UPDATE 1/10: There is now a third video viewpoint on the collision between the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling speed boat Ady Gil and the Shonan Maru No. 2, which is described as a security boat in the Japanese whaling fleet. Sea Shepherd contends that this vantage point clearly shows that the Japanese ship was intent on closing with and ramming the protesters. [UPDATE, 2/6: Another collision at sea, this time between a Japanese harpoon vessel and the Bob Barker.]
Here’s the view from the Japanese ship, as posted here originally:
[UPDATED below with news that the damaged boat has sunk. And here with an update on the role game-show host Bob Barker has played.]
The video above shows the collision of the $1.5-million dollar speedboat deployed by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society this year to dog the Japanese whaling fleet with a Japanese security vessel. The video was provided by the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research. Our news story is here.
[UPDATE, 5 p.m.: Sea Shepherd has released video from a distant vantage point that clearly shows the Japanese ship veering to starboard to close with the smaller protest craft.]
Sea Shepherd’s leader, Paul Watson, has labeled the incident a deliberate attack by Japan, but Japan’s whaling institute, which claims the whale hunt is scientific research, blamed the conservation group for what it called “illegal harassment and terrorism.”
[UPDATE, 1/7: Mr. Watson told media that the damaged boat, the Ady Gil, sank while being towed toward an island.]
In email exchanges with other whaling campaigners this morning, I heard mixed views, with some activists saying that such an incident was inevitable given Sea Shepherd’s tactics, which critics of the group say are aimed as much at maximizing publicity for itself as impeding the whaling.
At the same time, the media cannot afford to deploy boats to chronicle whale hunts, and governments opposed to whale kills in the global commons of the Southern Ocean aren’t doing much to track or resist such activities.
If a whale is hit by an exploding harpoon near Antarctica and the world doesn’t have a way to witness that, does it make a sound?
[UPDATE, 6 p.m.: Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, sent the following reaction:]
Yes, it has a sound. Because the question about a tree falling in the forest assumed that there are no sentient being able to hear it fall. But whales are sentient beings, and they make sounds that can communicate through the water over a great distance. But even if the whale was alone it can hear the harpoon and feel its own agony, as studies have shown that harpooned whales often die slowly.