Greenpeace vs. Sea Shepherd: An Unfortunate Conflict
Greenpeace issued a lengthy statement on their website in an attempt to further distance themselves from Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd yesterday. With an aim at setting the record straight, Greenpeace made the statement out of frustration with what it claims are lies and falsehoods propagated by Watson, compounded by a general public misconception that Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd are associated with one another.
Greenpeace takes issue with what they describe as a fundamental difference in the anti-whaling tactics practiced by each organization. It is interesting to note how Greenpeace characterizes and differentiates their tactics versus that of Sea Shepherd, particularly their characterization of what constitutes violence.
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For Greenpeace, violence constitutes doing something that might put a human being in jeopardy, something they say Sea Shepherd and Watson are guilty of.
However, in their attempt to illustrate how proactive they are in the fight to save whales, Greenpeace makes reference to how in the past, Japanese whalers run from their ship at high speed when faced with a potential confrontation.
Regardless of Greenpeace’s non-violent policies, would the Japanese ship run from them, or resort to bringing the coast guard, if there wasn’t a perceived threat of violence? The success of Greenpeace’s anti-whaling efforts is clearly connected to the willingness of Sea Shepherd to take tough action and thereby instilling fear of the protesters in the whalers’ minds.
And anyway, is there a huge difference between sabotaging a propeller or sinking an unmanned whaling vessel (Sea Shepherd tactics) and blocking a harpoon vessel from shooting a whale with your ship (a Greenpeace tactic)? All these tactics are designed to achieve the same result, namely to prevent or reduce the killing of whales, and none particularly put lives at risk. Can’t we all just get along?
Image credit: Michael Dawes at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
I suspect that the Sea Shepards program “Whale Wars” is now causing the diversion of GP donations to SS and so is causing the media war between the two. I heard about SS about a year ago and was intriged by their methods. They are not pirates technically but they proudly display the pirate flag and use a black ship. They know the PR game and have generated more of it(good or bad) than GP has in ten years. My future donations are going to SS.
I totally support the Sea Shepard. They are heroes in my book
What do you do when a bully continously bullies you and finally does the unthinkable and “beats you up”…YOU FIGHT BACK!
These Japanese whalers have been beating up our oceans and killing our gentle giants!
So it’s time to fight back…
GO SEA SHEPARD!!!! Sometimes it takes a percieved violent action to deal with violent people!
HOLDING UP SIGNS IS LUDACRIOUS!
I’d go toe to toe with any japanese whaler and I’m a 39 year old mother of three girls who’s a paramedic.
My job is to “help” others, which is what I’d do after I beat the hell out of em….
God Bless You All
mogul said:
“I suspect that the Sea Shepards program “Whale Wars” is now causing the diversion of GP donations to SS and so is causing the media war between the two.”
spot on!
I stopped donating to GP years ago and now support SSCS and so does every friend, family member and eco-envronmentalist I know and convince them to support Watson and his crew. The Japanese don’t care about world-view, protests and politics, they’ll hunt every last whale into extinction and poor GP will have no more snuff films to post on their website.
The fact that GP is not out there in the Antarctic, DOING SOMETHING, speaks volumnes.
GO SEA SHEPHERD!
ok, how about learning a little bit about boats and the ocean, before you run out there and put lives in danger?
Seems like alot of these peopl dont knw their way around a boat.
Whaling or not, have any of you ever heard of common sense?
The French sank a Greenpeace ship with explosive charges while in port years ago. The same or worse could befall the Sea Shepherd ship. I’m surprised that they have not been rammed by a Nipon whaling ship. It would be easy to do the dirty deed in darkness. The ship and crew would just be victims of the cruel cold sea.
SSCS now have a show on Animal Planet. I have also read about Paul Watson’s history with Greenpeace. I think there is reason to believe that what drives Watson is personal glory. Shepherding the Sea is just a vehicle for him to attain personal glory. Oh well.
I find Greenpeaces comments above, and there backdown in going to the southern ocean amazing. In years gone by, Greenpeace HAS been activly involved in trying to save species, using similar tactics Sea Shepherd are doing now.
But times have changed, highly paid suits…having seen the fruits of the publics abhorence of commercial slaughter of the wildlife we all share, have taken over the purse strings of GREENPEACE, and sending a ship to the Southern Ocean to protect whales, (money specificly raised for that purpose $$ MILLIONS)has been deemed a to costly excercise.
In the past few years, GP has ventured into the southern ocean, for no other purpose than taking photos of the whales dying, to expedite fund raising for whale protection for the comming year.
There refusal to cooperate with sea Shepherd, and there reasons why, are nothing more than spin doctoring, as teaming up with Sea Shepherd, would incur extra costs….by having to actually DO something.
The whales are dying….even while a 20 year long moritorium on whaling has been in place.
Organisations, governments and the international public have debated and pleaded with whaling nations to recognise the ban….after 20 years, they are still dying.
Sea Shepherd have proven they are the whales only chance.
And somewhere along the way….GP has lost sight of the real issues, and the importance onced placed on the health of our planet has changed.
Gp’s importance now lies with there bank balance, highly paid suits and free holidays.
They have lost me forever, my moneys on the team making a difference “Sea Shepherd”.
I think someone back there said that whales were fish.
Even if they were fish, why shouldn’t we save them? Sea Shepherd is doing what no other governments want to do. That is what’s going on. If the IWC would step up and their governments followed, the Sea Shepherds would not have to disrupt the whaling fleet. They could focus on the billions of other problems we created in the oceans.
Jeff,
No major change has ever been accomplished by doing nothing. It’s great that both organizations are out there doing something. If you are worried about climate change and polar bears, stop driving, and especially, stop supporting oil companies. Petroleum is in much more than just fuel tanks.