Protest boats hit Japanese whaler

I'll go on record to say I'm very much anti-whaling, but this shit is unacceptable.

A Japanese whaling ship and protest vessels have collided in the southern ocean, with the protesters saying they will next ram a Japanese factory ship.

The Robert Hunter and the Farley Mowat, both Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ships, collided on Monday with Japanese whale spotter Kaiko Maru in the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand.

The Japanese vessel's propeller was damaged, forcing it to send a distress signal, said Hideki Moronuki, a Japanese fisheries spokesman.

...

"They are terrorists and their activities are piracy," Moronuki told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

The protesters blamed the whalers for the collision, which punched a hole in the Robert Hunter's hull. The damage was not bad enough to force it to head back to port.

"For all this talk about extremism down here, what is extreme is the killing of endangered species in a whale sanctuary," said Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd founder and captain of the Farley Mowa. [emphasis mine]

The story goes on to say the whaler first sideswiped the protesters, but basically says the protesters intended to damage the whaler from the start. Note the highlighted passage. Harassing and obstructing a ship is one thing, but playing bumper boats with one is wrong.

Of course in cases like this where passions are high things will happen, but how about a little more intelligent behavior?

Interestingly enough, I found the above picture on the site for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The protesters are lucky the other ship had no guns. Or doesn't that flag still mean what it has for hundred's of years? Just asking.

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