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Anti-Whaling Group Using Drones To Find Whalers
FatLittleMonkey writes "Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd is using aerial drones to find and track factory ships used by Japanese whalers. The group claims the tactic shortened the Japanese whaling season last year by a month, saving 200 whales, and this year they've spotted the factory ship even earlier."
I don't get the opposition to hunting non-endangered whales. The whales being hunted(mostly minke whales), are nowhere near endangered, so why is there just so much opposition to the whaling? Do these people really have nothing better to do with their time and money than harassing fishing boats? Maybe they should just get into Magic the Gathering instead, eats time and money like nothing else....
Also have these people actually tried whale meat? It's delicious.
Monstar L
Disappointment? Things work both ways. But since the whalers are in international waters, they should just shoot down those drones. It's not like the anti-whalers have tons of cash to spend on them.
By fishermen you mean scientists, right ?
I'd be willing to bet that the minute the Japanese whaling fleet took a missile shot at the drone, the Australian navy would be all over them. The Japanese don't need that kind of bad PR at this point in time.
Won't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure that our guns could reach higher than a drone could fly. Of course, those were navy main deck guns, and whalers don't have anything as big, or as powerful available to them.
What whalers MIGHT get hold of, are some missiles. Shoulder launched SAM missiles, if they can acquire a lock on the drone. Drones are rather stealthy, lacking a lot of the heat, radio, and/or magnetism associated with older and/or ancient aircraft. So - you rely on sight? Fly-by-wire?
But, when you get down to it, I think the Iranians have the best idea. Just use some radio equipment to jam communications, the GPS spoof it into landing on the water, recover the blasted thing yourself, and the Greenies are out one drone.
All that said - I do wish the Japanese would quit hunting whales. It's not like they are going to starve without them. Back in the day when there were tens of thousands of any given species, and mankind only captured a few dozen whales per year, things were cool. Today, the population is just to damned low, and we've become to damned efficient. Extinction threatens, and that just sucks.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Isn't there an international standard of a 200 mile influence from a nation's shores, subject to negotiation of overlapping districts?
Regardless, the Japanese claims of "scientific research" seem like a flimsy excuse for the slaughter. Whales are intelligent, emotional creatures like dolphins. They communicate over vast distances. Just because they're not human doesn't mean we should be slaughtering them any more than we should primates.
They're too far up the evolutionary chain to be treated as common food animals.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
So are the Oz folks willing to keep the activists under control as well? If they're not, then they're not doing their goddamned job. I'm no fan of poachers, but this vigilante mentality that it's somehow okay for the Sea Shepherd nutters to run amok when they're doing something politically correct yet illegal is a crock of crap.
Ripped from Wikipedia:
According to its mission statement, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society "uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas". Those actions have included scuttling and disabling commercial whaling vessels at harbor, ramming other vessels, throwing glass bottles of butyric acid on the decks of vessels at sea, boarding of whaling vessels while at sea, and seizure and destruction of drift nets at sea. As of 2009, Paul Watson has said that the organization has sunk ten whaling ships while also destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment. Their practice of attacking and sinking other ships has led to reports of injuries to other sailors as well as the Sea Shepherd crew, including concussions and complications from chemical attacks.
--snip-
Ramming? Really? I'm no fan of the poachers, but I will say that it wouldn't be a stretch to get a hold of some surplus RPGs and explain it to a couple of Sea Shepherd vessels. Would I stand down to the Australian Navy or whatever their coast guard is called? Sure. Some independent ban of loons ramming my ship? Not likely. These fuckers are no different than the ELF or ALF.
Leave the policing of bad guys to nation-states and their organizations... otherwise don't cry when the poachers get annoyed and start to escalate. With two major wars winding down there are going to be plenty of surplus mercs on the market willing to do bad things to people.
Yeah! Terrorism is awesome when it's motivated by tree-hugging!
If I was a Japanese whaler Sea Shepherd wouldn't exist, their asses would be getting eaten by the fishes they love oh-so-much at the bottom of international waters.
I'm not necessarily a big fan of the fact that the Japanese partake in whaling, but I think they have more of a right to do that than Sea Shepherd does to terrorize the whalers. The whalers would be completely justified in protecting their property with deadly force.
If Japanese activists came over and did this sort of thing to American ships the U.S. Navy wouldn't think twice before torpedoing their asses.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Really? Ever own a cat. They have brains the size of a walnut yet each has their own personality. Mine would pout if they wanted to be close and I pushed them away. They'd play tricks on me. They knew when I didn't feel well, their behavior changed.
It used to be that people owning slaves in the South thought of them as farm animals as well, devoid of intelligent thought. If you have it drilled into you that other creatures are nothing more than automatons, then you will treat them like that regardless.