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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."
This group was founded by a guy who got kicked out of Greenpeace for being too extreme. Logic has nothing to do with their decisions.
That said, possible justifications might include the argument that the whales are too intelligent to ethically kill, or the argument that the law only allows killing whales for scientific research but the Japanese are instead killing them for food/profit (despite the word "research" written on the sides of their ships).
I'd be very surprised if they aren't all vegans.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Actually much of the whaling has been happening illegally in australian waters, and believe me, firearms would absolutely be the last straw in our governments very thin patience with these poachers.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I believe Watson left Greenpeace because they were softening up. Different interpretations?
The Japanese have massive factory ships dedicated to cutting up and conditioning whales, and according to Wikipedia: “The efficiency of these ships and the predation they carried out on whales contributed greatly to the animal's precipitous decline.”
These are, supposedly, research vessels. You have to appreciate the hypocrisy.
Also, Sea Shepherd vessels *are* vegan, to the best of my knowledge.
And SSCS also have a PGP key to send them encrypted email, c'mon, /. should approve of them.
No wit here.
In other news, Sea Shepherd are a conservation group, they defend all marine species, including Tuna (for which they have been doing a major Mediterranean campaign). You should check the width of their action before pointing out “boo, there are other fish species endangered, so you get no points for protecting one and not all of them!”.
Interesting that while TFA is about clever use of technology in a space where it's not obvious, most slashdotters seem more interested in bashing the group of people using this technology for not following their (very traditional and anthropocentric) view of life. Nice.
No wit here.
whaling is illegal in majority of countries which actually could engage in whaling. case in point below.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7188674.stm
that means, the majority of the countries which have a stake in this, are against whaling. but, japan, engages in whaling on its own accord.
then lets reflect on this - where does the 'individual freedom' stop ? see, majority of the countries in the world find something unethical and ban something, like slavery. and then is it ok if i broke accord and go against majority, and engage in slaving within my own country or international waters/zones - based on my own 'freedom' ?
it is a simple case of individual freedom's limits. there is no unlimited individual freedom, and there cant be unlimited individual freedom. you cant just go shit in your neighbor's backyard, or your neighbor cant just shit on the streets in common space. there are all encompassing rules that everyone needs to obey for society to EXIST (note how i didnt say 'work', but, even to exist), and these rules are determined by the overall level of ethics and morals understanding of the entire society. (planet in this case).
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Actually much of the whaling has been happening illegally in australian waters, and believe me, firearms would absolutely be the last straw in our governments very thin patience with these poachers.
Mod Parent up.
Public Opinion has in the region is around 90-10 against the Whalers, especially after the Sea Shepherd Stunt.
The Australian Navy has been requested to intervene on both sides in the last few years. Refused to take sides at this point.
General feeling is the Activists could prob take it a few steps further iwthout getting into trouble whereas the Japanese have pushed to the limits already.
Sonic weapons on both sides will be the next escalation step. However as this article is about communication and intelligence is vital.
If they know where the mother ship is they know how far out the whaling ships can reach and therefore act to drive the whales out of the way.
The danger comes where they know the Whaling ship has spotted a whale and is actively hunting it.
They will attempt to get in the line of sight of the harpoon, acid/gumsplash the harpoon mechanism, anything to stop the shot.
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.
Paul Watson was asked to leave Greenpeace because when GP was attempting to get charitable status with the US IRS, the IRS told them "No property damage". Later that week, Watson disarmed a harp seal hunter who was clubbing a seal to death and tossed the club into the ocean. That is considered property damage and the board asked him to resign.
A few years later, one of the other founders of GP decided that they had become too soft, left and joined Sea Shepherd.
I believe everyone on board SS's ships are vegetarian, if not Vegan.
The waters they are fishing in are waters claimed by Australia but not recognised by Japan - Australia claim control over most of the southern ocean, well outside of the normal economic zone limits, and thus Japan has a valid reason to not recognise Australian control. Japan also doesn't recognise the economic area Australia claim off the coast of Antarctica, so once again the claim is in dispute.
It's hardly as black and white as you put it - and I support the abolition of whaling.
Here's a picture of the drone!
There are plenty of nuclear waste disposal options that are cheap, reliable and safe. They are just politically problematic.
The easiest would be to just put it in boxes and throw it down the Mariana Trench. There is no possibility of anyone getting it back, and if it ever comes back up naturally it'll be long after safe decay. The problem is political: Throwing nuclear waste in the ocean violates international law, and for some reason no politician wants to start the process of changing that.
Here in southern Germany you still have to test mushrooms and wild boar for radioactivity because of the Chernobyl accident 1986. It's mostly due to Cs137 which has a half life of ~ 30 years. I remember having to stay indoors for days as a child (i was 5 at that time) because of that accident. The linear distance to Chernobyl is about 1400 km.
I would call that very much polluting.
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
There's a narrow line between "endangered" and "not endangered". The seas have grown barren, compared to 300 years ago. With five years of sea duty behind me, I can state that whale sightings are rare, dolphins are only somewhat less rare.
It's a bit tough to find tales of life at sea 300 or more years ago, that don't include a lot of superstitious nonsense, but it seems to have been common for ships to be constantly trailed by dolphins, and whales were common sights. With each passing decade, there are fewer and fewer.
The only two explanations for that, that make any sense, are over hunting, and pollution.
We really need to allow the ocean, and the populations found in the ocean to recover. Why wait until any given species is actually "endangered" before trying to conserve resources?
"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
That doesn't really matter. Drones have the extremely desirable property of having a tiny signature in pretty much any field.
Tiny radar signature ...
Tiny heat signature
Tiny visual signature
Tiny audible signature
These things ... well they are tiny. Finding them is ridiculously difficult, even for advanced military hardware.
Due to earth's athmosphere (ie. the wind generating small lensing effects) the smallest object you can find from 100km distance is about 15x15 cm. That's the theoretical limit. Let's say you can get military hardware half as good as that, well then you can find a 1m x 10cm drone from about 400 km distance. Since drones fly at a stupid altitude (we're talking 50 meters or maybe less), finding them from sea level is not possible at all, so basically they'd need a plane in the air less than 400 km from the drone. And this is assuming they don't make it really hard (paint the bottom to look like a cloud, paint the top to look like the sea, use a light nonconductive material for wings and don't let the engine's heat leak into the structure itself. Or better yet : use an engine that's too powerfull, run it at really low settings, so it doesn't get hot in the first place. Not hard, especially in tiny planes).
(that's also the problem for terrorism using these things. Even over US soil, assuming the autopilot is not stupid (and the RC doesn't give it away), doesn't fly over bases and the like, the US military needs to have a spyplane will be very invasive privacy-wise. But once a few muslims figure this out ... the discussion is basically over, and the choice is between the military being able to see the pattern on your swimshorts in your own backyard live, or random explosions in cities).
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.
Comparing anti-whalers to nuclear power opponents is disingenuous. The opponents of nuclear power are crying against the dangers and pollution it can cause, ignoring the fact that compared to other energy sources it's relatively safe and clean. Their campaign is self-contradictory.
The anti-whalers are against the killing of these and other species, because they consider this an immoral act the seriousness of which trumps the matters past that. Even if you don't agree with them, you can't say it's not wise. And they do have a point. Whales are species with recognized cognitive abilities. You know what's NOT wise? Hunting them. Do you also realise that whaling is banned by many countries, and part of what the Sea Shepherds are doing is enforcing laws that nobody else is?
While sea sheppards were definitely harassing the whaling vessel with Ady Gil, it is hard to watch the footage and not see it as that the Ady Gil was rammed by the whalers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brw6JN0lQXY&feature=related
I fail to see how anything in your comment is related or answers my previous comment.
Also, I think your grossly exaggerating, but maybe you're simply not used to the concept of “civil society” and activism.
Lastly, saying SSCS are cowards is amusing, given they engage in direct action and walk the talk, contrary to many environmentalist NGOs.
No wit here.
So they are both self-righteous assholes and cowards in my book.
Consider them self-righteous assholes all you want, but calling them (or the Occupiers, for that matter) "cowards" is patently absurd. I suspect you have no conception of what real courage looks like, but feel all tough and brave because you slapped a "Support our Troops" sticker on your SUV.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.