Friday, November 20, 2009

Sea Shepherd - Whale Defense Meat Grinder?

We're not sure if anyone stopped for a minute during the "1 Million dollar big check moment" with Sea Shepherd last month to really think about the acquisition of their high speed Earthrace vessel.

Renamed the Ady Gil and painted a nice black, the self styled eco warriors from Sea Shepherd have been touting this ship as their new weapon against Japanese whaling.

All we noticed were the two giant propellers at the back of the vessel that to us looked like big trouble for whales.

With a top speed of 45 knots the renamed Ady Gil credits at least one very serious collision with "submerged debris" during her life at sea.

"Shortly after leaving Palau on day 34, Earthrace struck submerged debris which sheared two blades off the port propeller and bent the drive shaft. This necessitated a return to Palau in order to assess the damage and remove the prop."

The propellers are German-designed, carbon propellers that are 36 inches in diameter.

To date Sea Shepherd have not provided "propeller shrouding" for these whirling Ginsu Knives of the Antarctic and intend on putting this vessel in between Japans harpoon vessels and the whales. Propeller shrouding would protect whales from these extreme blades while still allowing this vessel to "close intercept" with the animals and Japanese whalers.

Did Sea Shepherd or anyone in the eco media stop to think about this?

Clearly, in the rush to congratulate yet another futile season of reality television, no one did.

6 comments:

Whaleman said...

ss is run by eco clowns naturally no one thought about the props on the Ady Gil you are dead right to bring this up the suspicion is they have already collided once with a whale in Palau and with one million dollars in play do you think anyone thinks at all?

Anonymous said...

Maybe they should consider renaming themselves from Sea Shepherd to Sea Predator?

Anonymous said...

How many feet per gallon that thing makes? How large is the carbon footprint?

...something to think about, while they object to my occasional plane trips...

Anonymous said...

Considering that their efforts are hindering the meaningless slaughter of about 1,000 whales, it is well worth the negligible risk of accidentally scraping a whales back.

Fauxho said...

Well it looks like the season is going to be a bit short for the Ady Gil after it's run in with the Nisshin Maru...I can't believe with those big props that they could not back out of this situation. It would have allowed more money to be spent saving whales lives instead of buying yet another boat. "save the whales"

Fauxho

Anonymous said...

It doesn't look lie my last post made it by the sensors ...

Anonymous of Dec 27.

You obviously have no idea how much damage a propeller can do to flesh, and how often it happens.

The RISK is definitely NOT 'negligible'.