OUTRAGE OVER WHALING ... #2 <cont>

New Zealand is handling an investigation into the incident because the Ady Gil is registered in that country.

The Sea Shepherd is adamant the whaling ship is to blame as the Ady Gil was not in motion at the time of the incident.

But Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) says the Ady Gil was trying to cut off the Shonan Maru 2.

Japanese whalers say their ship was trying to take evasive action when the incident happened, and say whaling ships had been under "continuous attack" from the Ady Gil and another Sea Shepherd vessel in the hours leading up to the collision.

New Zealand's foreign minister, Murray McCully, has held a press conference in Auckland, saying the collision should be a wake-up call to both sides as someone could have easily died.

He says he wrote to both Sea Shepherd and Japanese whalers before Christmas, asking them to show some respect and restraint, but it is clear no one was listening.

There were media reports in Australia today that Japan was issuing a "stern" official complaint to New Zealand over the incident, but this has been denied by a spokesman for Mr McCully.

Maritime New Zealand and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission are currently investigating the incident and Mr McCully says he expects its progress will be announced later tonight.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key was recently in Japan to foster healthy relations, but New Zealanders, who pride themselves on being green, do not want him to take a soft approach over whaling.

Gillard shocked

Acting (Australian) Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she has been personally shocked by the confrontation.

She has asked the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) to conduct its own investigation and says the results will be made public once it is completed.

"The important point today is the conduct of people in the Southern Ocean. We support the right to peacefully protest, but it is not over-dramatic to say lives are at risk here," Ms Gillard said.

"I've see the video footage of this incident. It is concerning. It is disturbing.

"It seems to me a very lucky escape for the people involved that no one was more grievously injured or something even worse."

She has called for calm judgements to prevail during the operations at sea.

However Ms Gillard has resisted calls from the Opposition and the Greens to send a ship to the Southern Ocean to police the situation.

The Government sent the customs ship Oceanic Viking to the Southern Ocean two years ago to collect evidence of Japanese whaling in preparation for possible international legal action.

But Ms Gillard says a similar move this year could be counter-productive.

"Some might suggest the presence of the vessel monitoring and observing emboldened actions and we certainly wouldn't want to see that," she said.

However the Opposition's environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, refutes Ms Gillard's reasoning behind not sending a ship.

"It's a little bit like the police refusing to go to the scene of a riot because they say to turn up might make things worse," he said.

"There is a major conflict - we've had both sides talk about increased tensions.

"This is the moment for national responsibility, not for the Government to wash its hands."

Legal action

Ms Gillard says the Government reserves the right to take international legal action if diplomacy with Japanese officials fails, and has warned that evidence has already been collected to launch such action.

She says the collision took place within Australia's search and rescue zone, but outside its economic zone.

However Dr David Leary from the University of New South Wales says only a small number of countries recognise Australia's claim to Antarctic territories.

He says any legal intervention could backfire and a worst-case scenario would be an international court ruling Australia's claim to its Antarctic territory is not legitimate.

I don't want you to say anything in particular; I'm asking strictly because I'm curious. And one of the things I'm curious about is how people prioritize the targets of their activism:

On the other hand, whales make up but a vanishing fraction of suffering animals -- perhaps 0.000,001%. Moreover, wales live comparatively decent lives before we humans kill them. How are anti-whaling protests the best battle to fight?

.....As msolga correctly stated, Im ure e have a two sides of an issue here and, I stand on msolgas side that our demands are NON-NEGOTIABLE.

As far as comparing the intelligence of whales to cows and sheep, sorry Thomas but you have no idea about what you speak.

The new proposal suggests not just that the Hadean should be formalised, but also that a new aeon, the Chaotian, should be recognised as extending extend further back in time than the Earth itself. The Chaotian would begin with the beginning of the cloud’s collapse, be punctuated in the middle with the ignition of the sun and come to an end with the collision that created the Earth-moon doublet in its sort of modern form.....

The collision in the Southern Ocean on Wednesday between the Sea Shepherd vessel Ady Gil and the Japanese whaler Shonan Maru 2 has again thrown the spotlight on Japan's whaling activities. Japanese "scientific whaling" has been formally undertaken in the Southern Ocean since 1986, first under the Japanese Whale Research Program (JARPA) and, since 2006, under JARPA II.

Both programs have aimed at taking whales for supposedly scientific research purposes and Japan has asserted its right to do so under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. However, Japanese whaling has been the centre of international controversy because of the global ban on commercial whaling that came into force in 1986, and continuing suspicions that its ultimate intent is really commercial whaling under the cover of science.

In the light of this, and the endangered status of whale populations, especially the humpback whale, international environmental organisations such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd have protested against the legitimacy of Japanese whaling operations throughout the past decade. Sea Shepherd has intensified its protest actions over the past five years, not only in the number of ships it has been sending south but also in its provocative actions in directly challenging the Japanese whalers.

Clashes have occurred in the past when ships have collided and, while there have been no lives lost, there have been several near misses. The reality is that Sea Shepherd has been operating at the outer edge of maritime law for a number of years.

The Japanese responded first through diplomatic efforts at the International Whaling Commission (IWC), raising concerns over safety of life at sea and "maritime terrorism", and then with the Australian Government, arguing that Sea Shepherd's actions contravened Australian law, and now this summer with the deployment of extra support vessels to protect their whaling fleet.

In this atmosphere of heightened tension over Japan's continuing whaling activities, it was perhaps inevitable that this season, with Sea Shepherd unveiling the futuristic trimaran Andy Gil to pursue the Japanese whalers, that a serious collision on the high seas would occur. It seems a miracle there were no serious injuries or loss of life arising from Wednesday's clash. Nevertheless, there will inevitably be inquiries, investigations and legal action over the incident.

New Zealand is the best-placed country to undertake such an inquiry, as the Ady Gil is registered in that country and Sea Shepherd will probably look to the New Zealand courts to bring civil and possibly criminal claims against the master of the Shonan Maru 2.

In the meantime, the Rudd Government needs to settle on a clear course of action in response to these events. A few weeks after the December 2007 election, ministers Stephen Smith and Peter Garrett released the new Government's strategy for dealing with Japanese whaling. There were three significant aspects of that policy.

The first was to send an Australian Government ship to the Southern Ocean to monitor the Japanese whalers. This took place in early 2008, when the Oceanic Viking was deployed to collect evidence in support of a possible international legal claim being launched against Japan. The Oceanic Viking could again be sent to the Southern Ocean. Its presence would help to calm tensions and possibly save lives.

The second option was to seek legal advice as to possible international court action against Japan to halt JARPA II. The Government already had legal advice from the Sydney panel commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare making clear Australia had a strong claim. This was supplemented by advice from Professor James Crawford of Cambridge University. These legal opinions remain confidential and the Government continues to assert that it is keeping its legal options open.

The third response was to indicate that Australia would commence a campaign to significantly reform the IWC and, in particular, to abolish so-called "scientific whaling". There has been little real evidence of progress at the IWC, despite the efforts of the Australian Government and other like-minded governments, such as New Zealand. This year may well prove to be pivotal for IWC reform and if there is no breakthrough at the June meeting in Morocco, then hard questions will need to be asked as to whether there is any real prospect of reform while Japan maintains its hard-line position on its right to continue scientific whaling.

If this were to occur, the Federal Government would be faced with the prospect of having to choose whether it continued to pursue its diplomatic options and reform of the IWC, or challenged Japan's conduct of JARPA II before an international court.

Any international litigation has risks and a political judgment has to be made as to whether these are worth taking, especially when Australia and Japan have such a close bilateral relationship. However, it is often overlooked that Australia, along with New Zealand, took Japan to an international court in 1999 in a dispute concerning tuna. The relationship survived, as it would in any international court action over whales.

Donald R. Rothwell is professor of international law at the ANU College of Law and was chairman of the Sydney and Canberra panels reviewing the legality of Japan's scientific whaling program.

Fine -- let's stick to whales then. But one valid question to ask about whales is why they should be a priority in ones quest to promote animal welfare. And a valid answer to this question is that they should not, given the way we treat animals of other species. Why would you consider this line of reasoning off-topic for this thread?

valid question to ask about whales is why they should be a priority in ones quest to promote animal welfare.

This is really one of those "never the twain shall meet" issues, isn't it?

Though I suspect Robert was, to some degree at least, playing the devil's advocate for the purpose of a "balanced" argument on a very polarized subject. And you can tell me that I'm completely wrong about that, if you like, Robert.

And I really do feel that the arguments used to forward the notion that whales should not be eaten at all (regardless of the concern about species preservation) are hypocritical and logically inconsistent.

I do think that the Peter Singer view (I posted above) that there's no possible way to kill a whale without a very slow & agonizing death is valid.

Most of the objections to eating whale flesh (in these 2 A2K "outrage" threads, anyway) have been about the hypocrisy of the Japanese whaling industry. The utterly farcical claims that the annual whale cull in the Southern Ocean is for "scientific research". Everyone knows this is not true. Everyone knows that the catch ends up on supermarket shelves in Japan. Everyone knows that whaling is a commercial enterprise, nothing more, nothing less.

Then you disagree with Sam Adams, the philosophy within "Walden Pond" and Martin Luther King?

Sometimes a bit of anarchy is needed to get things corrected. It appears that the IWCis a mere puppet of whaling interests

Since Japan began hunting whales under its so-called scientific program, IWC member countries have passed at least 19 resolutions calling on the country to end its whaling. Conservationist-minded countries have objected to Japan's whaling program on several fronts. Aside from the lack of quality science produced from the hunts, conservationists point out that some of Japan's whaling is conducted in an IWC-designated whale sanctuary.