Home > Insight

A whale tale of eco-terrorism
By Emile Hallez
ehallez@mscd.edu

The ominous assemblage of a Jolly Roger, airborne smoke bombs and the putrid odor of rancid butter means two things: Captain Paul Watson is on the scene, and a handful of lucky leviathans will live to sing another day.

Some say Watson, who founded the vehement whale-protection group Sea Shepherd, is a vicious scalawag. Some brazenly label him a terrorist. To me, and to countless saltwater mammals, he’s a nothing less than a hero.

Watson and Sea Shepherd were squared in the crosshairs of an international media barrage for their February clashes with Japanese whaling vessels. In icy Antarctic waters, Sea Shepherd’s crew allegedly tossed smoke bombs and foul-smelling canisters of butyric acid onto the whaling ship Nisshin Maru and the Kaiko Maru, a whale-research vessel. What followed was a fire aboard the Nisshin Maru, the death of one of its crewmen and Japan’s untimely cessation of its Antarctic whaling season.

“Sea Shepherd resorted to throwing a large number of smoke bombs and bottles containing a harmful chemical substance on the decks … resulting in two injured crewmen,” stated a letter from the Institute of Cetacean Research, a Japanese whaling advocate.

What the ICR failed to mention is that butyric acid, the supposedly harmful chemical, is merely unpleasant to smell – it’s actually weaker than the acid in vinegar. Furthermore, the fire and resulting death aboard the Nisshin Maru were incidents in which Sea Shepherd had no involvement.

“Although the blaze came a day after Watson’s group pulled back for lack of fuel, and there’s no alleged connection, Japan calls Watson a terrorist,” the Associated Press reported.

A low-resolution video on the ICR’s website shows the Robert Hunter, a Sea Shepherd vessel, bombarding a Japanese ship. In another clip, it appears that the Hunter’s crew hurled canisters spewing orange-colored gas aboard the other boat. The footage is too grainy to be conclusive, and Sea Shepherd claims the opposite – that its vessels were the ones rammed. Regardless of the true aggressor, there were no casualties resulting from any collision.

The idea that Sea Shepherd is a band of “eco-terrorist” outlaws is an assertion with which I must disagree. This organization strives to protect highly intelligent, oft endangered creatures, and it does so without sacrificing human life. Japan, conversely, hides behind the mask of a revolting cultural practice and the faulty guise of research. It claims it has a right to sacrifice nearly 1,000 whales per year in the name of science. Most of these innocent creatures are butchered aboard ships and sent to Japan for extravagant consumption. Interestingly, Japan, a country that indulges heavily in seafood, has a disturbing incidence of gastric cancer, a disease the National Institutes of Health correlates with diet.

When successful environmental and animal-rights activists are conveniently branded as extremists and terrorists, it’s encouraging to see groups like Sea Shepherd refusing to compromise convictions for fear of stepping on a few toes. A vast number of Japanese may be furious at the prospect of an ostentatious-meat shortage, but one thing is certain – the whales don’t seem to mind.

Next time you hear the phrase “eco-terrorist,” question the accuser’s motivation, as well as the identities of the real criminals.