There's an old story about the Emperor of all the lands who strolls through a crowd completely naked and a child who shouts out "but he's got no clothes!".That's the feeling you get with the activist Sea Shepherd organization these days following their much covered claim that Paul Watson, titular hear of the organization, had been shot by Japanese whalers.
The claim was bogus. Since that time not one follow up investigation has been made into the alleged shooting. Leaving us and many others to shout "but he's got no clothes!".
If Sea Shepherd is to have any lasting credibility in the eco world, they will have to radically change course. Already they are running out of International ports to call home, nations are turning away Sea Shepherd vessels and or impounding them as soon as they arrive. How can an activist organization continue without ports to dock in?
Sea Shepherds eco madate is a fine a noble one. It's the execution of that mandate, under the guidance of Paul Watson, that has turned a once proud eco organization into a continuing farce and slide towards irrelevance.
Case in point this latest event in Watson's home country of Canada. Political theater aside, does anyone believe any claims made by Sea Shepherd crews anymore?
HALIFAX - The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vowed Tuesday to bill Canada $1,000 for every day it holds the seized anti-sealing ship, the Farley Mowat.
The ship was boarded by RCMP officers on April 12 off Cape Breton during the annual East Coast seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The ship's 17-person crew was also taken into custody. The Dutch-registered ship is being held in Sydney, N.S.
"At no time did my ship ever enter the 12-mile limit," Alex Cornelissen, the ship's skipper, said in a release. "They had no right to board us and these charges are ridiculous.All we did was take pictures of seals being slaughtered on the ice."
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said it will send an invoice to the federal Fisheries Department on the 12th of each month, asking for $30,000 for the time the ship is held.
"This will be $365,000 every year," the society said in a statement
7 comments:
Thanks for the update NDG nice breaking story!
We'll follow up with this as long as it lasts.
If you really want to know who far we have sunk in our quest for media exposure you only have to look at our most recent campaign against the Japanese Whalers. While down there in the cold Antartic me and my first officer Paul Brown were trying to figure out how to drum up some publicity since no one was paying attention to us anymore. We decide to send a couple of the new guys over to the Japanese ship and when they went aboard me and the rest of the crew on the Steve Irwin took of so that it would look like the Japanese took our crew members hostage. It would have worked too but Paul Brown developed a conscience and gave a story to the Cape Cod Times. In the store Brown said:
"Though the incident began when someone from a Japanese whaling vessel allegedly shot Paul Watson, the Sea Shepherd's controversial founder, it only became a "hostage" situation, Brown admits, when he turned the Steve Irwin around and left the scene so the Japanese would be forced to hold the two crewmen longer.
"It's all giant street theater," Brown said."
You can find the entire sad story here:
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080409/NEWS/804090347
Well it got my pretty face on the news and thats all that matters anyway.
Skipper Paul
Yes, but here's the rub, hundreds of real eco sites WITH credibility took that story and ran with it as if it was gospel reality. To what end?
We have always wanted to ask Watson the following two questions:
1. How many years has he been actively running ships, crews and budgets up against whaling and seal hunting?
2. Why is it still going on?
If Sea Shepherd was a for profit organization Watson would have been fired already for non-performance.
here's the numbers
1. o credibility
2. 100,000's in donations
3. 0% effectiveness
for the money send it in to greenpeace
Sea Shepherd's harrassment of the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean this winter resulted in the whalers being unable to operate for several weeks. This lost time meant that they were unable to reach their quota of whales killed. In fact, around just under 500 whales were spared.
The Japanese agriculture minister has directly blamed Sea Shepherd for causing this shortfall.
You talk about lack of credibility.
500 whales are swimming around today and are not on a Japanese dinner plate thanks to Paul Watson.
That's credibility.
Pete Sandford
there's another old saying "follow the money", watson and company are under no incentives to see anything really halted, just as long as they can continue to make high seas theater the money keeps rolling in.
"500 whales are swimming around today and are not on a Japanese dinner plate thanks to Paul Watson".
And these "facts" come from Sea Shepherd? The same organization that lied about Paul Watson being shot in the chest that same spring? The same Sea Shepherd who fabricated a video of said event and distributed it to the whole planet as "truth".
We're talking credibility. Right now S.S has none. 500 whales saved, or was it 50? 50000?
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