Whaling expedition turns tragic
Posted by ampontan on Saturday, February 17, 2007
The comedy resulting from the standoff between eco-loonies Sea Shepherd and the Japanese whaling fleet in the Ross Sea off Antarctica turned tragic when the body of one Japanese sailor was found on the Nisshin Maru after an hour-long fire.
The BBC reports that the ship is dead in the water and will have to be towed away. As the Nisshin Maru is the only ship in the fleet capable of processing whales, this year’s expedition to catch 945 minke whales seems to be over.
The BBC report is worth reading if only because it provides further evidence that conventional media sources are now nearly worthless for simple information gathering. Once the media was clearly shown to be both biased and slipshod, one would have thought they’d take steps to do their job better–or at least cover up the problem better. Instead, being caught seems to have liberated the media worldwide, because they’ve gone from bad to worse to atrocious.
Here are some examples from this article:
BBC Headline: Japan turns down Greenpeace help
New Zealand wanted the Japanese to allow a Greenpeace ship to tow the Nisshin Maru out of the area to prevent damage from a potential oil spill.
BBC report, paragraph 14: Japanese officials say there is no concern of an oil spill.
BBC report, paragraph 15: There is a Japanese tanker alongside the Nisshin Maru prepared to tow it away if necessary.
Not in the BBC report: The Greenpeace ship was a day away when the offer was made.
BBC report, paragraph 4: The whaling fleet has had “clashes” with the Sea Shepherd
Not in the BBC report: There is a video on the Institute of Cetacean Research website showing that the Robert Hunter of Sea Shepherd deliberately rammed a Japanese ship.
BBC reports Greenpeace quote:
Greenpeace urged Japan to accept its offer. “This is not a time to play politics from behind a desk in Tokyo,” said Karli Thomas, from on board the Esperanza.
Not in the BBC report:
The Greenpeace ship was a day away when the offer was made and has no idea of the condition of the Japanese ship. Meanwhile, the Nisshin Maru is probably in direct contact with the Fisheries Agency in Tokyo, which would mean the people behind the desk in Tokyo have a better grasp of the situation than Greenpeace.
BBC report: While all this was going on, the Sea Shepherd group wasn’t even in the area, as they were heading for a port to refuel.
Not in the BBC report: They must have finally resolved their serious problems with the governments registering their ships and the governments in the area. One of the Sea Shepherd’s two ships was immediately deregistered (and the other was going to be deregistered on the 19th) after they started causing trouble because they had registered as pleasure ships. (Well, that and the fact that Sea Shepherd is obnoxious and dangerous.) Deregistration would subject them to arrest as pirate ships had they returned to port.
Greenpeace refuses to cooperate with them, and even anti-whaling governments in the region dislike them so much they may have told the Japanese fleet their location to help them avoid the activists.
As of now: The Greenpeace ship has finally reached the area and gotten in contact with the Nisshin Maru. The Japanese say the fire on the ship has been completely extinguished.
Also, in a classic case reminiscent of a Trotskyite and Stalinist blood feud, Sea Shepherd is accusing Greenpeace of “cannibalism” because members actually ate whale in Japan. (Greenpeace is not opposed to coastal whaling in Japan.) Read all about it here.
Garrett DeOrio said
Good post, but Sea Shepherd’s Robert Hunter deliberately rammed a different ship, not the Nisshin-maru, didn’t it?
Japan News for February 17, 2007 » Japan Probe said
[...] Ampotan has blasted the BBC for its unprofessional reporting regarding the fire that recently occurred on a Japanese whaling vessel. [Link] [...]
ampontan said
Garrett: I’m not sure which ship it was, but I wrote “the Japanese ship”, which I changed to “a Japanese ship”. However, the video is on the website of the Institute of Cetacean Research, which is linked both in the article and on the left sidebar, and I watched it a couple of days ago. I thought they panned down at one point to what looked like a whale processing area on deck, but I could be confused.
GI Korea said
Its interesting that Greenpeace says now is not the time to play politics when it is in fact them that is playing politics.
Aceface said
BBC is definitely the most overrated media in the world.
It has very lame report on Japan for years.
Maybe they are sending the best and the brightest in the place like Uganda,but not to Tokyo.
James A said
It’s honestly quite hard to find any major western media sources that have any real substantial reporting on Japanese and East Asian affairs in general. You’d think with the massive business and economic investments in East Asia that America and Europe has, there’d be more effort put forth. No wonder so many people are turning to blogs like here, Marmots Hole, and others to get the real dig on what’s going on here.
Hell, foreign reporting in general tends to be a joke. I remember one of my Poli Sci professors in college telling me that the South and Latin American reporting office for the NYT was based in Miami!
ampontan said
James A: You sound like a kindred spirit! Take a look at the About page if you get a chance.
Pirates of the Anartic Land in Melbourne at The Daily Boomerang said
[...] the death of one of the Japanese crew members due to a fire aboard the Japanese ship. Once again Ampontan has a great posting covering the fire and the bias reaction from the media and Greenpeace. Here is a [...]