Japan’s whaling ships have returned home from the Southern Ocean and are reporting the smallest take in years. Many, including the fleet’s leader, blame Sea Shepherd’s continual harassment for the deficit … which the Washington-state-based environmental group is happy to take credit for.
“We hit them long and hard this year and all our efforts and risks have paid off,” said Captain Paul Watson. “There are now 528 whales swimming freely in the Southern Ocean that would now be dead if not for the fact that we intervened. It is a happy day for my crew and I and conservationists worldwide, a happy day indeed.”
The take of both 507 was about half of last year’s hunt (935), the lowest numbers since the 2006-2007 season. The fleet’s leaders were said to be “furious” with Watson and his merry band, suggesting they would do anything – including leaving oil and boat parts behind in the Southern Ocean (a result of a collision between one of the Japanese whalers and Sea Shepherd’s high-end chase boat, the Ady Gil.
Coincidentally a decline in demand in Japan for whale meat has left the country with a nearly 5,000 ton surplus, which will be increased by the 1,800 tons brought home this season.
At the start of the season I talked with Watson about his hopes for the campaign.
Jon Bowermaster: Has your current campaign in the Southern Ocean been successful?
Captain Paul Watson: I believe it has been successful. Our strategy is an economic one. I don’t believe the Japanese whalers will back off on moral, ethical or scientific grounds but they will quit if they lose the one thing that is of most value to them – their profits. Our objective is to sink the Japanese whaling fleet – economically, to bankrupt them and we are doing that.
We have slashed their kill quotas in half over the last three years and negated their profits. They are tens of millions of dollars in debt on their repayment schedule for Japanese government subsidies. The newly elected Japanese government has pledged to cut their subsidies. I am actually confident that we can shut them down this year. They are on the ropes financially.
JB: How do you measure success? Fewer whales taken by Japanese? Other signs??
CPW: Of their quota of 935 Minke whales last year they fell short by 304. Of their quota of 50 Fin whales, they took only one. The year before they only took half their quota and in the last three years did not kill enough whales to break even so have been operating at a loss. We have also exposed their illegal whaling activities to the world and initiated a controversy and a discussion on whaling in the Japanese media.
JB: How do the Japanese continue to get away with the whale hunt when so many things say they shouldn’t, i.e. the Antarctica Treaty forbidding commerce below sixty degrees south latitude and the International Whaling Commission’s ban on all whaling?
CPW: There is a lack of economic and political motivation on the part of governments to enforce international conservation law. The Japanese whalers are targeting endangered and protected whales inside the boundaries of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium on commercial whaling, in violation of the Antarctic Treaty that prohibits commercial activity south of sixty degrees and they are in contempt of the Australian Federal Court for continuing to kill whales in the Australian Antarctic Economic Exclusion Zone. There is no difference between Japanese whale poachers in Antarctica and elephant poachers in East Africa except that the Africans are black and impoverished.
JB: Do you know what the reaction among Japanese people – not scientists, not government – is towards the continued whale hunts?
CPW: I’m not actually concerned. I’m Canadian and the majority of Canadians are opposed to the commercial slaughter of seals but the Canadian government subsidizes it nonetheless. I believe it is a myth that once the people of a nation oppose something that things will change. First, most people are apathetic and could not care one way or another. Secondly, the pro-whalers have an economic motivation to lobby for continued whaling and thirdly in Japan it is considered inappropriate to oppose government or corporate policy. I’ve always felt that educating the Japanese public was a waste of time and smacks of cultural chauvinism. The fact is that whaling is illegal and we intervene for that reason and the key to ending it is the negation of profits.
Anti-whaling ship the Bob Barker and a Japanese harpoon boat collided in icy Antarctic waters in the second major clash this year in increasingly aggressive confrontations between conservationists and the whaling fleet. The Tribune of San Louis Obispo has the best report I could find, reported by Rohan Sullivan.
No one was injured in the clash Saturday, which each side blamed on the other. The U.S.-based activist group Sea Shepherd, which sends vessels to confront the Japanese fleet each year, accused the Japanese ship of deliberately rammed the Bob Barker – named after the U.S. game show host who donated millions of dollars for the anti-whaling group to buy it.
But Japan’s Fisheries Agency said the activist boat caused the collision by suddenly approaching the harpoon vessel No. 3 Yushin Maru to throw bottles containing bad-smelling butyric acid at the Japanese ship. The agency accused Sea Shepherd of “an act of sabotage” on the Japanese expedition, noting that it is allowed under world whaling regulations as a scientific expedition. Conservationists call the annual hunt a cover for commercial whaling.
Neither side’s account could be verified. Video shot from the Bob Barker and released by Sea Shepherd shows the two ships side-by-side moving quickly through the water. The ships come closer together and the Japanese ship then appears to turn away, but its stern swings sharply toward the Bob Barker. The collision is obscured by spray, but a loud clanging noise can be heard before the vessels separate.
Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said a 3-foot-long, 4-inch-wide (1-meter-long, 10-centimeter-wide) hole was torn in the Bob Barker’s hull, but it was above the water line and was not a threat to the ship. The Japanese agency said Yushin Maru sustained minor damage to its handrail and hull.
Bob Barker, famous for hosting “The Price is Right” for more than 30 years, said he had spoken to Watson about the collision and was happy to continue supporting the Sea Shepherd leader. “I hope he is able to bankrupt them,” Barker told The Associated Press. “He wants to sink this Japanese whaling ship economically. He wants to make it so they can’t afford to continue to business. I’m all too happy to be able to support him.”
Barker described the $5 million he donated for the purchase of the ship as “one of the best investments I’ve ever made.”
Saturday’s collision was the second this year between a Sea Shepherd boat and the Japanese fleet. On Jan. 6, a Japanese whaler struck Sea Shepherd’s high-tech speed boat Ady Gil and sheared off its nose. The Bob Barker then came to rescue the crew of the Ady Gil, which sank a day later.
Sea Shepherd and the whalers have faced off in Antarctic waters for the past few years over Japan’s annual whale hunt, with each side accusing the other of acting in increasingly dangerous ways. Sea Shepherd activists try to block the whalers from firing harpoons, and they dangle ropes in the water to try to snarl the Japanese ships’ propellers. They also hurl packets of stinking rancid butter at their rivals. The whalers have responded by firing water cannons and sonar devices meant to disorient the activists. Collisions have occurred occasionally.
On Saturday, the Bob Barker found the whaling fleet for the first time since the Ady Gil clash, Watson said. Watson said by satellite telephone on Saturday that the Bob Barker took up a position behind the Nisshin Maru – the Japanese factory ship where dead whales are hauled aboard and butchered – so the four harpoon vessels could not reach it. “The harpoon ships started circling like sharks,” Watson said from his ship, the Steve Irwin. “They were making near passes to the stern and the bow of the Bob Barker, then the Yushin Maru 3 intentionally rammed the Bob Barker.” Welders aboard the ship were patching the hole, and the Bob Barker would resume its pursuit of the whalers, Watson said.
The Japanese fisheries agency said the Bob Barker came to too close to the Yushin Maru 3, which “immediately moved away to avert a collision, but it was grazed in its tail area.” The governments of Australia and New Zealand, which have responsibility for maritime rescue in the area where the hunt is usually conducted, say the fight between the two sides is becoming increasingly dangerous.
Spent a fantastic-if-occasionally-soggy weekend in Nevada City, California, roaming from venue to venue at the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, watching new films and re-watching a couple recent classics. We also showed two films – TERRA ANTARCTICA and the ‘premiere’ of WHAT WOULD DARWIN THINK? Man v. Nature in the Galapagos – to great response. My favorites were two: THE AGE OF STUPID and PICKIN’ AND TRIMMIN.’ The former, by British director Fanny Armstrong, is a look back at 2008 from the vantage point of 2050. The big question in retrospect becomes “What were you guys thinking, to have acknowledged environmental ills but done nothing-to-little to stop or cure them?” Thus, the Age of Stupid. (The line itself is spoken by a Louisiana oilman who loses his home to Katrina.)
‘PICKIN’ is a much smaller film, a short about the goings on at a simple North Carolina barber shop where musicians also gather to play (mandolins, guitars, violins) on a regular basis. The wry comments of the pair of barbers who host the shop – interviewed on a bench in front of their shop, waving to passersby as they gab – suggest that in some parts of the world little has changed in the past fifty years which in this case is a good thing. The focus is on community, and a weekly ear-lifting haircut.
I also saw for a second time the moving film about dolphin slaughtering in Japan (THE COVE) and a bio-pic of Sea Shepherd chief Paul Watson, (PIRATE FOR THE SEA) amazing for its collection of archival footage of Paul over the past thirty-plus years. While you may argue Paul and Sea Shepherd’s tactics, you cannot contend with his commitment: He’s been espousing the same message since the mid-1970s, to any cameraman or reporter who will listen!
Captain Paul Watson and his band of merry whale-hunters from Sea Shepherd took a big hit last week when their $2 million “attack” boat the Andy Gil was run over by a five-hundred-ton Japanese whaling ship. Video of the incident shows the Batmobile-like trimaran – made of carbon fiber and Kevlar, designed to pierce the rough seas of the Southern Ocean – baiting the bigger ship, being cascaded by fire hoses and then being landed on.
Its bow severely damaged, though none of its six-person crew seriously injured, the Shepherd’s main ship, the Bob Barker (the boats are named for their prime funders, in this case Gil – a Hollywood set designer – and Barker – longtime host of “The Price is Right”) attempted to tow it to a French science base on the Antarctic continent, but it sank along the way. Sea Shepherd assures that the seventy-foot boat had been drained of fuel and oil before it sank. The accident occurred about two hundred miles off the coast of Antarctica.
Sea Shepherd is on the Ross Sea harassing Japanese whalers for the fourth consecutive season; on board is a film crew from the Animal Planet show “Whale Wars” for which the accident should provide plenty of promo material for next season. Has the accident dissuaded the Japanese from continuing their questionable whale hunting? Not at all. In fact, they are suing Sea Shepherd for “piracy.”
Before the season began down south I talked with Paul about what he expected this year:
Has your current campaign in the Southern Ocean been successful?
Captain Paul Watson: I believe it has been successful. Our strategy is an economic one. I don’t believe the Japanese whalers will back off on moral, ethical or scientific grounds but they will quit if they lose the one thing that is of most value to them – their profits. Our objective is to sink the Japanese whaling fleet – economically, to bankrupt them and we are doing that.
We have slashed their kill quotas in half over the last three years and negated their profits. They are tens of millions of dollars in debt on their repayment schedule for Japanese government subsidies. The newly elected Japanese government has pledged to cut their subsidies.
I am actually confident that we can shut them down this year. They are on the ropes financially.
JB: How do you measure success? Fewer whales taken by Japanese? Other signs??
CPW: Of their quota of 935 Minke whales last year they fell short by 304. Of their quota of 50 Fin whales, they took only one. The year before they only took half their quota and in the last three years did not kill enough whales to break even so have been operating at a loss. We have also exposed their illegal whaling activities to the world and initiated a controversy and a discussion on whaling in the Japanese media.
JB: How do the Japanese continue to get away with the whale hunt when so many things say they shouldn’t, i.e. the Antarctica Treaty forbidding commerce below sixty degrees south latitude and the International Whaling Commission’s ban on all whaling?
CPW: There is a lack of economic and political motivation on the part of governments to enforce international conservation law. The Japanese whalers are targeting endangered and protected whales inside the boundaries of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in violation of a global moratorium on commercial whaling, in violation of the Antarctic Treaty that prohibits commercial activity south of sixty degrees and they are in contempt of the Australian Federal Court for continuing to kill whales in the Australian Antarctic Economic Exclusion Zone. There is no difference between Japanese whale poachers in Antarctica and elephant poachers in East Africa except that the Africans are black and impoverished.
JB: Do you know what the reaction among Japanese people – not scientists, not government – is towards the continued whale hunts?
CPW: I’m not actually concerned. I’m Canadian and the majority of Canadians are opposed to the commercial slaughter of seals but the Canadian government subsidizes it nonetheless. I believe it is a myth that once the people of a nation oppose something that things will change. First, most people are apathetic and could not care one way or another. Secondly, the pro-whalers have an economic motivation to lobby for continued whaling and thirdly in Japan it is considered inappropriate to oppose government or corporate policy. I’ve always felt that educating the Japanese public was a waste of time and smacks of cultural chauvinism. The fact is that whaling is illegal and we intervene for that reason and the key to ending it is the negation of profits.
While Sea Shepherd’s chief cheerleader and trouble-inspirer Paul Watson is holding forth from his ship, The Farley Mowat, continuing its chase of Japanese whale hunters off Antarctica and (recently) being arrested on a thirty-year-old warrant in Portugal (where he had gone to attend a meeting of the International Whaling Commission) … the Washington state-based environmental group’s second-most visible campaign is ongoing, in the Galapagos.
From a very prominent, second-story office just across from the main fishing dock on Santa Cruz Alex Cornellisen manages the Shepherd’s Galapagos operation. At the moment, it is a two-person band. His focus is on trying to keep a global audience alerted to issues of over fishing and illegal fishing. To that end the group has already donated a boat to the park rangers, to help them enforce the marine reserves rules and regulations. A veteran of Sheperd’s Antarctica campaigns, Cornellisen is happy to be in the slightly less-amped environment of Galapagos. That said, his predecessor was chased out of the country when the shark fin “mafia” put a hit out on him.
“In Ecuador you can get someone killed for $40,” says Cornellisen, standing on the balcony of his office, looking down at the main dock where small fishing boats are unloading legal catches. “So you have to take threats seriously here.” His primary concern about the Galapagos is that while there are plenty of rules against illegal fishing, enforcement is difficult.
“Last year we were responsible for several raids which resulted in the confiscation of about ninety thousand sea cucumbers, and about thirty thousand shark fins. But there is an enormous amount of illegal fishing that still continues. For example, the legal quota for sea cucumbers last year was about two million allowed to be taken out of the park. Only about 1.2 million were reported, yet there was an increase in illegally caught and confiscated sea cucumbers. What was not being reported just ended up being sold in the illegal markets.
“It’s not just a few Galapaganians doing the illegal fishing. There’s a big group from the north, from Costa Rica, that comes here to take shark fins. They catch them within the park’s marine reserve and then take them out of the supposedly protected waters where they are sold mostly to Asian countries, like Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
“All this shark finning has an impact on tourism, not just the fish population. If there are fewer sharks to observe, there will one day be fewer tourists coming to see them. Without sharks the whole ecosystem will crumble and then the question is will tourists continue to come to the Galapagos?
“Enforcement in the Galapagos is not as efficient as Sea Shehperd would like to see.Plus, there’s a lot of corruption in the local Navy. Sometimes the Navy will alert illegal fishermen that the park officials are in the area.I’ve been coming to the Galapagos ever since I first joined Sea Shepherd in 2002 and every time I come, for a month or so, we catch poachers. So it is possible. They are absolutely out there and we know how to find them and pass the information on to the park. But the Navy often warns off the poachers so that by the time the park rangers arrive … they are gone.
“Unfortunately we don’t have any jurisdiction to apprehend the poachers, so all we can do is notify the park and start pulling in the long lines, which is mostly what they use to fish for sharks.
“I think it would certainly help if the park rangers were armed. If you go to a supermarket in Quito you see a security guard with a gun protecting bags of potatoes. Here we have this beautiful pristine ecosystem called the Galapagos Islands, and the park rangers have absolutely no jurisdiction whatsoever, they are not even allowed to carry batons. I think that the park rangers should definitely be armed. I think if the word got out to the illegal fishermen that the park rangers were armed and capable of making arrests, I think it would be a lot harder for poachers to come in here and take sharks or any other species.”
Like so many parts of our still-protected world, in Galapagos it is sometimes easy to get swamped by what’s gone wrong with the place and overlook its uniqueness. Our new film, “What Would Darwin Think,” attempts to show both. Obviously the close to 200,000 tourists who arrive each year are coming for good reason – Galapagos offers the most spectacular glimpse of biodiversity on the planet. Albatross, boobies, finches and mockingbirds; iguanas, tortoises and penguins; sharks, dolphins and hundreds of species of fish. And more. Everywhere – everywhere — you look.
While I’ve been focused these past couple weeks on some of the ills besetting this truly special place – too many tourists, too many locals, shark finning, sea cucumber poaching, etc. — I’ve just put up some reminders of why Galapagos is such a draw. Photo galleries from Santa Cruz are up now: A peek at the natural world archives at the Charles Darwin Center; a look at local’s life and tourist life; the fish market and some of the incredible beauty. During the week we’ll add more photos from Santa Cruz, of Sea Shepherd’s operation and a recent protest by tourist operators plus beauty shots from seven more islands – Bartolome, Espanola, Fernandina, Isabella, North Seymour, Plaza and Santiago. If you can think of a place with more creatures per square meter … let me know.
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