OH HELL YEAH! SEA SHEPHERD BOAT SUNK!
January 6th, 2010
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Too bad it’s not their primary ship, the “Steve Irwin,” which is the base of operations for the pirate operation known as Sea Shephard, but their new “stealth,” “high tech” speedster that cost a cool 1.5 million. The Ady Gil, a fast yet flimsy boat had suffered many problems in her short lifetime before having her bow completely smashed by a Japanese security vessel defending their civil ships which were being endangered by the illegal operations of Sea Shepperd. All six crew members escaped the sinking hulk. Hopefully they’re off to a Japanese courtroom.
If the Adi Gil looks familiar it’s because it had previously been used for the stunt known as “EarthRace.“ Earth Race was an attempt to “raise awareness” for global warming by racing around the world in a vessel powered by biofuels – not that biofuels are actually environmentally friendly, mind you, but it was an excuse to build a big fast boat on donated money.
Earthrace did succeed in setting a new marine around-the-world record. It also did manage to achieve one kill. While speeding through the crowded waters off the coast of Guatemala, the Earthrace vessel struck a small local fishing vessel. Of the three working stiffs onboard, Earthrace scored one kill and two serious injuries.
Sea Shepherd had previous stated that they would use this vessel to “physically block” whaling operations. The incident, according to Sea Shepherd occurred when the Gil attempted to ram a whaling support ship. This leaves two, possibly three menacing vessels still afloat, but it’s still great news for marine safety, civil navigation of the world’s oceans and rule of law.
Now a molded carbon fiber and resin reinforced hull may have a high strength to weight ratio, but it doesn’t generally come out the winner when rammed into a very large structure of marine grade steel, dumbass.
I haven’t worken up to news this good in a long time. It seems the new decade is looking good already!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 11:16 am and is filed under Announcements, Bad Science, Enviornment, Good Science, History, Misc, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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January 6th, 2010 at 11:44 am
Perhaps predictably, they’re claiming that the much larger Japanese ship not only deliberately rammed them but veered to one side so as to counter the Ady Gil’s attempted evasive maneuver. I’m not a mariner, obviously, but this seems a little improbable to me. One of the fastest boats ever built couldn’t dodge a big whaling ship?
I’m opposed to the Japanese “scientific whaling” program, for several reasons. But I’m also opposed to the way Sea Shepherd is going about this. It’s stupid, it’ll hurt people, and it’s gonna do absolutely bupkis to stop the Japanese anyway. The only real reason I can think they do it is the same reason anti-logging activists strap themselves to trees. They like seeing themselves as bold adventurers, heroically defending innocent whales from cruel harpoons. Which means that, like a lot of protesters, this isn’t really about the cause. It’s about their own egos.
Pity the boat had to get smashed. It was a beautiful piece of engineering. But that’s what’s going to happen if Sea Shepherd decides to use it in such a foolish way. Like you say, carbon fiber isn’t exactly known for its impact resistance.
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January 6th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Calli Arcale said:
And what if they did? It is breathtaking hypocrisy to accuse them of doing exactly what Sea Shepherd intended to do.
Me, I would have taken a chain-gun and reduced the boat to toothpicks, and the occupants to shark chum, but I’m just like that.
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January 6th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Looks like the guys on Ady Gil tried to go forward and turn right to avoid the japanese ship.
Possibly they don’t understand how to steer ships; if they had just stayed where they were the japanese ship wouldn’t have hit them.
I agree, those activists should be going to jail, then to trial, then to prison for a long time. Could have got themselves killed.
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January 6th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Poor sharks.
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January 6th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Oh, man! What a shame to see such a sweet boat go down. On the other hand, what a major shame that it was in the hands of these idiots. The captain should have gone down with his ship. There’s just no honor anymore!
Reviewing the film clip, I do not see these idiots attempting any evasive manuever until the last second. There is very little wake or prop turbulence. The captain leaves the boat in forward gear instead of putting it in reverse. Stupidly at the last second he speeds up and starts to turn, but dang few boats will turn on a dime . Too late! Crunch. Heh, heh, heh. Judging from the angles of the boats, I suspect the Ady Gil captain was trying to get the whaler to make a turn to the port. Even if as claimed that the whaler did turn starboard, it’s captain would have beeen following the rules of the sea to turn starboard to avoid a collision from a ship approaching from the starboard. There is not a maritime board in the world that would fault the whaler’s captain.
I hit a dock one time thinking I could do a power turn to avoid the inevitable collision and in a much smaller boat than the Ady Gil. Wrong move. Throwing it in reverse would have been a better idea. Dad kicked my butt. On the bright side and in retrospect: $100 worth of damage is a lot less than $1.5 million sent to the bottom of the sea.
Speaking of $1.5 million, where do these folks get this kind of money to throw into what is really a big boy toy? And do you know what it costs to maintain a boat like this or to operate a ship like the Steve Irwin?
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January 6th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Duncan said:
Calli Arcale said:
The Ady Gil is a very powerful and lightweight boat. I heistate to call it a “ship,” but the whaling ship or the escort or whatever is a bigass ship and certainly can’t stop or turn on a dime. Once it gets going, even if they cut the engines it’s going to take a fair distance to slow down and if you turn the helm on one of those it’s not going to make a sharp turn, it’s got a wide radius.
If the shop were coming at the Ady Gil, it could have easily gotten away. That little thing can zip around no problem. The collision was caused by one of two things. Either they stupidly tried to ram the ship or maybe thought that they could graze off the size of it for some dramatic footage or something, or they just plain miss-estimated the closing speeds and the turning radius and such.
I think Duncan might have it right. They wanted to get very close and then turn at the last minute and they just didn’t do it right and waited a moment too long, misjudged things and hit.
This is what happens when you don’t know what you’re doing and pull dangerous stunts with big vessels. On the open ocean you always keep a safe distance and follow good safety protocol, because otherwise you get into trouble. In harbors where ships must pass close to eachother they go very slowly and follow planned paths and lanes, they communicate with eachother and even have harbor pilots.
THESE ARE NOT TOY BUMPER BOATS!
Calli Arcale said:
I am as well, but the problem here is that just because you find something objectionable does not mean you can take direct and dangerous or violent action to try to forcibly stop it.
What Japan is doing may be objectionable to many of us, but it’s not illegal at all. Law is a bit nebulous in international waters, but there is no universally recognized international law that forbids whaling outright. The whales in question do not qualify as an endangered species.
There is a treaty that Japan has entered that limits whaling, but Japan contends that their activities are within the limits of the treaty for research whaling. Whether or not that is the case is up to the other members of the treaty to decide, but even if it does, that does not mean much, because Japan has already signaled that they are considering withdrawing from the treaty, which they have a right to do. So if it were found to violate the treaty, that would probably just result in their pulling out, so it’s moot.
Therefore: Not illegal.
Japan as a sovereign nation may have some policies that we don’t think are so great. They’re not committing international crimes outright, so what they’re doing is perfectly within their own rights to decide how to run their own country and what to do in the world’s oceans.
Therefore, if you want to get them to stop this, you have to get the Japanese people and government to decide not to do it anymore
Now, this may be a part of Japanese culture and all, but the British stopped fox hunting, even against the objections of many traditionalists. You can appeal to the Japanese and try to convince them that it’s not a good idea. Will this work? I don’t know, but it has a shot. Japan is not a closed society and they’re certainly open to Western influences.
If the other countries of the world find it so objectionable that Japan chooses to whale then the other option would be to start playing some real hardball and begin revoking their various international courtesies. This is where relations really get sour though: Countries start to try to get others to do stuff by being asses in general and not doing them the favors they normally do. These include things like letting their citizens enter and leave without a visa, exchanging international mail with their post office, letting their aircraft fly in our airspace. Even stuff like allowing the Japanese meteorology beuro to pull data off of our weather satellites.
If we wanted to be bitchy enough we could do all kinds of things to make it a pain for them. If it went far enough we could even issue travel bans, bar their ships from refueling at our ports, void all cooperative research projects, shut down direct telecommunications links between Japan and the US (which would be shooting ourselves in the foot just as much because it would cause a bandwidth bottleneck to Asia due to routing). Other countries could even expel their diplomats. Worst case: A total trade embargo.
I’m sure Japan would stop whaling if enough other countries started imposing such enormous sanctions. The thing about doing that is that it generally turns things into what amounts to children fighting. It completely ruins international cooperation, and you’ll find Japan will probably start treating others with equal bitchiness. IMHO, not worth it.
But anyway, that’s how you have to do it: diplomacy and sticks and carrots.
Attacking ships is an act of war and war is an absolute last resort and the most extreme action to deal with a disagreement.
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January 6th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Looks like they should have purchased a copy of “How to Avoid Huge Ships” by John W. Trimmer(1). According to one reviewer, “Here is a book written by an old captain who is tired of running over fools in their pleasure boats, and wants to educate those same fools in a futile effort to save their lives. One can almost imagine a sequel written by a train engineer ‘How to Avoid Parking on Train Tracks’.”
Long story short they don’t turn fast, don’t get too close.
(1) http://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-Trimmer/dp/0870334336 .
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January 6th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
leg said:
Yeah, well as far as I see it, when you get that close to a big ship and start playing those antics, you can’t blame them for what happens. It’s a no-win situation. These ships are not designed to deal with this kind of thing. It’s not even clear if the captain would have had a clear view from the wheelhouse of what was happening.
It’s like seeing a moving freight train and dancing around on the tracks in front of it, with the expectation that you’ll be able to dodge it at the last minute by jumping off with your clothing just barley brushing the front of it as you skip off the track with a nanosecond to spare. If it doesn’t quite work out for you, don’t blame the train engineer!
leg said:
The Ady Gil, I believe was donated. It was built using donated funds for Earthrace, which did a lot of work to collect donations and got several big grants. Earthrace was the stunt to go around the world on biofuel, you may remember.
The Ady Gil itself may very well have malfunctions, I should add. It’s packed with the latest in bleeding edge technology, but it was built from the ground up as a one of a kind, and that kind of thing is always subject to bugs and glitches. Their first try at the world record they have their toilet stop working, their air conditioning go out and several other problems. I believe they have since gotten it to be more or less reliable.
As for funding: Yes, it’s a very expensive operation. They have managed to get a lot of funding in both direct donations and grants from charities. They pull a lot of stunts to get publicity and therefore money.
They also have a lucrative deal for a reality show with Discovery Communications on Animal Planet.
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January 6th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
David K: looks like a good book. I also highly, highly recommend the US Coast Guard’s Power Squadron training if you operate a small boat. I have no doubt that this training has saved many in my family and all of our boats.
Buzz0: One of the better definitions I’ve seen to differentiate a ship from a boat is: A ship is “Any large vessel capable of extended independent operation.”(a US Navy manual) Other definitions say a ship can carry a boat, but a boat cannot carry a ship. The Ady Gil is definitely a boat and the whaler is a ship. Why they designate submarines as boats is curiously obscure. However, that’s one boat I would like to see take on the Steve Irwin – with a torpedo.
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January 6th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
leg said:
The price is right – Bob Barker pays $5 Million for Anti-whaling warship
“No pun intended but that seems like a boat load of money. But according to Bob Barker the price is right and justly. The 35 year former host of the popular daytime game show The Price Is Right, donated $5 million dollars of his own money to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which named it’s new 1,200-ton anti-whaling ship The Bob Baker.
The new vessel has already been put into action on Tuesday when it joined two other Sea Shepherd vessels iming[sic] to stop Japanese whaling mission near Antarctica.”
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January 6th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
drbuzz0:
A fact which greatly lowered my opinion of the Discovery network, and Animal Planet in particular. I’m not sure which I hate more: Whale Wars, or the various paranormal nonsense shows.
Oh, and technically what Japan is doing is in a nebulous area with respect to international law. They signed the treaty, so they are bound by it. That’s why I think it would’ve been better if they’d been honest and just not signed the damn thing. They decided to go for loopholes; Iceland just said phooey on the whole thing. (Of course, Iceland was at the time starving, and probably will soon be again, thanks to their collapsed economy. Maybe they can save the Japanese by offering to do the hunting for them? Or would the loophole not permit Japanese imports of whale meat?)
Truthfully, the Japanese appetite for tuna worries me more than their whaling….
leg:
The thousand-foot-long iron ore carriers on the Great Lakes are also called boats, amusingly enough. This is due to “laker” tradition. It distinguishes them from the “salties”, oceangoing cargo ships which can pass through the St Lawrence Seaway. (Lakers are too big to ever escape to the ocean, so they’re technically not ocean-going vessels despite their enormous size and capacity for extended independent operation.) I’m sure the same is true for submarines — it’s probably a tradition of the submariners themselves, born of a desire to differentiate themselves from the surface-dwellers.
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January 6th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Calli Arcale said:
Yeah, it’s nebulous. Whaling in and of itself does not violate any standing law so it’s not an overtly illegal action outside the bounds of the treaty. As for what they are bound to by the treaty, Japan claims that it is within the bounds of limited research whaling that is permitted.
This is certainly a nebulous use of a loophole, but whether it’s a violation or not is the responsibility of the International Whaling Commission to decide. Basically, what they are doing may as well be legal unless the International Whaling Commission says otherwise.
Basically, one of the member states of the Commission has to raise an objection to Japan’s actions and assert that they violate the treaty. If they do, then it can be voted on. Nobody has thus far. In all likelihood this is because Japan has pretty much stated flat out that if the IWC decides that they are in violation, they’ll just up and leave.
My point is that you can’t really assert that they violated anything until the IWC decides on that, because they’re the only body that Japan is bound to. This is the proper channel to address any legal and treaty issues through.
Your best bet in getting IWC to make the call on this is to appeal to your politicians that the next meeting of the IWC (which is this coming june) that your respective country’s representative put forward a motion that contends Japan is violating regulations. One of the member states has to step up to the bat and do that before the legality can be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Whaling_Commission
(BTW: If you’re Canadian, this could be a problem, because Canada is one of the few major industrial nations that never signed onto IWC)
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January 6th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Calli Arcale said:
Uh oh…. is the song wrong?
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore – 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconson
As the big freighters go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the North Wind they’d been feeling.
-Gordon Lightfoot
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January 6th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Well actually we were part of the IWC until the moratorium came into force in 1986, which was when the IWC stopped being about managing whale stocks, and became concerned only with halting the taking of whales. That’s when we withdrew.
Canada still has a large native population in the Far North that depends on harvesting arctic cetaceans that have never been under commercial pressure. Agreeing to this ban would have destroyed these communities and in many cases would have been a violation of treaty obligations between the Crown in Canada and the First Nations in the area.
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January 6th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Great Lakes ore freighters are often referred to as boats. I have no idea why. My college roomate is an engineer on one. Myself I’m a former submariner. Submarines are refferd to as boats since all early submarines were small. When newer, larger designs were introduced, the terminology never seemed to catch up. Submarines are formally referred to as ships; i.e. the order, “Diving Officer, submerge the ship, make your depth 150 feet.” they are informally referred to as boats, “one more beer, then I’m headin’ back to the boat.” A similar situation probably exists on ore boats.
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January 6th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
That picture of the Ady Gil you have there is taken in the port of the city I live in…. Unforunately the Sea Shephards boats regularly dock here and you see dickheads wandering around town in sea shephard tshirts with the skull and bones on them…..
If they bring the Ady Gil here for repairs I will be sure to go get a few snaps of the damage for you!
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January 6th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Maybe I should have made this more clear: I’m not saying anything about Canada and the IWC or passing judgment on the country for withdrawing. Canada was basically in a situation where they would have had two treaties in direct conflict if they didn’t withdraw.
So don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything about the politics.
However, I am pointing out that since Canada no longer has any seat on the IWC board, they’re not going to be able to do much directly to deal with how the IWC deals with Japan.
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January 6th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Perry said:
Hopefully it’s totaled.
Do me a favor though, while you’re at it, spit on it. If don’t mind, don’t just go for a saliva droplet, hock up a big loogie on that one.
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January 6th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
drbuzz0 said:
I wasn’t implying you were dissing Canucks, only a slight correction as you said we never signed on to IWC – we did, and then pulled out later.
At any rate Canada is not so lily-white when it comes to managing wildlife resources, and in many cases we richly deserve any shots we take over it.
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January 6th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
How would doing things like making Japanese people pay for visas or denying them use of weather information or even allowing their planes to fly in airspace force them to change their whaling policy? Those aren’t really aren’t things that are going to force them to do anything. Those are just dick things to do. How is just being a dick going to make anything happen?
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January 6th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Evam: you can’t force another country to do anything unless you want to use military force. The mentioned actions are generally refereed to as “diplomatic pressure” or even “sanctions” in polite conversation, but yes, in reality, they amount to being a dick.
Countries generally extend certain courtesies to each other if they’re on good terms. Withdrawing them isn’t crippling or anything, but it causes some headaches. Even relatively small countries can cause international headaches if things get pissy. Like, for example, if a few island nations start denying your vessels the right to traverse their waters. It means your ships may have to take a longer detour at times. It’s just an annoyance and yes, it’s kind of a dick thing to do.
The thing is that if enough countries start being dicks to Japan they might be persuaded to capitulate because they’re sick of having to deal with all the BS it would cause them. The problem, of course, is that if you’re too much of a dick to another country then you can expect any descent relationship you had with them to go sour.
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January 6th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Well, you can expect relations between Australia and Japan to go tits up very quickly. The Australian public is pretty much out for blood, and our media aren’t doing anything to help the situation. Its only been 24 hours, and already people are calling for a boycott of anything from Japan (If anyone reading this wants to boycott Japan, I will gladly have your television if you don’t want it), and the racist rhetoric being thrown around on talk back radio and online news sites is just depressing.
The Greens leader Bob Brown isn’t helping matters either, by demanding that the Labor Party (currently the ones in power) pay for the replacement of the Ady Gil. He is also requesting for our Navy to send a military vessel to monitor the situation.
One of the ‘conservation societies’ (I can’t remember if it was the Sea Shepherd or another group) is even calling for legal action against the companies that provided the Japanese fleet with aerial recon to help them monitor the activities of the Sea Shepherd’s ships.
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January 6th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
OK Everybody should stop and take a deep breath for a second. The mandate of the IWC is the protection of all whale species from overhunting, establishment of a system of international regulation for the whale fisheries to ensure proper conservation and development of whale stocks, and safeguarding for future generations the great natural resources represented by whale stocks. They are not an instrument to, under the guise of conservation, essentially grant whales an entitlement to life via an absolute protection from being killed by humans for commercial purposes. In fact they are not not backed up by treaty and thus has no ability to enforce any of its decisions through penalty imposition.
The blanket ban on hunting whale was not a product of any scientific conclusions or advice, but was a purely political move to appease various movements that were making life difficult for the governments of some member states. Japan was not the only nation to question the ban.
The bottom line here is that until such time as whaling is made illegal under international law, the Japanese are within their rights to hunt these animals, however what Sea Shepard et.al. is clearly piracy,. Any nation that would send armed vessels into that situation on the side of Sea Shepard, or to protect them would then be accessories to piracy, grounds under international law, for war.
This is what happens when we grant non-human species rights. Legal right must be backed by some apparatus to enforce and protect them, or they are hollow words. This has gotten way out of hand.
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January 6th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
DV82XL: Thanks for that info. You are correct in saying that this has gotten way out of hand. You seem to know a fair bit about this, would you be able to answer a question I have?
All this whaling is happening in waters that are part of The Australian Antarctic Territory. From what I understand, despite being called ‘Australian Antarctic Territory’, these are essentially international waters, and our country really doesn’t have any jurisdiction over them?
I ask only because of the hundreds of bleating idiots currently screaming that we need to defend our waters, these are our whales, arrest the whalers, blah blah blah.
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January 6th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Curtains said:
The issue of jurisdiction in littoral waters is not that clear beyond the universally recognized 12 mile limit. Countries can and do lay claim to larger zones, which other countries may or may not recognize depending on the circumstances, be it formal agreement, fear of reprisal or otherwise. The bottom line is if there is a will to enforce it if violated.
I am not clear on what claims Australia has made on these waters, or how vigorously they are willing to assert them. I would hazard a guess that those screaming for direct action, don’t know ether.
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January 8th, 2010 at 1:54 am
These people give real conservation biologists a bad rap. We’re concerned with sustainability, not ideology.
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January 10th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
As a former submariner. All those things that float on top of the water are properly called targets.
But seriously. Anyone interested in a discussing the Ady Gil, Sea Shepherds and Japanese whaling may want to take a look at this site, especially the forum. Say DrNuke sent you.
http://www.endecoterrorism.com
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January 11th, 2010 at 1:21 am
What a massive waste of money and energy.
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January 11th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
DV82XL said:
In fact, there is a treaty that facilitates countries not recognizing claims in Antarctica. It’s conveniently called the Antarctic Treaty.
Here is a summary of Japan’s position.
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/aus04/clcs_03_2004_los_jap.pdf
“Recalling Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty, Japan does not recognize any State’s right of or claims to territorial sovereignty in the Antarctic, and consequently does not recognize any State’s rights over or claims to the water, seabed, and subsoil of the submarine areas adjacent to the continent of Antarctica.”
A similar source regarinding USA’s stance (just for comparisons sake)
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/aus04/clcs_03_2004_los_usatext.pdf
“The United States wishes to inform you that, recalling Article IV of the Antarctic Treaty, the United States does not recognize any State’s claims to territory in Antarctica and consequently does not recognize any State’s rights over the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas beyond and adjacent to the continent of Antarctica.”
Very similar statements from
Netherlands
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/aus04/clcs_03_2004_los_nl.pdf
Germany
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/aus04/clcs_03_2004_los_deu.pdf
India
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/aus04/clcs_03_2004_los_ind.pdf
Russia
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/aus04/clcs_03_2004_los_russiantext.pdf
I think you get the picture by now.
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January 12th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Just *you* try and sing “the good boat and crew” rather than “the good ship and crew”. “Ship” sounds much better.
And it’s an acceptable thing to call the Fitz, even if she was a laker. Superior’s a nasty body of water; it can sink you as effectively as the ocean can. The Fitz was not the first vessel to go down, and she won’t be the last. (She was the last major shipwreck on Lake Superior, though. It’s all been small boats since then. This is probably a testament to better weather forecasting.)
It is actually true that the lake never “gives up her dead”, BTW. It’s like a giant refrigerator, barely above freezing even at the surface in summertime, and there are no convective currents to stir up the water and oxygenate the depths. As a result, the bottom is lifeless. Not even bacteria have been found down there. So bodies don’t decay, they don’t bloat, and they don’t float.
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January 12th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Calli Arcale said:
Yeah, I’m aware of that, but I don’t know about “never” giving up her dead. If someone dies in a shipwreck and is wearing a life vest, they’re likely to be found. Also, there was one (and possibly two) bodies from the Fitz sited during an expedition in 1994 and they likely could find many of the others if they actually looked hard enough for them (although they might not find them all as some may have washed overboard during the sinking and thus not be in or on the wreck.
At the depth of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it would not be unreasonable to recover a body. It’s actually within the limits of hard suit diving and of course ROV’s and submersibles could get there. They decided not to recover the bodies and to leave them there as their final grave. But they *could* recover a couple of them…. just to be ironic and prove the old saying wrong.
Then they’d have to change it to the lake “under normal circumstances does not give up her dead, although she will if you force the issue on her by actually going down there to get them.”
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January 12th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Proving once again that pedantry and lyricism make poor bedfellows.;)
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January 19th, 2010 at 12:31 am
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/pm-should-replace-rammed-ady-gil-greens/story-e6frf7jx-1225816922656
Reaction from the green crazies in parliament in Australia.
Expecting the Australian government to replace the Ady Gill???? Pfff.
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February 16th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Quite frankly the security vessel should be able to torpedo these nuts. If anyone is doing something legal and you choose to disrupt it you should be arrested. I have no doubt that whaling is bad but just like smoking it is still legal. Fight it in the courts if you must, otherwise be prepared for the full consequences you might get and stop whining about it.
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October 25th, 2010 at 11:39 am
the exceptionally-talented group known as ‘Sea Shepherd’ has a new fast boat as of Friday, Oct. 22nd. Great going guys!
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October 25th, 2010 at 11:40 am
Trey Parker is a tool…
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October 25th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Actually they don’t have a new ship.
They’re claiming they might have a new ship if a celebrity comes up with a million or two dollars to throw at them.
Meanwhile, the website for that vessel is still listing it as available for charters.
Hmmmmmmm.
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October 25th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
kujirakira said:
Exactly. Paul Watson’s original statement was they had the boat but needed money to finalize the sale. Now their website said “they desire to add the Ocean Adventurer 7 to their fleet” and then ask for your donations to make it possible. Of course if you read the fine print on the donation page, they retain the right to use the money, even if given specifically for the boat, on whatever they want.
So who knows what the truth is. But either way at least one of Paul’s statements is a lie. Typical SSCS tactics.
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December 5th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
I recently had seen some pictures of the Ady Gil out of the water.
That boat was made to go forward fast, but was badly designed for turning.
The rudders were out on the pontoon outriggers probably to not be affected by the “swirl” of the water coming off the propellers. That made the rudders completely useless at low speed.
The Ady was idling with only enough power to maintain direction just before the collision, as it was almost out of fuel.
The best course of action for the helmsman would have been to reverse on either the starboard, or both engines to pull back from the japanese ship. Not knowing the drivetrain or performance of the Ady, she might not have been able to quickly reverse her propulsion. I have been on small craft that take several seconds to reverse, so that may not have been an option immediately available to helmsman.
There is no way that the composite construction Ady would have been ramming the steel hulled whaling ship. The Ady really didn’t belong in those waters, but had all forms of right of way in this incident.
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December 5th, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Just because a sane person wouldn’t ram a ship doesn’t mean the crew of that ship wouldn’t.
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December 6th, 2011 at 8:11 am
Silveradocyn said:
Sorry but the Ady Gil could turn very well at low speed. There are numerous videos of it make tight 180 degree turns at less than 5 knots.
And the almost out of fuel is a relative claim. They were prepared to wait by themselves for 2-3 days for the Steve Irwin to arrive for refuelling, rather than refuel from the Bob Barker. First running your fiberglass boat out of fuel in the middle of the Antarctic Ocean hundreds of miles from help is the height of stupidity. And second if their fuel situation was so dire why didn’t they transfer at least some fuel from the Bob Barker? Heck the Bob Barker is basically a small tanker with enough fuel capacity to more than circle the globe, you mean to tell me they could spare a few hundred gallons?
Yes the Ady Gill had the right of way but as the NZ investigation found they also had the responsibility to avoid the collision and thus were found 50% at fault. The helmsman also stated that he accelerated forward in the time before the collision, without the additional forward speed the Japanese vessel would not have hit the Ady Gil without a course change.
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