GREENPEACE STATEMENT - SEA SHEPHERD.


Paul Watson has made many public requests for Greenpeace to reveal the location of the whaling fleet or otherwise cooperate with Sea Shepherd in the Southern Ocean when the ships of both organizations have been there simultaneously.

We passionately want to stop whaling, and will do so peacefully. That's why we won't help Sea Shepherd. Greenpeace is committed to non-violence and we'll never, ever, change that; not for anything. If we helped Sea Shepherd to find the whaling fleet we'd be responsible for anything they did having got that information, and history shows that they've used violence in the past, in the most dangerous seas on Earth. For us, non-violence is a non-negotiable, precious principle. Greenpeace will continue to act to defend the whales, but will never attack or endanger the whalers.

We differ with Paul Watson on what constitutes violence. He states that nobody has ever been harmed by a Sea Shepherd action.  But the test of non-violence is the nature of your action, not whether harm results or not.  There are many acts of violence -- for example, holding a gun to someone's head -- which result in no harm.  That doesn't change their nature. We believe that throwing butryic acid at the whalers, dropping cables to foul their props, and threatening to ram them in the freezing waters of the Antarctic constitutes violence because of the potential consequences. The fact that the consequences have not been realized is irrelevant.

In addition to being morally wrong, we believe the use of violence in protection of whales to be a tactical error. If there's one way to harden Japanese public opinion and ensure whaling continues, it's to use violent tactics against their fleet. It's wrong because it puts human lives at risk, and it's wrong because it makes the whalers stronger in Japan.

Disabling a ship at sea in the Antarctic, regardless of how much one may object to its activities, is not only a callous act of disregard for human life -- it's courting an environmental disaster in one of the most fragile environments in the world.

Such tactics are not only dangerous to the whalers, they are dangerous to the cause of stopping Japanese whaling. Our political analysis is unequivocal: if Japanese whaling is to be stopped, it will be stopped by a domestic decision within the Japanese government to do so.   That's why we have invested heavily in a Greenpeace office in Japan and efforts to speak directly to the Japanese public -- 70 percent of whom are unaware that whaling takes place in the Southern Ocean at all.  A majority of those who are aware of the whaling program, oppose it.   Support for whaling in Japan has been steadily falling for the last decade. Consumption of whale meat is in decline, the cost of the program to taxpayers is being questioned by the business community, and the political costs of the program have created opposition in the Foreign Affairs department in Japan.  All of this progress could be undone by a nationalist backlash.  By making it easy to paint anti-whaling forces as dangerous, piratical terrorists, Sea Shepherd could undermine the forces within Japan which could actually bring whaling to an end.

We've got fairly thick skins here at Greenpeace.  When you challenge powerful forces, you need to be ready to put up with accusations of ulterior motives and hidden agendas. What's unfortunate is when we have to spend time countering friendly fire -- attacks by an organization that shares the same goals as we do.  We don't mind robust disagreements, but we do object to falsehoods.

Paul Watson has claimed that Greenpeace goes to the Antarctic merely to film whales being killed, to wave banners and to bear witness to their deaths -- but does nothing to save them.

This is untrue

Belgarion wrote on Jan 16^th, 2011 at 4:25pm:


You are Joking right?

They were stationary and got mown down by a large ship which turned directly towards them when it had been on a safe course and clearly going to pass by a large distance.

freediver wrote on Jan 17^th, 2011 at 8:54pm:


Do you specialise in only telling someparts of a story?

Their quota also contains fin whales which last time i checked were endangered and until recently they were hunting hump back whales but they backed down on these due to mounting  about that issue

Dnarever wrote on Jan 17^th, 2011 at 11:08pm:




DNA - Do you agree/disagree with Greenpeace's statement?

There must be something seriously afoot when Greenpeace has to come out and defend its position and criticise Sea Shepherd does there not?

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The IWC is a political body. If you want to know whether an animal is endangered, check with the IUCN. They are the relevant authority.

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Dna, you posted the evidence. Try reading it for yourself. This is what it says:

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OK infarction, your turn to decide what to do about this. Your choices are:

1) Turn the IWC into a political body that is fundamentally opposed to any form of whaling and which drives the whaling nations out into the wilderness.

2) Turn the IWC into a body that sustainably manages the commercial whale harvest.

You can't have it both ways.

freediver wrote on Jan 18^th, 2011 at 10:03pm:


Dna, you posted the evidence. Try reading it for yourself. This is what it says:

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Do you not think that a hunted species showing a decline goes to sustainability.

If you read it all you find that their doubt is a bit unreasonable, they say doubt is attributed to the method when the methods are the same as 30 years ago and just getting lower and lower results.

I would think the opposite improved technology over the time should have produced more accurate results.

I would think that the line that they will measure the whales under the ice would invalidate the comparison as they were probably always there and not counted, so to add previously uncounted whales to the mix would only give a false impression of the impact of the whaling.

If you remove that rather unreasonable doubt from the mix then the statment becomes the Minke whale population is in decline due to the level of the Japanese catch and that the current situation is not sustainable.

freediver wrote on Jan 19^th, 2011 at 9:31pm:



They are getting a clearly lower count with the same method.

They incorporate the word possible inferring the whales may have gone somewhere else - Like under the Ice.

I think much more probable that they are hiding in Japanese restaurants where they partisipate in scientific studies on taste & flavour.

They are now going to use methods to count the whales under the Ice but this clearly invalidates comparisons to past data as they do not know how many whales have always been under the ice.

Very clearly and obviously a less meaningfull indication of the population trend but a more accurate total count.

I would think a measure very likley to confirm the trend that has already been accuratly identified but it will take another 10 years.