goal, is to eliminate demand for the meat. for as long as demand exists, commercial interests will find a way.
That means the Japanese Government needs to outlaw whale meat.
That's the only way it'll happen. And the only way that will happen is if the industry is no longer profitable. Now while influencing consumer demand needs to happen on the one hand, the other way to work towards this is to simply get between whales and the hunters and make each hunt increasingly less profitable.
Sea Shepherd does crucial work and I for one am glad they're out there.
You however, have not written a word of evidence in refutation, so why should anyone listen to you? "I was on one of Watson's ships" is means what exactly?
That their opinion as a result counts for more as they have experiential evidence where Spillman and yourself do not?
I know some of the Sea Shepherd crew personally and Spillman's 'opinion' is misrepresentative, ignorant and ill-informed.
That's why its illegal to hunt commercially for whales. There is a quota, it is zero.
Now you can go back to sleep...
Also, the entire "eco-terrorist" label is asinine.
See Paul Watson's interview with the CBC here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_gTBDFTXE0
Paul Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace. Watson grew disenchanted with his creation Greenpeace, and the hypocritical do nothing but witness restraints his first creation put on him, and founded the Sea Shepherds to not do nothing about the things witnessed, way way back in the 1970's.
Bytown links to a radio interview shortly after Watson left Greenpeace and founded Sea Shepherds, where Watson slags Greenpeace, not the Sea Shepherds, and certainly not himself.
If only it was all about the money, Canada would have shut down the seal hunt 30 years ago, and not waited for the Europeans to do it for us, and Japan would turn anti-whaling in a second, were it all about the money.
Spilman chose a man difficult to slag as irrelevant, and tried, weakly, to slag him anyway.
Watson founded two of the most successful organizations of their type in the world, and spent decades racking up victory after victory, I mean, what has Spilman ever done to compare to Watson.
As far as Mr. Watson's capacity to captain on the high seas, well, anyone who has found and sunk so many pirate ships without being sunk himself sure looks like a skilled captain to me.
They are throwing butyric acid, which is actually rancid butter, on the other vessels to make them stink. Wow, stink bombs. Pretty terroristic.
"boarding the Japanese ship".. Kind of implies they jumped in mass, with weapons loaded, onto the Japanese ships to take them hostage. In actual fact, one guy boards a Japanese ship, is immediately taken prisoner, in order to generate some news and get the story out. Wow, once again, pretty terroristic.
Too bad the real terrorists in the middle east don't throw stink bombs, and chain themselves to vehicles to generate news stories.
Since I've never seen the TV show myself, I can't comment on whether the Sea Shepherds on "Whale Wars" are abolitionist animal rights activists. The Sea Shepherds in real life assume a law enforcement role as provided by the United Nations World Charter for Nature.
It is the Japanese that are saying that there are no laws on the high seas.
And the Japanese did not "By international agreement with the International Whaling Commission" win anything, the IWC is rendered dysfunctional and unable to prevent Japan from conducting a hunt under fraudulent terms by Japan's antics.
And furthermore, the Japanese are in for a pyrrhic victory if they ever manage to win their way at the IWC. The IWC will dissolve around them, and what replaces it will stop the hunt.
The biggest benefit of this show is raise awareness that this illegal harvest still takes place.