Sea Shepherd against Japanese whale poachers. For eco-pirates, cetacean hunters are heartless butchers, for Tokyo environmentalists are real terrorists. The clash is only tough: a naval battle took place again this year, with the usual water cannons and a heavy collision.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Sea Shepherd against Japanese whale poachers. For eco-pirates, cetacean hunters are heartless butchers, for Tokyo environmentalists are real terrorists. The clash is only tough: once again this year one was staged naval battle, with usual water cannons and a heavy collision.
On Sunday 2 February at approximately 06am AEDT (Eastern Australian time), the Bob Barker with Sea Shepherd activists aboardhe was rammed by a harpoon ship in the Japanese whaling fleet, the Yushin Maru # 2 as the whaling ship crossed the bow of the Sea Shepherd ship at 67 ° 29 ′ South 164 ° 01 ′ West.
After the attack, Sea Shepherd released video proving how the Yushin Maru No.3 caused the collision, hitting the starboard side of the Bob Barker. The harpoon ship cuts Bob Barker's course and attempts to damage its propellers during one of 86 attacks that day. The Yushin Maru # 3 struck the animal guarding ship at high speed, causing damage to the bow on the starboard side of the Sea Shepherd ship.
The ICR, the body behind the Japanese whaling fleet, also released a video of the collision, without however contextualizing the images and without visual documentation of how the ships arrived at the final collision. The Sea Shepherd video, on the other hand, clearly shows the repeated and bullying attacks suffered, including the change of course of the Yushin Maru No.3, the direct cause of the collision.
The assault, which began early Sunday morning and lasted a good nine hours, was marked by a clear escalation in whalers' assaults, activists say, according to which harpoon ships approached Sea Shepherd ships shortly after midnight and began encircling the Steve Irwin and Bob Barker, passing between the one and the other ship, in a continuous circuit, for disturb their positioning behind the Nisshin Maru.
The harpoon ships passed within three meters of Sea Shepherd ships, crossing their bows and dragging 300-meter-long steel cables to damage their propellers. These ships are faster and more agile than Sea Shepherd ships and it is easier for them to avoid collisions. But thearticolo 13 dell’International Collision Regulations (International Convention on the Prevention of Collisions at Sea), violated on the occasion of each of the 86 passages, clearly states that “any vessel that passes another must remain off the course of the vessel it has passed”.
As if all of this were not enough, the crew of the harpoon ships has threw bullets at the crew of the Steve Irwin's dinghy and aimed the water cannons against the crew on the Bob Barker dinghy, both of whom took to the water during the accident to defend themselves from the attack and to attempt to cut the steel cables.
Sea Shepherd has no doubts: the assault was a well calculated ambush, aimed at chasing ships of Sea Shepherd from their position of non-violent control of the Nisshin Maru loading chute, to prevent slaughtering and processing the meat of illegally killed whales. Sea Shepherd ships held their position for eight consecutive days, ensuring that no whales were killed in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.
The association opposes Japan's planned killing of about a thousand animals this year, which continues to hide behind scientific research reasons that exploit an exception to the international call of 1986. It is actually a hedge for commercial purposes: they want to continue selling whale meat.
Roberta Ragni
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