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The Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.auApathy in the face of whale slaughter
Paul Sheehan
December 10, 2007
This morning, in the grey swells of the Southern Ocean, a pirate ship will
enter the waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory. It is a black
ship, bearing a black pirate flag, the Jolly Roger. For the past five days
it has sailed south, so that it can take position and wait for its prey.
The prey is expected to arrive on Saturday, the day when Japanese whaling
ships, operating under the patronage of the Japanese Government, are
scheduled to begin hunting minke whales, humpbacks and fin whales in
southern waters. This is an area where Australia has declared an exclusive
economic zone extending 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from the
Antarctic coastline in a large swath of Antarctic waters. This is prime
whale territory.
Yet the only intimidating presence that stands between the whaling ships
and the slaughter of more than a thousand whales - the Japanese have set
themselves a quota of 1030 - will be a private ship sailing under a Jolly
Roger on which the crossed bones have been replaced by a trident and a
shepherd's crook. The shepherd's crook signifies that this ship is
operated by Sea Shepherd, the environmental vigilante of the sea.
"We shouldn't be doing this, we shouldn't have to," the ship's captain and
Sea Shepherd's founder, Paul Watson, told me by satellite phone a few days
ago. "If you want to stop pirates, you have to send pirates. It was a
pirate, Captain Morgan, who shut down the slave trade in the Caribbean. It
wasn't the British navy."
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mehr:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/whale-watch/apathy-in-the-face-of-whale-slaughter/2007/12/09/1197135280066.html?page=fullpage.
