Where did, “But whales are ENDANGERED!!!” come from? Are these people really too stupid to understand the difference between order and species?
Don’t answer that.
I… oh.
Did you watch both videos? The youtube link of the whaler’s perspective is down, but the original link from krazykrok still works for me. Looking down from the deck of the whaling ship you can see it would have been a miss had the trimaran not surged forward.
Ha ha ha ha what a riot. I saw a camera on board there, so hopefully this makes it onto Whale Wars.
All the videos seem to indicate the whaler was manuvering in for a close pass to get the water cannons into play, a tactic they use often if the show is any indicator. The trimaran crew seems to panic and the boat lurches forward into the side of the whaler’s bow, you can even here the engines fire up right before you hear the impact. I’m no expert, but I’d say the inexperience of the trimaran crew caused the collision more than anything else. Had they just stayed put and taken a soaking from the water cannons they’d have been fine.
$1.5 million spent on that thing for what? It doesn’t seem to be doing anything the regular launches weren’t already doing. Other than the annoying car alarm sound and the hilarious ping pong ball catapult, what exactly does it bring to the table other than an expensive PR piece? I wouldn’t doubt to discover the Whale Wars guys made this happen as a PR stunt. I’m not a fan of the whalers at all, but this just seems too staged to me. The trimaran didn’t even sink.
For 1.5 million why don’t they just friggin torpedo the Nisshin Maru? We all know that’s what they really want to do~
What a waste. Whalers are scumbags but these sea shepard jokers are incompetent attention whores.
Let’s give the whales torpedoes.
Fucking idiots. Both sides.
This just made my morning.
Ping pong ball cannon?
I haven’t been paying much attention to this whole situation, but it seems like littering the ocean with floating round blow-hole sized plastic things is a bad idea when your goal is protecting whales.
Or is ‘ping pong ball cannon’ a euphemism for, like, katana gun that shoots bullets with tiny arms carrying katanas in them?
Look, all I know is that the Shonan Maru is the un-winnable scenario.
If you try to rescue the Neutronic whales in the Antarctic Zone then the Japaningons attack you and blow up your ship.
If you leave the Neutronic whales to die then you’re an uncaring clod.
What I want to know is do the whales prefer Kirk, Picard, New Kirk, or Jane Mulgrew?
Having watched a few episodes of Whale Wars I’m putting the blame on the Sea Shepard folks. I looked over their website and there’s no requirement of seamanship to work on their boats. Hell, “Capt.” Paul, or whatever his name is, has never been licensed as a captain himself. Until I hear otherwise, I cannot imagine the people that were operating the Ady Gil were not competent to be operating that craft in those seas in such close quarters.
Yeah, I’m calling incompetence, too, Cheesypoof . . . but I saw a few episodes of Whale Wars that makes me think that while Watson is a liar and a fraud, he’s a damn good ship pilot, at least of his own boat. He pulled off some unbelievable (and dangerous) stunts and close calls with the Steve Irwin. I’m sure he wasn’t piloting that other boat, though. It was probably piloted by one of the former Zodiac drivers, which are complete morons. On several occasions they have gone the completely wrong way, taken waves way too fast, and other incompetent mistakes.
Really, the whole thing is a tragedy waiting to happen. It was almost inevitable that eventually a ship was going to get crushed by the Japanese, especially with the risks they take. Hell, last year/season Watson intentionally rammed the Japanese ship. If that guy is still on the seas after that, nothing can stop him. That was as clear cut as you can get that he rammed them. He’s a madman. It will take someone getting actually killed to give the Sea Shepards any pause.
Aye, I missed Krok’s link and youtube was down as you say. Weird how two videos can show very different things - the Japanese one does look like it was going to miss, the Youtube video looks like they made a big turn and came in hard to hit the boat.
I’m going to throw out the possibility that it was insurance fraud. Their fancy expensive boat wasn’t giving results so they decide to “sell it back”.
What you call good seamanship I call luck. It’s better to be lucky than good, so I hear.
I agree with you that it is a tragedy waiting to happen. They will keep pushing their limits until someone dies. I suspect it will be someone from Sea Shepard and not the Japanese whalers.
I have some questions about the video shot from the Bob Barker. I’m curious where the Bob Barker was in relation to the Japanese vessel and what it’s path was. If it was relatively close and moving to the right of the frame it could give the illusion of the Japanese ship turning when it did not. The seas are also very rough and I’m not sure how much that played into what happened. So far I’m skeptical that the Japanese vessel was in the wrong.
Obviously what happened is that they put all of their research points into engine speed and range, neglecting weapons research. Green Lasers 1 and Mass Driver 1 aren’t going to penetrate any tech 2 or better armors.
I just watched the two videos again and it’s very weird how different they look. From the Japanese ship the seas look relatively calm, but they are a lot rougher looking when viewed from the Bob Barker’s perspective.
Indeed.
Saw that clearly from the Japanese video. The Japanese ship does look like it was cutting it close and then the trimaran decided to resist the unstoppable force. Frankly whomever was piloting that boat should face criminal charges, although one could possibly argue a charge for the Japanese captain as well.