On January 6th the controversial anti-whaling mission, the Sea Shepherd, entered the news once again after its smallest vessel, the Ady Gil, sunk off the coast of Antarctica. The captain of the Sea Shepherd mission, Paul Watson, accused Japanese whaling ship, the Shonan Maru, of deliberately ramming the vessel and causing it to break in two. A charge that the Japanese deny.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) was established in 1977 by Watson, one of the founding members of Greenpeace. The mission is described as an “international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization.”
Watson’s tactics have always been dramatic, and he vowed to apply himself to the protection of whales after a confrontation with a Soviet whaling ship in 1975, in which he was nearly killed after chaining himself to the vessel. Watson split from Greenpeace two years later as his frustration grew over the perceived bureaucracy of the organisation. Watson favoured a direct action approach, practical intervention rather than political pressure.
The SSCS is funded both by governments and private backers that support Watson’s renegade, and often violent, approach to the protection of whales. Their mission has also become the focus of a popular Discovery Channel documentary Whale Wars.
The high suspense documentary follows the ongoing battle between the Sea Shepherd vessels and the Japanese whaling fleet. Watson and his crew employ tactics such as throwing foul smelling butyric acid onto the deck of the Japanese ship and sabotaging eqiuptment such as drift nets.
Other methods include ‘prop fouling’, where a rope is released into the water, entangling itself in the ship’s propeller.
The Japanese respond with giant, high force water canons, that prevent the apprach of smaller vessels such as the Ady Gil. The LRAD is also a favoured weapon, a system that produces a noise so violent that even the Sea Shepherd helicopter is endangered.
The documentary is presented as a David and Goliath struggle on the high seas, where good men never give up a fight, and bad Japanese people kill whales. The contest is so unevenly matched that it’s almost comic, and has even attracted a South Park take off. The lobbing of what are essentially stink bombs at a crew that are well used to the stench of whale flesh just doesn’t seem enough.
The publicity that Whale Wars has stirred up has been invaluable to the SSCS, however, and has attracted support from an array of celebrities. The two largest vessels in the fleet, the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker are named after their patrons, the latter of whom presents The Price is Right on American television.
Watson joked that the SSCS had Batman, Captain Kirk and James Bond behind it, referring to the support of Christian Bale, William Shatner and Pierce Brosnan.
It was also rumoured that Heath Ledger was considering playing Watson in a film about his life. Shortly before his death, Ledger made a six minuite animated clip with the band Modest Mouse, donating all the funds to the SSCS.
The video, King Rat, features a blue whale in a captain’s hat, hunting humans in the ocean before skinning them and feeding them to his seal pups.
The issue of whaling has been sidelined, somewhat, since the 1986 Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.A moratorium on commercial whaling was agreed on by the fifteen whale-hunting nations, but membership remains voluntary. Currently nearly ninety states have signed up but support has dropped to a fifty fifty split among whaling nations, Japan, along with Iceland and Norway opting out. There are numerous controversies surrounding the IWC , among them the accusation that Japan was ‘vote buying’ in an attempt to overturn the moratorium.
A loophole in the agreement allows them a whaling quota on the grounds of scientific research, a move that the SSCS stands against. Anti whaling lobbyists argue that the lucrative market for whale meat, which can be sold as a by-product, is the real inscentive for the Japanese fleet.
This battle has raged for over three decades, with campaigners diverging over the correct tactics to use.The publicity that Watson’s direct action techniques have acheived is undeniable, but many believe this has done little for the plight of whales. Greenpeace and other organisations argue that the only way to achieve a long term solution is through campaigning for greater legal protection, through an amendement to the IWC rulings.
Since the sinking of the Ady Gil this issue has risen to the surface once again, and Watson’s tactics continue to divide. Phillip Hoare, whale enthusiast and author of 2008 book on whales, Leviathon, wrote an article for the Guardian newspaper, praising Watson’s Ahabian tenacity. The comparison to the wild captain of the whaling ship in Moby Dick holds an ironic truth as Watson remains utterly dogmatic in his beliefs, and often reckless in his actions. He is a pragmatist to the end, and claims to have saved exactly 350 whales during the lifespan of the SSCS.
Hoare challenges the assertion by Bibi Van Der Zee in her critical article, who argues that Watson’s tactics only encourage the violent response made evident in the attack on the Ady Gil. Van Der Zee asigns Watson to the “moral grey area” in people’s minds that surrounds violence against property. Watson, she claims, admits to ramming boats himself, just as the Shonun Maru did, but defends his actions as a necessary tactic. Accusations against him have placed his mission in the realm of ‘eco-terrorism’, protest that permits violence. Watson’s retort is that he is not protesting against an injustice but actively intervening and preventing a specific wrong. The Sea Shepherd fights its wars by the minuite, and indeed by the whale.
Hoare’s book gives a fascinating history of the whaling industry, the huge wealth it brought, and the irreversible destruction it caused. Watson claims that since the moratorium 25,000 whales have been slaughtered by Iceland, Norway and Japan and that several species are desperately in danger of extinction. There is undoubtedly an element of the ridiculous about Watson and his very personal campaign. Ego aside, however, the Sea Shepherd team, with their celebrity entourage and high octane documentary, is doing more than any other organisation to bring the horrors of contemporary whaling to public attention.
In response to criticism of the Ady Gil collision, Watson sums up his manifesto in a fittingly bizarre statement;
“We don’t care what any human thinks, find me a whale that disagrees and I promise we will not do it again.”
