Shonan Maru 2 - Killing Whales or People?

On January 6, 2010, the Japanese whaler, Shonan Maru 2, rammed the Ady Gil, a vessel of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The incident took place at 64 Degrees and 03 Minutes South, and 143 Degrees and 09 Minutes East, off Antarctica. In the attack, the Japanese vessel totally tore away eight feet of the Ady Gil's bow. The good, decent folk on the Shonan Maru 2 then went on to ignore Ady Gil's distress call, failing to render any assistance to the six crewmen who had to leave their sinking vessel.
The six men from the Ady Gil were rescued instead by the crew of the Bob Barker, a former Norwegian whaler purchased and refitted with a $5-million donation to Sea Shepherd from Bob Barker, longtime animal activist and former host of TV’s "The Price Is Right".
The Sea Shepherd Society aims to enforce the United Nations World Charter for Nature by physically intervening in illegal whaling missions that "target endangered and protected whales," according to Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson. In 1994 the IWC designated the entire Southern Ocean as a whale sanctuary where the killing of whales for commercial purposes was prohibited. The Japanese seek to circumnavigate this prohibition by declaring their annual hunt to be based on science, and therefore totally legal. Each year, they take over 400 whales in a hunt that the IWC calls on Japan to stop.
The vessels of Sea Shepherd have, indeed, used some aggressive tactics in their attempts to interfere with the Japanese as they hunt and kill whales in the Southern Ocean, supposedly in the name of science. The crew of the Ady Gil, for instance, Its crew have used a projectile launcher to send capsules of odoriferous butyric acid at the whaling ships. They have also made use of fouling ropes in attempts to entangle the propellers of the Japanese ships. Although the Japanese refer to these actions as "felonious behaviour", they would not endanger lives. Butyric acid may sound dastardly but it is nothing more than a fatty acid actually found in such substances as rancid butter, parmesan cheese, vomit, and body odor. It might not be something you'd want to smell, but it wouldn't kill anyone. This Tuesday, however, the Japanese vessel indulged in behaviour that could have had tragic results, if the Bob Barker had not been nearby. The 712-tonne Shonan Maru 2 began by firing its water cannons at the idling Ady Gil, and then it turned into a collision course with the
16-tonne carbon fibre and Kevlar boat. Putting lives at stake doesn't actually seem to be something the Japanese whaling fleet would shy away from, as evidenced by the fact that this week's ramming was not the first such incident. In 2006, Greenpeace's vessel, Arctic Sunrise, was hit bow-on by the Nisshin Maru. Perhaps Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, which denounced the Sea Shepherd actions as felonious need the loan of an English dictionary so that they can look up the word, and then use it more properly to describe their own actions.
The bottom line here is that Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research is nothing more than a cover for commercial whaling. It's a load of bullshit, plain and simple. How many whales do they need to kill before they find that supposed data they seek? How many years do they need to continue the slaughter before they feel they have finally learned something about the gentle giants they murder? "Scientific whaling" is nothing but a myth, and it is not only Greenpeace activists and Sea Shepherd sailors who say so. The Economist magazine, in its October 25, 1997, issue had this to say about Japan's research. "Officially it (Japan) does not hunt whales, but kills about 300 a year for "research purposes," a cover as thin as the slices of sashimi that a "researched" whale inevitably becomes."
For those with suspicious minds who may be thinking that the Japanese ICR is actually out to make money, they should know this. Each year, nearly 2,000 tonnes of whale meat is brought back from the Southern Ocean by the ICR's fleet and the carcasses are fed into the commercial distribution system. In spite of this, the balance sheet of the ICR officially shows no profit. The figures for the wholesalers and distributors of the meat are, on the other hand, a little different. In 1997, for instance, "ICR officials announced that the year's catch from the Antarctic, 1,995 tonnes, would be sold for 3.5 billion yen (33 million US dollars at current rates) and that retail prices would be three times as high." It should be understood, however, that none of that filthy lucre would sully the officials' pockets. No, more likely the officials find themselves annually heart sore and much dismayed over these figures. We can assume these figures would only serve to renew the officials' zeal for the following year's hunt, in the hopes of finally learning that elusive information they seek about whales.
Japan's ICR seems to have made it pretty clear to the rest of the world. They will brook no interference with their "scientific" hunting of whales, and they are not averse to destroying human lives, either, in order to continue their killing ways.