Whale Wars

Animal Planet has started a new series known as "Whale Wars." I had seen something about environmentalists boarding a Japanese whaling ship on Youtube, so I suspected that they may be the same thing. Unfortunately, I was right. The story goes something like this: The co-founder of Greenpeace apparently also helped start a group to protect whales from, well, whalers. So far, so good. The group called themselves the Sea Shepherds, and have several ships operating in different areas, at least that's what they imply on the show. All I've seen is about the Antarctic unit, ship named the Steve Irwin. Here's where things go illegal. They desperately want to stop Japanese whaling, which is currently being done under the title "scientific research", which makes it legal, even if no one believes them. However, the Sea Shepherds wanted to stop it by less-than-legal means. All the following can be seen on the show. The Steve Irwin chased down one of the Japs' ships. They then launched a small boat equipped with lots of small packets filled with a type of acid powder and a huge coil of rope. The boat came up alongside the ship,and the goons started throwing the packets onto the ship. ILLEGAL. One type of the powder makes it too slippery to walk, and the other leaves an awful reek for days. The boat then pulled in front of the ship, and dropped the rope with the intention of fouling the ship's propeller and stopping it. ILLEGAL. The fouler missed, so they performed their next stunt with the ship moving. They launched the boat again, and two of the people on board actually BOARDED the Japanese ship. They didn't ahve weapons, but boarding a ship is always illegal. Of course, they're saving whales, so Animal Planet's portraying them as heroes, leaving out the fact that next to nothing they're doing is legal.