Whaler, Protest Ships Collide in Antarctic - AP

[Eugene]

Whaler, Protest Ships Collide in Antarctic

By RAY LILLEY
The Associated Press
Monday, February 12, 2007; 3:37 AM

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- An anti-whaling group's boat and a Japanese whale-spotting
vessel collided in Antarctic waters Monday during violent clashes over a pod of whales,
conservationists and Japanese officials said.

The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said a 3-foot gash was torn into the hull of its ship,
the Robert Hunter, by the Japanese ship Kaiko Maru during the clashes in iceberg-strewn
waters far south of New Zealand.

Japanese officials accused the group of attacking the whaling ship Kaiko Maru "like
pirates."

-snip-

Hideki Moronuki, a senior official at the far seas fisheries division of Japan's Fisheries
Agency, said Sea Shepherd's two vessels attacked the Kaiko Maru on Monday morning.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021200113.html

[krispos42]

1. Well, looks like it's time to make some popcorn...

:popcorn:

[Dover]

2. HONESTLY! The Japanese and Asian countries in particular cannot keep

fishing things into extinction! Enough is ENOUGH!!!!

[sam sarrha]

3. back in my day they called that Ramming.. Ram on Brothers!!

[xchrom]

4. ...

:applause: :woohoo: :applause: :woohoo: :applause: :woohoo:

[SledDriver]

5. Damn the torpedoes, RAMMING SPEED!

n/t

[Ghost Dog]

6. See also "Sea Shepherd in plan to ram whalers ("steel enema")"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2727007

Hardline anti-whaling activists are threatening to sacrifice their ship in Antarctic waters by ramming a Japanese whaler.

Captain Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said today his vessel, the Farley Mowat, was almost out of fuel and he was considering giving the Japanese whaler, the Nisshin Maru, a "steel enema" by ramming its slipway .

Watson said his boat, currently north of the Balleny Islands, west of the Ross Sea, was now seen as a pirate vessel, and he would rather lose it in defence of whales than to bureaucrats.

/...

[Kolesar]

7. The whale population is at about 5% or 10% of the 19th century population, IIRC

I just don't know how the Japanese could be so obtuse.