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Acid attack on Japanese whaling ship

seashepwhale.jpgWhen is it non-violent to throw acid at someone? When he’s a Japanese whaler, apparently. Crew on the Sea Shepherd group ship the Steve Irwin hurled a number of unpleasant projectiles at the Nisshin Maru on Monday.

Quite how serious the projectiles were depends on your point of view. The BBC makes them sound not too bad, calling them “containers filled with a mild form of acid made from rotten butter” along with what the protesters call “slippery chemicals”.

This acid is butyric acid and it is extremely smelly (see the Molecule of the Day blog). Here’s some of the safety information on it:

Harmful if swallowed or inhaled. Corrosive. Extremely unpleasant smell may cause nausea. Liquid may burn skin and eyes. Readily absorbed through the skin. Severe skin, eye and respiratory irritant.

“I guess we can call this non-violent chemical warfare. We only use organic, non-toxic materials designed to harass and obstruct illegal whaling operations,” says Paul Watson, captain of the Steve Irwin (press release).

Four of the crew of the Nisshin Maru who have injuries might dispute the “non-violent claim”. “Sea Shepherd is not an environmental group. It is a terrorist vigilante group that operates outside of the law,” says Minoru Morimoto, director general of Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research (press release).


There has been some glee over the attack in blogs and comments, although I wonder if these people would think the same thing acceptable if it was the Japanese deliberately trying to make the decks of a Greenpeace ship too slippery to work on.

Japan has lodged protests with the Australian government and the government of the Netherlands, where the Sea Shepherd vessel is registered. It has also summoned the countries’ ambassadors in Tokyo to demand they control the protestors. “That was an inexcusable act to inflict unjustifiable damage to Japan’s ship and to harm the safety of the crew who are operating legally in the public sea,” says spokesman Nobutaka Machimura (Sidney Morning Herald).

In other whaling news “experts in conflict resolution” have been called in to the International Whaling Commission meeting in London later this week (Australia’s ABC). And a Norwegian group is claiming, in Reuters’ words, that “harpooning the giant mammals is less damaging to the climate than farming livestock”.

Image: Steve Irwin alongside Nisshin Maru via Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Peter McKellar said:

    One major point that hasn’t entered this whole debate is the hidden agenda of the whole Japanese fishing industry. The whale issue is just one aspect.

    The truth is that Japanese fishing fleets, having been granted fishing rights in our (Australian) waters have stepped beyond this and poached and decimated our carefully managed wild tuna populations.

    These wolves in sheep’s clothing have taken our trust and stolen from us. They don’t steal mongrel fish to feed starving children, they steal our most expensive assets and sell them to the highest bidder at auction, fabricating and altering records to conceal their premediataed actions. But we caught you didn’t we?

    Japan is no longer our friend, and we must now ask ourselves if they ever really were. Now they plunder our declared marine parks. They claim this is traditional hunting, but whaling only really began when they were starving following their cowardly, tardily declared war on the west and their attack on the rest of the world, and subsequent punishment at the hands of their victims. Even then, the little whaling done by amateurs was never in Australian waters.

    Australian’s are often called “bread theives” denoting our convict origins – England’s poor and dispossessed who stole to feed their families. But Japanese Tuna Tycoons are not “bread theives”, they steal from their friends and allies, they are fish thieves, seaborne rustlers more interested in the caviar rather than the fishcake end of the income range.

    Whilst I do not speak for the Australian Government, I do speak for the vast majority of outraged Australians. Mr Rudd (our Prime Minister) is an accomplished diplomat and will hopefully head off this growing problem. If not, we have submarines, we have armed forces and the whalers will have to contend with more than rancid butter. Sheer weight of numbers will force the Governments hand in this matter if our territorial waters continue to be violated.

    When Indonesian fisherman poach our waters we imprison them and destroy their boats. If you act like a common thief don’t expect to be treated any differently.

    Japan is only now becoming aware of the massive groundswell on this issue and the mood is slowly turning violent. Donations are pouring in to the vigilante’s and we forced the Government to send our own official observers. Australians WILL go to war over this if pushed (as reluctant as our Government may be). Beware Japan. This is not some national pride thing, legal rhetoric and stalling will not do more than buy you a little time. Go home and let your fishing fleets steal from each other, not us.

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