Japan’s whaling authorities are suing the Sea Shepherds in US courts to attempt to stop the violence directed by the organization against the annual Japanese whale hunt.  The Sea Shepherds claim that the annual hunt is illegal, but prefer what they refer to as  “direct action” rather than acting through the courts as the Japanese have chosen to do.

Japan whaling authorities sue Sea Shepherd in U.S.

It has been interesting to watch the Paul Watson’s merry band, the Sea Shepherds,  morph from boastful brigands to slightly more mild mannered environmentalists with their own reality TV show, who now claim to eschew violence even as they willfully break the Law of the Sea and put sailors lives at risk. Watson brags about sinking whaling ships. “We don’t give a damn what you or anybody else on this planet thinks. We didn’t sink those ships for you. We did it for the whales.”  The Sea Shepherds still sell T shirts, “JOLLY ROGER/RAMMED & SUNK LONG-SLEEVE,” listing the whaling ships that they claim to have sunk.  Their website store now says that “this item is being discontinued. Stock is only available for the options/sizes currently listed above.”  It appears that they are not now quite as boastful about acts of piracy as they have been in the past.

These days, they are claiming that they non-violent.  Watson in response to the lawsuit said in part, “We act non-violently within the boundaries of the law and we save whales from a criminal operation in a whale sanctuary.” This seems like an odd claim for an organization that brags about sinking ten ships.  The Sea Shepherds routinely attempt to foul ship’s propellers, hurl acid bombs at the decks of the whaling ships and regularly attempt to ram the ships.  Hardly acts of “non-violence within the boundaries of the law.”

For the record we do not support whaling by the Japanese, Norwegians or Icelanders. Nevertheless, we definitely do not support vigilante violence of the sort practiced by Watson’s band of reality TV show pirates.