Sea Shepherd v the Institute of Cretinous Research

Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, February 4th, 2014 - 31 comments
Categories: Conservation, Environment, uncategorized - Tags: , , ,

Sea Shephere Japanese whaling boat copy

I blogged about this previously.  Whaling is back in the news.  The Japanese continue in the scientific research of the number of whales remaining by slaughtering them and offering them up as food.  The Sea Shepherd is fighting the good fight or engaging in terrorist activities, depending on your world view.

Claims and counterclaims about sabotage and intentional damage have recently been raised by the parties.  The Institute for Cetacean Research’s spokesperson Glenn Inwood has entered into the fray.

He is one of those really annoying PR types who maintain that his client is completely innocent and the other side is totally in the wrong.  There are absolutely no shades of grey for Glenn.

Two days ago he was quoted as saying that Sea Shepherd has a history of making up stories and he very much doubts the veracity of the Sea Shepherd claims.  At the time he had not heard from either of the Japanese ships.  It is interesting that he should accuse an organisation of lying when he did not have any information to base this on.

Inwood was interviewed yesterday morning on Radio New Zealand.  He made some more startling claims.

He first said that everyone can be very clear that nothing said by the Bob Barker Skipper Peter Hammerstead was true.  Wow nothing at all.  That is some feat.  Hammerstead had claimed that three Japanese harpoon vehicles had attacked its ships the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker, dragged steel cables across the bow of the ships in an attempt to damage the propeller and/or rudder, turned water cannon on the ships and that the Yushan Maru had deliberately rammed the bow of the Bob Barker.  And there was film showing Japanese boats towing metal cable and cutting in front of the Bob Barker so you would think that Inwood would have to concede that at least this claim was true.

Inwood claimed that the release of the unedited footage of the incident clearly demonstrates the falsehood of Sea Shepherd’s claim and that the Bob Barker clearly steered into the Yushin Maru.  Well an expert has looked at it and said that the collision was probably unintentional.  And when you look at both videos you do wonder about who steered into who.

Inwood also said that an examination by Maritime New Zealand clearly showed that four years ago another Sea Shepherd boat, the Ady Gil, steered itself into the path of the Japanese vessel.  Well I call bullshit on this claim.

This is the map from the Maritime NZ Report on the sinking of Ady Gil.

Ady Gil Shonan maru tracking diagram

The closer the dots, the slower the boat.  The Ady Gil’s course is in green, the Shonan Maru’s course is in purple and the Sea Shepherd’s course is in red.

Inwood at the time said at the time that “The Shonan Maru steams to port to avoid a collision. I guess they, the Ady Gil, miscalculated.”  Clearly he is wrong.  The diagram clearly shows the Shonan Maru turning starboard and approaching an almost stationary Ady Gil at speed.

There is this comment in the body of the report:

93.  The information available suggests that, when Shonan Maru No. 2 was approximately 130 metres away from Ady Gil, Shonan Maru No. 2 steered so as to alter her track line some 13o degrees starboard (that is, from about 350o(T) to 014o(T). This alteration of course by Shonan Maru No. 2 rendered a close quarters situation inevitable in the absence of either a further change of course by Shonan Maru No. 2 or a change of course by Ady Gil.

Get that Glenn?  The report said that it was the alteration of course by the Shonan Maru No 2 that “rendered a close quarters situation inevitable” barring a change of course by either of the boats.  If you want to see video of the collision it is here.

In the recent interview Inwood claimed that the trailing of the ropes is apparently to stop the Bob Barker from approaching it.  He could not confirm the number of times that the Japanese ship passed in front of the Bob Barker.  If the lines were merely defensive it makes you wonder why the Japanese ship had to sail past the Bob Barker at all.  And if he did not know the number of times the Japanese ship passed in front of the Bob Barker you have to wonder at his claim that Hammerstead could not be believed when he said this was 41 times.

Finally when asked when the scientific research into whales would be finished Inwood said that it is a long term research project and there is not an end date.

When the final whale is killed I wonder if the Japanese will then agree that they have conducted enough research.

31 comments on “Sea Shepherd v the Institute of Cretinous Research ”

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  1. Sanctuary 1
    4 February 2014 at 12:00 pm

    Glenn Inwood is a nice little Quisling, I hope the pay makes it worthwhile.

    • grumpy 1.1
      4 February 2014 at 2:06 pm

      ….sometime commenting here as Winston Smith……

    • SHG (not Colonial Viper) 1.2
      4 February 2014 at 3:21 pm

      Glenn Innwood, former Beehive staffer and Press Secretary to Lianne Dalziel during the last Labour Government.

      The Institute for Cetacean Research’s spokesperson Glenn Inwood has entered into the fray.

      He is one of those really annoying PR types who maintain that his client is completely innocent and the other side is totally in the wrong.

      • mickysavage 1.2.1
        4 February 2014 at 4:12 pm

        Wow right you are SHG.

        • adam 1.2.1.1
          4 February 2014 at 4:41 pm

          I wonder if he believes Captain Kirk will save the day and bring whales from 1984 to the future. What was the name of that movie again?

      • Tracey 1.2.2
        4 February 2014 at 4:19 pm

        Oh I see what you did there. You’re really clever. Thanks for your insightful contribution to the discussion

      • QoT 1.2.3
        4 February 2014 at 9:40 pm

        Christ, the plot thickens:
        http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=153425

        … Helen Clark said yesterday that his attendance would be inappropriate because it was a meeting of the World Council of Whalers.

        The council was “widely believed to receive most of its core funding from commercial whaling interests and we know that those in countries like Japan are working to try and stop the moratorium on whaling and to get back into commercial whaling to supply meat to the dinner tables of their countries,” Helen Clark told National Radio.

        But Mr Inwood said he did not support commercial whaling.

        “Maori don’t want to go commercial whaling and I think that’s what the Prime Minister’s getting confused with.”

        You say “confused”, I say “prescient”.

    • thechangeling 1.3
      4 February 2014 at 4:22 pm

      Quisling is defined as a ‘collaborator with the enemy’ which is great cos i learnt a new word today!
      I think there’s a few of those types around in the neo lib environment these days unfortunately. Thanks for the new word!

    • rhinocrates 1.4
      5 February 2014 at 8:48 pm

      Just like Hooton. Has anyone ever seen them in the same room at the same time?

  2. greywarbler 2
    4 February 2014 at 12:10 pm

    MS Very apposite headline. And good image.

    Finally when asked when the scientific research into whales would be finished Inwood said that it is a long term research project and there is not an end date.

    It is likely the most truthful and factual statement he has made to the public on this issue.

  3. Ad 3
    4 February 2014 at 12:37 pm

    If I ruled the world any Japanese whaler within our EEZ would be boarded, its crew arrested and re-trained into Whalewatch guides, the boat melted down in to a giant whale sculpture and shipped back to Tokyo, and Glenn the PR guy would be confined to volunteering for life looking after puppies at the SPCA.

    And great find of Blue Whales off Farewell Spit. Hopefully there’s tourist flights starting soon out of Wellington.

  4. greywarbler 4
    4 February 2014 at 1:28 pm

    Are the Blue Whales safe from the Japanese? I don’t think they are on their radar are they?

    • Murray Olsen 4.1
      6 February 2014 at 12:19 am

      Blue whales are not one of the target species for the Japanese “researchers”. They mostly go after minke, a smaller species, and maybe humpbacks. There was a huge outcry in Australia a few years ago when the “researchers” suggested going after humpbacks because of an albino humpback called Migaloo. “The Japs want to kill our Migaloo” was one of the politest things said.

      Blues were actually one of the last whales to be hunted, because they were too fast for the old boats to catch. Sadly, warming of the oceans and sonar surveys for oil will probably cause them more problems than any number of “research” ships.

  5. McFlock 5
    4 February 2014 at 1:35 pm

    Personally, I reckon both sides are pretty dickish, but the whalers are massive dicks while sea shepherd are just dicks with a tv show.

  6. fambo 6
    4 February 2014 at 1:45 pm

    A small but incredibly important battle for the future of the planet. It will be remembered as being significant by history for either saving the whales and other species or wistfully as people live in a world where much of present life on the planet can only be imagined with awe, and its loss with regret.

  7. grumpy 7
    4 February 2014 at 2:05 pm

    Well done Mickey. Inwood is a horrible little wanker of the type who make a profession out of being able to lie with absolutely no conscience.
    Sea Shepherd may not be everybody’s favourites but they are mine. I contribute to them financially and consider them as having more credibility than Greenpeace and more guts than both the NZ and Aussie governments.

  8. Sanctuary 8
    4 February 2014 at 2:17 pm

    here is what gets me about Japan’s whaling. it is the constant bleating about how the Japanese can’t “lose face” and it is “traditional” and we should be more understanding of how offensive they find it when the rest of the world tries to boss them around on the high seas. Well, diddums to them. How about how offensive we find it when they send a whaling fleet thousands of miles from Japan, into a hemisphere their country isn’t even located in, to go to into our own backyard, into a whale sanctuary we declared, to catch an animal we regard culturally as sacrosanct from hunting? Do we not get a say? Or do we just have to bend over backwards to the nationalistic elements in Japan who still deny the rape of Nanking and all their awful crimes, and suck it up? Stuff them, and their little slimeball Inwood.

    • SHG (not Colonial Viper) 8.1
      4 February 2014 at 3:41 pm

      IIRC consumption of whale meat only really entered mainstream Japanese culture after WWII, as the country’s food infrastucture had been bombed into oblivion and they needed protein wherever they could get it. There were whale hunts by indigenous peoples such as the Ainu long before that of course, but I’m pretty sure consumption of whale meat by the general Japanese public is a pretty recent thing.

      • Tracey 8.1.1
        4 February 2014 at 4:23 pm

        and short-lived. Not many eat it now. The Cetacean research institute has been going since 1947 I think.

    • Chooky 8.2
      4 February 2014 at 4:15 pm

      +100

  9. cricklewood 9
    4 February 2014 at 3:58 pm

    This whole scenario is a disaster waiting to happen. Regardless of the rights and wrongs both parties are now towing fouling lines actively attempting to disable one another. If they succeed and cripple a ship ending in a wreck with accompanying oil spill does anyone actually win?

  10. McFlock 10
    4 February 2014 at 4:04 pm

    For me, the thing about whaling is twofold:
    the first is the endangering of a massive [literal] part of the ecosystem.
    The second is that whales are some of the few non-human creatures that might very well be able to write an essay on what they did during their summer holidays, provided the obvious practical difficulties were overcome. That’s my personal initial test on the “cool to eat, or just plain murder?” question.

  11. Tracey 11
    4 February 2014 at 4:12 pm

    Have a look at their peer reviewed research output. It won’t take you long.

  12. Yossarian 12
    4 February 2014 at 7:56 pm

    I feel the need to hire a boat and go harpoon some Japanesse Scientists, purely for “Research”you understand.
    Can any one point me in the direction of a decent sized boat and crew? Or do “We Need A Bigger Boat” for Operation Up Yours Japanesse Gvt

  13. Lloyd 13
    4 February 2014 at 10:36 pm

    One interesting fact is that the Japanese commercial whaling fleet has been partially funded by a special extra tax that the Japanese government imposed on the Japanese public to pay for damage caused by the tsunami. How that logic works I don’t know, but is probably at about the same intellectual level as that ecological criminal Inwood.

  14. Lloyd 14
    4 February 2014 at 10:53 pm

    Mickey thanks for raising the report of the sinking of the Any Gil. I remember at the time hearing Inwood commentating on the video footage of the collision where he said on both TV3 and TV One news programmes that the Shonan Maru did not steer into the Ady Gil. The video footage clearly shows a significant rudder movement happened turning the Shonan Maru into the Ady Gil’s track. Why he was not publicly embarrassed by a TV interviewer questioning him on this I could not understand at that time.

    Inwood would obviously argue black is white for the right payment.

    • framu 14.1
      5 February 2014 at 10:22 am

      ” Shonan Maru did not steer into the Ady Gil.”

      which raises the rather obvious question – “Why did you keep spraying them with water cannons/fire hoses afterwards?”

    • mickysavage 14.2
      5 February 2014 at 10:45 am

      Agreed Lloyd. There is video spliced together which includes video from on the Ady Gil and they were clearly stationary and had finished for the day. Then the Shonan Maru approaches, changes course and collides with the Ady Gil. The video makes it abundantly clear what happened.

      It is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLdUISE3e8c

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