Neptune's Navy!

          An interesting vigilante environmentalist group known as the Sea Shepherds has recently become very publicized in the United States, thanks to support from Animal Planet, and I am going to post a blog on my personal opinions about what they do.

          The Captain and Owner of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is named Paul Watson.  He looks like a stereotypical lumber jack, only a foot shorter and with white hair.  Ever since he was a child he was completely against any sort of cruel behavior towards any animal.  He even claims that, when he was 9 years old, he shot a kid with a B.B. gun for harassing birds, and destroyed animal traps after his "pet beaver" got stuck in one.  Now as I am unsure about the truth to these stories, this man has dedicated himself to the preservation of marine wildlife around the world.

          Now, the people that he is trying to expose to the world are the japanese.  The japanese are currently the biggest threat to whales in the wild, killing more than a thousand in december of 2005.  The japanese excuse for this currently illegal activity is that it is for research, commonly showing signs in english stating "Collecting tissue samples" and painting the word Research on the side of every whaling vessel they have in their fleet.  The problem here is, the company that they are doing research for, the Institute for Cetacean Research, has never published a thing, which most people think is due to the fact that their whales get cut up and shipped to restaurants before any research can be done to them.

          Companies such as Greenpeace, which Paul Watson helped give an influential start to, are not in support of the techniques used, and claimed to have been used, by the Sea Shepherds, commonly denying any relation to the eco-vigilante group.  The techniques used by the Sea Shepherds include ramming, smoke bombs, boarding vessels or various reasons, and media attention.  One of their most commonly used tools is the media, and they know how to use it.  They are a big story in australian now, because of the fact that the japanese are whaling in an australian protected habitat.  Where the methods of the Sea Shepherds may be wrong, violent, and sometimes a risk to whalers lives, there are still a lot of supporters in their campaign against whaling, such as Pierce Brosnan, Orlando Bloom and Mic Jagger.

          Personally, I feel as if the Sea Shepherds are correct, because I like the idea of protecting endangered animals such as the fin whales, a prominent capture of the japanese, whether the whalers get hurt or not.  I believe this because they need to be taught a lesson, and if extremes are necessary, it will show the japanese governments just how much people care, and they might stop, or even slow down their whaling expeditions.