Japanese Ship Sinks Whale Protest Boat Ady Gil

There's nothing ethical about what Sea Sheperd is doing according to maritime custom and law, which is the only law out there. That's why Greenpeace won't back them. It's great to be idealistic, but they're naive. Either that, or they're just terrorizing others.
I don't like the fact that the Japanese are hunting whales under the ruse of research either. Spend the money and hire lawyers to deliver letters and fight them in the Australian and Japanese courts. Doing that at sea is expensive and foolhardy. This group just wants to put on a show and star in it. Just because Australian citizens are on these boats in international waters doing what they are doing, does not mean the Australian Navy should intervene. Politics notwithstanding, if the Australian Navy believed the Japanese whalers were in Australian waters of any kind, they would have intervened by now. The greatest affront one nation can perpetrate on another is to invade their territorial waters. No nation tolerates that. Hasn't happened yet- when it does, we'll hear about it.

Wow, that was really sweet... and "kind-hearted," too.

The crew of the Ady Gil got exactly what they deserved. They went looking for trouble and it found them. They ought to be prosecuted for piracy. Even their captain has stated that they throw bombs, use lasers to point at the Japanese crew, and try to entangle screws and rudders. The Japanese whalers have been very kind hearted so far.

http://player.video.news.com.au/heraldsun/#sxiCQFRrLmdM0xDi7_JKv_Hfy7GtQhpI

Ady Gil gets rammed

See the shocking footage in which a Japanese whaling ship collides with Sea Shepherd vessel, Ady Gil.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/01/06/lah.japan.whaling.ship.collision.cnn

Here's the video...

http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/national-news/adi-gil-pursues-whalers...?

Video

The Sea Shepherd crew number 77 from 16 nationalities including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Bob Barker: Crew of 30, Captain Chuck Swift (USA)
Steve Irwin: Crew of 41, Captain Paul Watson (Canada)
Ady Gil: Crew of 6, Captain Peter Bethune (New Zealand)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aedcea0e-fa8c-11de-a532-00144feab49a.html

CANBERRA, January 6 – Anti-whaling activists accused Japanese whalers of ramming and sinking a high-tech protest boat in the frigid Southern Ocean on Wednesday, as tensions mounted over accusations of “spy flights” mounted from Australia.

The hardline Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said its futuristic powerboat Ady Gil was cut in half by the Japanese security ship Shonan Maru No. 2 as it loitered near the whaling fleet. Whalers said the boat was launching projectiles.

All six crew were rescued, but the A$1.5m ($1.37m) carbon-fibre trimaran was sinking, Sea Shepherd said.

“We believe it was deliberate. Our ship had come to a complete stop and they basically came straight down on top of them. They cleaned them up,” Jeff Hansen, the group’s Australian director, told Reuters.

Mr Hansen said the incident occurred after two activist vessels intercepted the Japanese fleet near Antarctica’s Commonwealth Bay. Japan’s government-backed Institute of Cetacean Research said the activists were trying to tangle propellers.

A Japanese fisheries ministry official declined to comment on the incident, saying it was still getting information.

Tensions flared as Australia’s government came under pressure from lawmakers to block “spy flights” launched by Japan from Australian airports to foil the activists, who were involved in a ramming incident with the whalers two years ago.

The Sea Shepherd group also unveiled a third “secret” ship to help them pursue and block the Japanese fleet, as influential Australian lawmakers said reconnaissance flights were helping Tokyo breach international anti-whaling conventions.

Japan’s government-backed whaling fleet aims to harpoon up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales, classified as endangered, in the Southern Ocean during the current Southern Hemisphere summer.

Commercial whaling was banned under a 1986 treaty. But the Japanese continue to cull whales on grounds that this is for research purposes and to monitor their impact on fish stocks, deflecting criticism from anti-whaling nations like Australia, Britain and New Zealand.

The Ady Gil, a 24-metre (78ft) carbon-fibre wave-piercing trimaran that runs on low-emission, renewable fuels, was the latest addition to the Sea Shepherd protest fleet.

The materials and paint on the boat made it difficult for radars to detect, enabling it to sneak up on whaling vessels and disrupt the hunt.

A third vessel, a 1,200-tonne former Norwegian harpoon ship refitted in secret, joined Sea Shepherd on Wednesday.

A public relations company based in New Zealand and linked to Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research chartered aircraft in Hobart and in Western Australia state last month to track the Sea Shepherd flagship Steve Irwin, the Age newspaper said.

“Instead of Australia sending a surveillance vessel to watch the whalers, the Japanese are using Australian soil to watch the whale defenders,” said Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, whose party wields five key swing votes needed by the government.

The Greens would try to introduce laws banning whalers’ access to support services when parliament resumed in February, he said, though support in the chamber was uncertain.

“The lawless Japanese whale killers are doing what they want in Australia’s Antarctic Territory waters,” Mr Brown said.

Environmentalists accuse centre-left prime minister Kevin Rudd of backpedalling on threats of an International Court of Justice whaling challenge to avoid damaging Australia’s trade ties with Japan and slow-moving talks on a free trade pact.

Some legal experts believe the cull violates international law. A court challenge would lead to so-called provisional orders for

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/302301,activists-boat-damaged-in-clash-w...

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Sydney - An anti-whaling protest ship was taking on water after colliding with a security vessel of the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's leader said Wednesday. Paul Watson said five of the six crew members aboard the high-speed trimaran were rescued and taken aboard an accompanying protest ship, the Bob Barker.

The captain stayed with the 1.5-million-US-dollar Ady Gil, in the hope of saving it from sinking.

"It's taking on water and it's in no position to navigate without a bow," Watson said from the main Sea Shepherd boat, the Steve Irwin. "We were taken by surprise that they (the whalers) would be so aggressive. They weren't doing anything when they were struck by the Shonan Maru 2."

Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, which supports the whaling programme, blamed the protestors for the collision.

"The Ady Gil came to collision-distance directly in front of the (ship's) bow," the institute said in a statement. "The (ship) started its water cannons and proceeded to prevent the Ady Gil coming closer."

The Ady Gil, capable of a speed of 50 knots (93 kilometres per hour), circled the globe in a record 60 days the vessel was still known as Earthrace. It was renamed Ady Gil after the US multimillionaire who helped buy it for Sea Shepherd.

The boat's hull had been strengthened to handle ice in the Antarctic Ocean and been painted black to deflect radar signals, making it hard for the Japanese fleet to detect.

"The whales are worth more to us than the ships, so we will continue," Watson said. "These are poachers, they are criminals, which is why we have never been prosecuted and why they haven't sued us. We are doing the job that governments ought to be doing."

It was the most serious clash of this year's whaling season between the six-ship Japanese fleet and the three protest boats belonging to Sea Shepherd.

Japan uses a loophole in the 1986 whaling moratorium to continue whaling under the guise of scientific research. According to conservation organization Greenpeace, it has killed more than 9,000 minke whales over the last 22 years.

Watson said Sea Shepherd chased the Japanese fleet for more than 3,200 kilometres last year, forcing the Japanese to limit their season's catch to 680 whales.

Sea Shepherd said it has undertaken 25 years of anti-whaling protests without a single fatality or serious injury

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_japan-whalers-sink-boat-australia-activists...

The Ady Gill

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582115,00.html

SYDNEY — A conservation group's boat had its bow sheared off and was taking on water Wednesday after it collided with a Japanese whaling ship in the frigid waters of Antarctica, the group said. The boat's six crew members were safely rescued.

The clash was apparently the most serious in the past several years, during which the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has sent vessels into far southern waters to try to harass the Japanese fleet into ceasing its annual whale cull.

Clashes using hand-thrown stink bombs, ropes meant to tangle propellers and high-tech sound equipment have been common in recent years, and collisions between ships have sometimes happened.

The society said its boat Ady Gil — a high tech speed boat that resembles a stealth bomber — was hit by the Japanese ship the Shonan Maru near Commonwealth Bay and had its bow sheared off.

"The condition of the Ady Gil now is that it is inoperable and the crew of the Ady Gil has been transferred to our other vessel, the Bob Barker," Locky Maclean, the first mate of the society's lead ship told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The Ady Gil's captain had stayed on board to try to save equipment from the boat "before it floods too severely," he said.

Japan's Fisheries Agency, which has no direct involvement in whaling but overseas all the country's fishing operations, said it was still checking details about the clash.

"We have confirmed that there was a collision, but we have no other details. We have not heard that any boats have sank. We are now trying to confirm details of why the collision occurred," said Fisheries Agency spokesman Toshinori Uoya.

Uoya said there were no injuries on the Japanese side, but said he was not sure about the Sea Shepherd crew members.

Sea Shepherd sends boats to Antarctic waters each southern summer to try to stop the Japanese whaling fleet killing whales under what it calls a scientific whaling program. Conservationists and many countries say the program is a front for commercial whaling.

Earlier Wednesday, the Institute of Cetacean Research, the nonprofit organization that conducts the hunt, said in a statement that one of the ships in the whaling fleet was attacked by the Ady Gil, but it did not mention a collision.

It said the Ady Gil arrived on the scene at about 1800 GMT and that its crew threw ropes at the whaling mothership, the Nisshin Maru. It said another Sea Shepherd vessel, the Bob Barker, had already arrived in nearby waters.

The Ady Gil came "within collision distance" of the Nisshin Maru's bow and repeatedly dangled a rope in the water in an attempt to entangle the ship's rudder and propeller, and lobbed small projectiles designed to release a foul smell.

The whalers responded by firing high-powered hoses to keep the Sea Shepherd vessels away.

"The obstructionist activities of the Sea Shepherd threaten the lives and property of those involved in our research, are very dangerous and cannot be forgiven," the statement said.

Each side routinely alleges the other engages in dangerous activity during what has become a cat-and-mouse chase in one of the world's most remote and isolated regions. Australia and New Zealand — which both have Antarctica territories and are among the closest nations to the waters where the hunt goes on — have urged both sides to show restraint, warning that they are far from rescue of anything goes wrong.

Japan's whaling fleet in November left for its annual hunt in the Antarctic waters. Uoya said that for security reasons, details of the fleet's composition, the number of whales it hopes to take and the number of crew members is not being released to the public.

http://www.foxnews.com/images/593965/2_61_b320.jpg