Founder of Sea Shepherd Arrested in Germany

[Marcus]

It was a deliberate hyperbole, to make a point. If they want to stop whaling, you could sabotage the boats at port, see they disembark, instead, it's all about ratings.

Sabotaging boats in a Japanese port would be difficult to pull off safely, I doubt if they have the chops for that. I'm sure they do want the ratings as high as possible, more money and more publicity. Given the limited resources they have, and the risk level they are comfortable with, their tactics, including being on a tv show, are not that bad.

 

[NoahFence]

Limited resources?

 

[triforcharity]

Ummm, I'd like to look over the Japanese math. If they are weighing each whale when caught, minusing the total kilos sold, then there may be very little waste.

Guts, bones, skin, etc don't count. Outdoorsman that you are, or a butcher maybe, don't we actually eat only 50% of the live weight of a mammal?

Inherently frugal that the Japanese are, I can't beleive they toss out edible meat. Or waste the cost of attaining it. One would think they would sell it to the Koreans, a day before "best served by date". Or prisoners? Foodstamp program?

Or do they really just save the penis for use as an aphrodisiac?

eta: Another thought- Do they toss most of the meat, never having the intention of selling it all, the real point is the whale oil/fat? For industrial purposes? Maybe somebody needs to audit the industry?

I use, on average, about 75% of a deer, and about 80% of a hog.

What parts I don't use, aren't wasted. They are put to good use. I use even the toughest meat for jerkey, and the guts and such for fertilizer.

I waste very little. I usually find someone to take the bones, but not always. What they do with them, I have NO clue! Maybe they have big dogs or something. Don't know honestly.

 

[Marcus]

Limited resources?

They have donations of course, but they don't have an income stream like the whalers have. Their boats are fewer, smaller, and slower.

 

[NoahFence]

True. SSCS doesn't have the backing of a government that doesn't care about its citizens, and instead cares only about their image. Why else shuttle all that disaster relief money to the : whalers?

 

[Aepervius]

True. SSCS doesn't have the backing of a government that doesn't care about its citizens, and instead cares only about their image. Why else shuttle all that disaster relief money to the : whalers?

Just curious, but a lot of boat were destroyed during the tsunami. What makes you think those are not the same float which do whaling ?

Tatsuya Nakaoku, a Fisheries Agency official in charge of whaling, defended the move, saying the funding helps support Japan's whaling industry as a whole, including some whaling towns along the devastated northeastern coast. One ship on the hunt is based in Ishinomaki, a town hit badly by the March 11 tsunami, he said.

The budget request was made to beef up security and maintain the "stable operation" of Japan's research whaling, he said, which has faced increasingly aggressive interference from boats with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

You note that fund were diverted to whaling.

I note that fund were wasted on security due to an individual attacking whaler/fisher.

 

[casebro]

..... from 55 to 65% of the whole animal as sold stuff. For beef I would expect it to be lower but on the sme order (maybe 40-50%). I expect that whale would be in a similar order of magnitude.

ETA some packing plant says 30% to 45% for beef. ETA for meat only does not take into account gut sold, like tripes or stuff. I gues it depends on the country you are in.

Sellable, now minus the bones, because I doubt that a whale prime rib is sold bone-in. They are Japanese, not Fred Flintstone.

So pretty easy to see that if all the salable meat is sold, but it is only 40% of the live weight. Not saying it's so, only conjecture, without an audit better than "newscasters say"..

 

[Marcus]

Just curious, but a lot of boat were destroyed during the tsunami. What makes you think those are not the same float which do whaling ?

The most important ship, the 8,000 ton factory ship Nisshin Maru, would take years to replace. It really is a factory, it takes the whole whales and processes them into frozen, finished product, ready for market. In any case it was out whaling during the tsunami and returned early to assist in the relief efforts.

The harpoon ships were also of course out whaling during the tsunami so they were not damaged either afaik.

 

[Marcus]

Sellable, now minus the bones, because I doubt that a whale prime rib is sold bone-in. They are Japanese, not Fred Flintstone.

So pretty easy to see that if all the salable meat is sold, but it is only 40% of the live weight. Not saying it's so, only conjecture, without an audit better than "newscasters say"..

The advantage of using a factory ship is that you bring home only the finished product, already packaged and ready to be transported directly to a store. I don't know how much waste there is in a whale, but knowing the japanese I'm willing to bet that they find a use for most of it in the form of various products. Blubber, for example, while being an edible product, can also be reduced to whale oil, which still has applications where petroleum products are not suitable.

 

[fuelair]

I was going to start a thread about this. I hope the idiot gets serious time.

Strongly agreed!!! I like whales, I am not fond of whalers, BUT!!!!

 

[fuelair]

Bethune and the Ady Gil weren't even moving. The Shonan Maru 2 changed course to deliberately attempt murder. That can't even be debated for crying out loud.

It is not murder if the other ship is endangring your ship! I would have tried the harpoon gun on them - and I still do not support whaling.

 

[fuelair]

That's the problem. The "appropriate authorities" DO NOTHING.

That in no way makes the acts of these ecofreaks legal, ethical or moral.

 

[Wildy]

Inherently frugal that the Japanese are, I can't beleive they toss out edible meat. Or waste the cost of attaining it. One would think they would sell it to the Koreans, a day before "best served by date". Or prisoners? Foodstamp program?

They can't sell it to the Koreans, because they are not allowed to sell the meat internationally.

 

[NoahFence]

Just curious, but a lot of boat were destroyed during the tsunami. What makes you think those are not the same float which do whaling?

They're not docked where the damage occured.

You note that fund were diverted to whaling.

I note that fund were wasted on security due to an individual attacking whaler/fisher.

They should have called off the hunt, if only for a year. Its not as if "researching whale populations" is more important than helping a devastated population.

 

[NoahFence]

That in no way makes the acts of these ecofreaks legal, ethical or moral.

Legal? Agreed.

Ethical or Moral depends soley on a point of view.

 

[ponderingturtle]

They're not docked where the damage occured.



They should have called off the hunt, if only for a year. Its not as if "researching whale populations" is more important than helping a devastated population.

How would this have helped?

 

[triforcharity]

You note that fund were diverted to whaling.

I note that fund were wasted on security due to an individual attacking whaler/fisher.

You're ok with funds that are donated to disaster relief, being used for anything other than disaster relief?

Just want to make sure that i'm reading this right.

 

[Korren]

Don't forget they took 33 MILLION dollars from the Tsunami/Earthquake/Fukishima disaster and gave it to the whalers.

Not quite. From Japan Times:

Fisheries Agency officials admitted that roughly ¥2.28 billion would be used from a post-disaster reconstruction fund, earmarked as part of about ¥500 billion in "fisheries-related spending" green-lighted by parliament last month.

[...]

Fueled by interviews with Sea Shepherd's combative leader, Paul Watson, the story was misreported around the world to imply that foreign donations, not Japanese taxes, were being siphoned off to protect the cull. In an interview with Sky TV Australia, Watson called it "really disgraceful" that the money had come from "people all over the world" who'd never dreamed how it would be used.

That claim is refuted by Sea Shepherd rival Greenpeace, which has said Watson is not doing conservationists any favors by misrepresenting the truth. "It's about the credibility of the whole antiwhaling movement," said Sato at Greenpeace Japan.

 

[Aepervius]

Legal? Agreed.

Ethical or Moral depends soley on a point of view.

This is the same type of fallacious reasonning which dictate that India should concentrate on feeding its people rather than put fund into research, space, and technlogy.

 

[Aepervius]

You're ok with funds that are donated to disaster relief, being used for anything other than disaster relief?

Just want to make sure that i'm reading this right.

In the grand scheme of thing, I am much more disgusted by a terrorist group getting away with it. I am much more disgusted by people using vigilantism, than maybe a few politician diverting an less than 0.02% of a relief budget.

ETA: heck once a certain relief level is reached, I am betting you that like for all budget, it is reverted to the normal general budget.