Sea Shepherd Lies Again (was: SEA SHEPHERD WILL WITHDRAW IF MAKAH HUNT CAN BE PROVEN LEGAL)

I wonder if you could clear up a confusion of mine?

Could you let me know where the bowhead quota 'explicitly mentions the Chukotka' in the IWC Schedule?

The Schedule refers to the stock of bowheads (in para 13 (b)1: as being the 'Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas stock' - but this is a management/biological classification.

Furthermore my understanding of the text is that the ICRW explicitly prohibits allocation to nations or groups of people.

Article V (2) states: 'These amendments of the Schedule....(c) shall not involve restrictions on the number or nationality of factory ships or land stations, nor allocate specific quotas to any factory or ship or land station or to any group of factory ships or land stations...'

Chris Stroud

You're not confused

I did not realise that by being employed by a conservation or environmental group excluded one from being able to ask questions?

My question re. the quote of David's still stands in that I am unable to find the reference to the bowhead issue that he points to in any texts I can lay my hands on.

I am, however, impressed by the depth of research material that Mr. Eitelbach has at his disposal and the range of his contacts. Maybe he has data that I do not.

I do apologise for any impoliteness on my part. Its been quite a while since I had access to discussion groups and its seems I have to relearn a few points of etiquete.

Yours

Chris Stroud Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society

This is correct. It remains only formal questions of whether the term 'factory ship' and 'land station' applies to the Makah hunt. The spirit of the ICRW is that the IWC should not bother with *who* catches whales, just how *many*.

However, the above came up in a discussion about the Sea Shepherds' statement that they will withdraw protests

'if the Makah Tribal Council or the U.S. government can produce a document stating that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has approved a Makah aboriginal take of Gray whales.'

According to the above quotes from the ICRW, this can never happen. I.e. the Shepherds pretend that they are reasonable in that they are willing to halt protests if international bodies accept the hunt, but they have formulated this in such a way that the condition can never be satisfied.

Yet another dishonest tactic from the Shepherds.

[...]

Well, .50 caliber is the same caliber as many modern assault rifles. They'll shoot one bullet at a time instead of 50, but that bullet is much more powerful than most hunting ordnance. But I agree with you that it's misleading to say that a bolt-action rifle is like a machine gun. Just like it's misleading for you to say that SSCS uses mines to sink ships (evoking images of WWII) when they placed limpet mines on an unoccupied ship in a harbor and out of harms way.

Again, I do not condone SSCS's methods, but in your ongoing crusade against Paul Watson, you are looking more and more like, well, Watson. Untempered advocacy and propaganda aren't that far apart...

The .50 caliber machine gun, for instance.

No, Mercer, I don't have the ballistics data on the airspeed velocity of unladen swallows. But a 50-cal bullet is a big nasty bullet that is simply unnecessarily powerful in typical hunting uses. The Makah have obviously selected it for it's big punch. They need something that will penetrate blubber and damage the organs and tissues that lie underneath. If you shot a quail with the same gun, you wouldn't have much bird left to stew in your pot...

When I was in basic training, they didn't even LET us non-infantry trainees near the .50 cal machine guns. We used 5.56 mm rounds in our M-16s and spent one day shooting .30 cal machine guns. We heard another platoon shooting .50 cals on the next hill, and they were much noisier than what we had... So to my knowledge, no, the standard army rifle is the M-16, but yes, they do still train on the .50 cal MG for heavy fire support missions.

I already agreed with you that it was misleading. And I have to say that if they are going to kill a whale, it seems to make sense to kill it quickly. To that end, however, why don't they mount a harpoon gun on their canoe with some explosive-tipped harpoons? The Norwegians, I understand, have perfected the art of the quick kill, and in doing so have managed to recover most of the whales they shoot, reducing waste.

But perhaps a harpoon gun wouldn't fit in with the spiritual motif...

With all these examples at your disposal, why don't you simply stick with the truth, and avoid making misleading statements yourself? Again, I am not condoning their tactics. But when you start misleading people with your own half-truths, then you are no better than Watson. Hence, my point, which is that propaganda and untempered advocacy tend to resemble each other after a

(snip)>

So then, is it safe to assume that you view humans with the same objectivity as animals? Do you see yourself and your family as indistinguishable from all other humans? Would the death of one you love be easily compensated for by the continued existence of a stranger? I didn't think so.

If we are not willing to 'manage' our own populations, to designate 'surplus' members of our own 'herds' and target those who are genetically 'exhausted', to look at each other and see 'species' instead of sister, mother, mate, how can we justify doing so to other animals? Have you reserved some honored place for humans in the halls of life? Are we the 'lord of the manor' , the Earth, our vast game preserve, other life forms, our hunting stock to be taken at will?

To our coarse sensibilities, one deer may seem much the same as any other deer; humans must appear interchangeable to deer as well. But as anyone who has spent time observing the social interaction of animals knows, animals are every bit as individualized as humans; they have distinctive personalities, histories, alliances. Like humans, their singular characteristics help form their unique futures.

To use a formula to calculate how many animals will die over the course of a season is as sinister an act as would be a group of generals calculating how many young men each country can afford to lose over the course of a war. Death is not a group phenomenon; it is only experienced as an individual, usually a decidedly unwilling individual.

It is not enough that we breed animals, fish and birds for the kill, we still demand the maximum number of deaths that wild species can endure. Sustainable yields, bag limits, poundage quotas, harvest limits, the language of conservation management, presupposes that man has the right to determine an 'acceptable' number of animal deaths. We do not.

(snip)

If, as has already been stated, repopulation of harvested whales is not a problem, what possible difference does it make to a conservationist if a dead whale is a pregnant female or not? You wouldn't have a 'religious fascination' for this particular kind of individual whale, would you? A cetaceous version of the Madonna and Child, maybe? 'The day when you're compassionate to wildlife and not to people, you've lost the battle.'

The day when you're compassionate to people and not to wildlife, you've lost the battle as well.