Direct Action Failure? Sea Shepherds Next Act

While Sea Shepherd congratulates it's self on an eco win this year, the second act of it's direct action policy is playing out in Japan.

There's always a second act.

As was the case last year, Japan is considering moving whaling operations to fragile coastal waters targeting whale and dolphin populations within Japans territorial limits.

"Jun Morikawa, an academic at Rakuno Gakuen University and the author of a book about Japanese whaling, says he is concerned that because fewer whales were killed in the Southern Ocean, Japan may want to hunt more whales and dolphins in its own waters."

This is Japans ultimate trump card, regional whaling pressure on a scale not seen since the end of WW2, and a disaster for coastal whale populations.

Does Sea Shepherd have a plan for this outcome?

Probably not, as their thin veneer of legitimacy and argument against scientific whaling would all but disappear in the face of Japans navy and coast guard vessels. A similar Catch 22 to Sea Shepherds now completely failed 30 year anti-sealing effort in Canada, which culminated in the loss of a two million dollar vessel, impounded and then sold off by the Canadian Coast Guard in 2008.

Canada has recently signed a multi-million dollar trade agreement for seal products with China, the largest trade agreement of it's kind for seals, and a complete repudiation of 30 years worth of direct action policy on the part of Sea Shepherd.

Whaling must end, but is direct action the method in which long term success can be achieved, or like a water balloon, are Sea Shepherds actions just putting pressure on other animals that, until now, have enjoyed relative safety and security off the coast of Japan?

Story here.

Is Sea Shepherd really saving whales?

With the announcement of a not-so-surprising impasse at this years IWC meeting Southern Fried Science takes a hard look at the "other effort" to curb whaling.

The data reveals activist conservation that is more about the media byte than saving whales.

Are we really being effective, or can whale conservation folks break free of the cycle of impasse and group think?

Southern Fried Science

Sea Shepherd claims that their actions in the Southern Ocean opposing Japanese whaling fleets has effectively reduced the number of whales killed. What always rubbed me the wrong way about these claims is that they always compare their success against the Institute for Cetacean Research (the Japanese organization that oversees ‘scientific whaling’) Quotas. So at some point you have to ask the question, in absolute numbers, has Sea Shepherd really reduced the number of whales killed?

To answer that we need three pieces of information:

1. When did Sea Shepherd begin it’s campaign against Japanese ‘scientific whaling’?
2. What are the ICR quotas for that time frame?
3. What are the absolute catches for that time frame?

Sea Shepherd provides a comprehensive timeline for their whaling campaigns that indicates serious opposition in the Southern Ocean began in December 2002.

For the two other questions, we turn to Whale and Dolphin Conservation International, who have produced a truly exceptional interactive graph of the history of whaling since the inception of the International Whaling Convention by the numbers. The relevant figure is reproduced below:

From this graph, we can see that Sea Shepherd began its campaign when whale catches were at their lowest, and catches have increased since then. Despite their claims of preventing whaling, we can see that more whales were killed per year after 2004 than any year before 2004. In other words, more whales are dying on Sea Shepherd’s watch.

Complete Post.

Sea Shepherd - Popular Culture and South Park

When Sea Shepherds plans for a new reality television show with Animal Planet were announced - we had to the following to say about it:

"Perhaps one of the most chilling departures from the entire 40 year global eco movement was this year when Sea Shepherd traded it's last shred of dignity and credibility for the cameras of Animal Planet and thus began Eco-Edutainment Television, where media messaging and outright fabrication of events have subsumed the horrors of actual whaling. Where dead whales and story lines are traded with advertisements for SUV's and laundry detergent. This is a meeting of eco media and horror that never should have happened and now that it has will change the landscape of the global eco movement for years to come."

No truer words have been written about the ongoing embarrassment to the global eco movement that is Sea Shepherds Whale Wars.

We're not the only ones to take notice, popular culture commentators South Park decided to expose Sea Shepherd this week in what can only be described as "Skewering the Emperor with no clothes."

We have been covering Sea Shepherds media rise and mistakes for the past year in an ongoing series of blog posts. In one year Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd have managed to completely redefine the term for "conservation," taking the concept from quantifiable metrics for eco success to a series of often inane talking points and million dollar media spectaculars that leverage main stream media's desire to sell advertising as their conservation vehicle.

Meanwhile whales keep being killed, year after year, while Whale Wars ratings climb. It is high time we discuss and enable real and lasting conservation efforts. Reality television shows are not conservation, and fortunately South Park has just embedded that idea with the next generation of conservationists.

Sometimes the best way to enact conservation change is with a popular culture backlash.

Unfortunately Sea Shepherd is soon to announce a new reality television show with sharks in the coming weeks. We're pretty sure the folks at South Park are looking forward to that announcement as well, while the rest of the shark conservation world cringes at the prospect.

See complete Whale Whores episode here.