Sea Shepherd Crew Arrested and Attacked by Seal Hunters

Until Sea Shepherd apologizes to the Makah tribe in Washington State for what S.S. did, they will receive zero support from me, and probably many others.

What indigenous tribe is S.S. going after these days?

I am appalled that Sea Shepherd crew members were assaulted! After all, they're in the area to protect the seals. They took a picture. Anybody's right to do so. You can see a sea animal dangling from the hands of sealers. Yet the Coast Guard's involvement is out-of-sight.

Incidentally, why does the Sea Shepherd owe the Makah tribe an apology? The Makah took a whale for which they had a legal right to do.

Until the whale tribe gets an apology from the Makah, they'll get no support from me. What hightech gadgets are they using to slaughter whales these days?

These were not indigenopus people practicing subsistence hunting, far from it. They live a modern consumerist lifestyle then demand traditional hunting rights.

I'll make sure I send Sea Shepherd a little extra contribution in your honor.

in response to the person not wanting to support jailed animal rights activists because of Sea Shepherd's history with the Makah...
it seems as if you should focus your anger (or whatever) towards Paul Watson, the person we all know controls Sea Shepherd, not the activists that are actually on the front lines currently in jail for acting their conscience. Opposing seal hunters, getting attacked, and then arrested has nothing to do with the Makah. The activists currently in jail need support. If we can't support our jailed comrades, what the hell kind of movement have we created?
Complain all you want about Paul - many people have problems with him for various reasons, but leave everyone else out of it.

Though whaling was once part of Makah life. Not all indigenous people supported it. Some disaproved with the hunting equipment and exactly who was hunting.

The Makah whalers were committing murder, and I was appalled. Being Native American is no excuse to be killing whales. It was disgusting. I can't believe anyone would suggest that we condemn people who are up in the ice packs right now trying to protect the 300,000 baby seals that the Canadian government says sealers can kill this year. That's the same Canadian government that set cod limits ridiculously high until the cod population set into an irrecoverable dive that destroyed the coastal fishing communities as surely as it destroyed the fish. And now, that same fucking government is saying that the reason they are allowing hundreds of thousands of baby seals to be bludgeoned to death is that hey, the local fishing communities need the income because the cod are gone. FUCK! Didn't we think we solved this problem years and years ago? WHY does NOTHING EVER CHANGE???

Whale survival is FAR FAR more important than past Makah "tradition". Suggesting that what Makah used to do is what they should always do, is to suggest that Makah culture is stuck in some remote time slot & cannot evolve. That is insulting to Makah. I prefer to think that Makah can think, & KNOW that killing whales is NOT critical to their culture. If it were, than their culture deserves to expire, as does U.S. "culture", by the way.

I hope that Seattle activists are planning actions at the Canadian Consulate there. I wish there were a consulate here. I'd like very much to throw blood on their damn flag. Fuck Paul Martin, the bastard prime minister. Prime asshole.

let's support our comrades. and let's not forget the seals. yesterday 15,000 seals were murdered. the total quota is 350,000. the hunt will continue for several more days. the corporate media, especially in the US, has not reported on the situation hardly at all. people need to hear about this senseless brutal slaughter. and the activists on the front lines need to be supported.
do what you can to help out.
www.harpseal.org also has great info on the hunt.

harpseal.org, harpseal.com and harpseal.net are all datamining sites.

One of the arrested activists was released (she was a Canadian citizen, the other 10 activists were due in court this morning. here is the latest report.

0800 Hours Atlantic Standard Time

0400 Hours Pacific Standard Time


Report from the Farley Mowat



Position: 46 Degrees 38 Minutes 50 Seconds North

61 Degrees 45 Minutes 44 Seconds West



The storm has abated, the sun is shining, and the pressure on the ice is beginning to release. That's the bad news. The good news is that many sealing vessels were damaged, two were sunk, and most of the others continue to be locked into the ice.



Another bit of good news is that Sea Shepherd Advisory Board Member Bob Talbot arrived in one of two helicopters chartered by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and retrieved all the photos and video we have taken since the opening of the seal slaughter on March 29th. This means that the evidence of the assault by the sealers on our crew will not be captured, confiscated, or destroyed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.



Even better news was the radio message intercepted from the sealer Polar Venture. Apparently that vessel has been stuck in the ice since March 26th and has not taken a single seal. They reported that they just wanted to go home.



The crew who were assaulted have requested that charges be laid against the sealers who attacked them. The Mounties are investigating the incident and Bob Talbot will be delivering video of the assault to the Mounted Police headquarters in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.



The sealers who assaulted the crew were from the Brady Mariner, a Newfoundland fishing vessel built in 1988 with the official number of 0810609 and registered in St. John's, Newfoundland. The vessel was formally known as the Fundy Leader. The owner is a man named Rendell Genge (wife, Bertha) and his address is P.O. Box 65, Anchor Point, Newfoundland, Canada A0K 1A0 and telephone 709-456-2654.



The video sent to the Mounted Police vividly illustrates the hostility and aggressiveness of the sealers in their attack on the Farley Mowat crew.



One sealer boasted that he killed seals, "Because I loves to kill seals, I enjoys killing seals."



Lisa Shalom, the one Canadian of the eleven crew arrested, was released last night and turned out on the streets of Charlottetown without funds or means of returning to the ship. Sea Shepherd found her a room for the night at a local hotel.



According to Lisa, all eleven crew were kept in plastic handcuffs for nine hours and had to spend the time sitting on a metal deck on board the ice breaker Amundsen.



The ten remaining crew, citizens of the United States, Sweden, Britain, and the Netherlands, were kept in confinement overnight and are expected to be brought to court this morning in Charlottetown.



Court House

Harborside

3 Kelly Building

Supreme Courtroom Number 1

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island



In a radio conversation overheard between two sealing vessels today, they exchanged cell phone numbers. If anyone wishes to call up one of these baby killers and give them a piece of your mind the numbers are 418-861-7951 and 418-937-6746.



The Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat is beginning to make progress through the ice. It is about fifteen miles to open water. The Coast Guard icebreaker Earl Grey is engaged in breaking out the sealing vessels and the Farley Mowat is working its way towards them to take advantage of the Coast Guard services to the sealers.



"The Coast Guard are certainly the handmaidens to the killers out here," said Captain Paul Watson. "It seems to be nothing but 'yes sir, Mr. Sealer sir, whatever you want Mr. Sealer sir.' I'm surprised they aren't flying in Tim Horton donuts and coffee to these boys."



The cost of these three icebreakers is enormous. In addition the Department of Fisheries and Oceans supplies aircraft to locate seals for the sealing vessels. Yet, the Canadian government insists they do not subsidize the sealing industry. One thing for sure, the sealers are not paying for these services. The assistance comes free of charge and that is a subsidy by any definition of the word.



The sealers are reporting that they are seeing few seals. Hopefully, the storm scattered the seals to safer waters. It appears that the quota will not be met in the Gulf of St. Lawrence this year. Unfortunately, the numbers short of the 90,000 allotted to the Gulf will be added to the Newfoundland Front slaughter that is scheduled to open on April 12 off the northern coast of Newfoundland and the southern coast of Labrador.



With luck, Mother Nature will ravish the sealers again and block their ability to kill.



The presence of the Farley Mowat, the storm, and the assaults on and arrests of the Sea Shepherd crew have provoked international media interest in the seal slaughter. Yesterday, Captain Paul Watson did onboard telephone interviews with journalists from Los Angles to Auckland, from Barcelona to Mexico City, from London to Amsterdam.



The international movement against the horrifically-cruel and ecologically-damaging seal slaughter is building. Seafood distributors, restaurants, and individuals are signing onto the Canadian seafood boycott.



The empty rhetoric of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans is no longer credible. The DFO says that the sealers only kill adult seals yet every seal kill documented by our crew was between three and six weeks of age. Most of them were born just a month ago.



The DFO says that the hunt is humane and every seal dies instantly. We have observed once again that this is a lie. We saw sealers kick pups in the face and skin them as they writhed in agony on the ice. If the hunt is as humane as the government insists then why do they ban cameras from the ice without official permission? The censorship is blatant and few believe the DFO's lies anymore.



The DFO is no longer saying the seals are a threat to the recovery of the cod. They make insinuations that this is so and they let the sealers broadcast this lie. However, they do not openly admit to the fact that the seal slaughter is actually a threat to the recovery of the cod because they keep other fish species that prey upon cod in check.



We also were able to expose the incredible irresponsibility of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans in issuing sealing licenses to vessels that clearly have no business being in these ice conditions. The Canadian Department of Transport should also be held accountable for allowing these vessels into the Gulf under such conditions. Nothing is being said about the oil pollution from the sinking of the vessels and little is being said about the lack of resources to address the numerous distress alerts issued by the sealers.



The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans also promotes the myth that the sealer is a hard-working courageous man just trying to support his family by participating in a dangerous occupation in harsh conditions.



Yet the truth is, that there is nothing courageous about walking around in a nursery bashing baby seals in the head. The amount of money each sealer makes is relatively small - on average only $800 and the costs to many of them will be significantly more this year due to losses of vessels and equipment.



And when these "brave hardy men" fall to the fury of the elements, they are quick to go running for help to the Coast Guard with pleas for ice-breaking assistance and help in finding seals to kill. Now many of them are scurrying home to Newfoundland and the Magdalen Islands with few seals and tales of woe.



The true heroes out here on these remote ice floes are the young seals who valiantly attempt to escape their killers and whose cries echo mournfully across the blood stained ice. The crew of the Farley Mowat have seen so many of them try to defend themselves from the cruel hak-a-pik and attempt to cling to life as their skin is ripped from their convulsing bodies.



And above them, knife in hand, cigarette dangling from cruel lips, an ignorant, uneducated, inbred, sadistic brute sneers, and slices the young body from throat to groin exposing the beating heart that still throbs with life and futile hope.



This is mankind at his most extreme savagery and there is little that is noble or inspiring in such an image.



For out here on the frigid harsh expanse of drifting ice, mankind wallows in the terrible darkness of his own cruelty and contempt for life.



When these men go to church in the next few days, they will confess their sins and be absolved, but the stain, the stench, and the vicious evil of their actions out here on the ice will forever be etched into the book of humanity in yet another testament to our dark and base nature.



Will we ever escape from this hell that envelops our soul? A first step in such a direction would be the abolishment of this obscenity, this horrific slaughter and destruction of innocence, this ecological insanity and national curse called the Canadian seal hunt.

We're proud to support Sea Shepherd and were pleased with their efforts to prevent Makah whaling. Right now they need our support in the annual effort to make people more aware of the seal hunt.

Any of you that think the Makah were celebrating some ancient ritual have been duped. The Makah never hunted whales with speedboats and .50 cal machine guns. Unlike their ancestors the Makah killed a grey and didn't even make use of the carcass. The Makah received much support from Japanese whaling interests that seek to expand commercial whaling. If the Makah want to get in touch with their past why aren't they organizing berry gathering expeditions in the forest like one tribal elder suggested? This has nothing to do with culture and tradition. The Makah would simply like an exemption to whaling laws so they can make big $'s. Allowing the Makah to take a single whale weakens the opposition to commercial whaling. There is no reason for a single whale to be taken anywhere near our shores.
There are a few indigenous people in other countries that practice subsistence whaling. They use traditional boats and weapons. They still make use of the entire remains. I don't have a problem with that. They have nothing in common with the Makah.

We can only hope that they are trying to recruit crazy, radical sabotuers, since all other US activism seems so pointless. This goes for US natives too, isolated, insular, always fighting among themselves - not inspiring.

I cannot support anyone affiliated with the Sea Shepard group, because of their lack of respect for indigenous sovereignty. The ends don't justify the means. Had they not treated the Makah like crap, I would be doing all I could to support the brave souls who stood up for the seals. Unfortunately, the taint of racism on the whole Sea Shepard project will prevent me from ever supporting Watson or his minions.

I've gotten the impression over the years, from watching people from the Sea Sheppard that they are ego-filled zealots. I'll pass on supporting the Sea Sheppard. The tactics they use to conduct their protests seem to only result in emboldening and inspiring the people they are fighting with. They seem better at fostering an atmosphere of anti-environmentalism and hatred than anything else. What do they do? Travel around the world getting people to hate environmentalists? They get beat up and thrown in jail and then they leave, sending out newsflashes for everyone to sympathize with them and leaving behind only hatred for anything "environmental". Way to go dumbshits.

No one (indigenous or not) has a right to brutally hurt these animals. I am glad the SS sees that and tries to stop it. Maybe if people clubbed the clubbers, they would see the evil of their own actions. I just wish the SS could take the next step of hunting the hunters, you know, even the odds a little bit. Remember that the indigenous people of Germany wanted to hunt the Jews; tradition does not automatically give a person a right to do something. The "indigenous" people of Germany had to be stopped from practicing their national traditions (the genocide of the Jews go back thousands of years), just like Native Americans must sometimes be stopped from doing their tradition (like the whale hunts). If they are unwilling to stop because they do not care about morality, sometimes they need to be stopped.

Racist? You're calling Sea Shepherd racist? Give me a break. Sea Shepherd is about defending wildlife. To call the racist because they happen to be opposing the Makah is ludicrous. They have expended a great deal of effort opposing sealing. Capt Watson is Canadian. The sealers are Canadian. Does that make Sea Shepherd anti-Canadian?

If it was a bunch of WASP's fresh out of a Baptist church on Sunday morning that were murdering whales do you think Sea Shepherd would ignore them?

"just like Native Americans must sometimes be stopped from doing their tradition (like the whale hunts). If they are unwilling to stop because they do not care about morality, sometimes they need to be stopped."

How very racist of you.

For a well researched history of Watson's racist lies and general lack of integrity, as well as a clear look at the racism of some environmental groups, see:

 http://www.certain-natl.org/racism_in_the_ar_movement.html

for the comprehensive web site on SS's and Watson's racism. It is unfortunate that activists still allow SS to ferment such division, by spaming any internet resource where people make this criticism.

The Makah people and whales can obviously co-exist. They did so for a long time before the people who wrote the drivel legalizing their long held 'hunting rights'.

To the extent that the Makah nation has become western-consumerists is the extent they NEED whaling.

For substinance based fishing-and whaling cultures of the west coast (like the Makah), their health has immediately and drastically declined with the decrease in substinance fishing and hunting and the partial adoption of western, processed-foods diet.

SO WHALING IS TO SOME DEGREE A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH FOR THE MAKAH TRIBE.

The obesity, heart disease, and diabetes epidemics of the Makah (and other west coast tribes) is directly linked to the loss of traditional subsitence hunting and fishing diet.

There are no 'organic co-ops' in Neah Bay, where most of the Makah live. There are few jobs and even less disposable income. What jobs are available to Makah members often mean leaving the Makah Nation and the support that exists there. The tribe has some control over only a fraction of the area it used too and has no control over the fisheries and forests that used to sustain them. All of this occured because of the immediate ancestors of most of the folks reading this.

So for anyone thinking that the tribe does not NEED whaling, and that the tribe does not DESERVE whaling...I suggest you spend some time in NEAH BAY...talk to folks, think about the greed of our ancestors....and then tell me what you think!

The hipocrsy of the invading, polluting, resource stripping, gas guzzling hordes (yes thats me too) astounds me!

You want to see greed and thoughtless, pointless destruction of natural life? Look two inches from your nose...not to the makah nation!

Here's an article I found printed in a local Vancouver paper. I think it sums things up very well.

"The majority of Canadians (and the rest of the world) is opposed to the
seal hunt, and yet the brutes still drag their knuckles across the ice in
search of seals to smash. I thought the Canadian flag represented a
democracy where people would be heard and represented. Fly our flag at half
mast, its false advertising" - Mike Rogozinski

There was a follow up printed by a reader in todays edition:

"I thought your reader Mike Rogozinski raised an intereting point about the seal hunt (April 5). With such a large majority of Canadians against the seal hunt, how is it the brutality is allowed to continue" - Christopher Hatherly, Pitt Meadows BC.

Don't hate the protestors, or the sealers, just hate the hunt itself and put an end to it.

The barbaric Canadian seal hunters should be required to get real jobs rather than use their ruthlessness to accost other human beings and club innocent baby seals to death creating a sea of red. They are probably high on the fact that they are allowed to club hundreds of thousands of seals which enables them regress into further ignorance rather than educate themselves enough to pursue real employment. Disgusting isn't it?

I'm flattered someone took the time to post my 24hrs submission regarding the seal slaughter. Both sides of the debate are very passionate, and will defend their arguments however possible. We need to avoid personal insults and ridicule, and focus on the real issue;

Hundreds of thousands of seal pups are butchered before they have even had a chance to live. The Department and Fisheries and Oceans set the kill quota at over 300,000 animals, and says 98% of pups are killed humanely. That means over 6,000 defenseless seal pups are only injured or maimed and left to writhe on the ice in excruciating pain until they die. That is unacceptable. Canada is supposed to be a compassionate and caring country, but then endorses such a barbaric event.

Sealers still believe seals depleted the cod stock, when everyone knows it was their own greed that raped the Grand Banks. Environmental groups warned them decades ago, but they were too greedy and kept taking more, and more, and more. Now they just keep taking more, and more, and more tax dollars from the hard working Canadian taxpayers.

The sealers live a charmed life. They embarrass our country, slaughter defenseless mammals, and then we reward them for it. Oh Canada!

I'd love to have the list (address, phone number...) of the seals clubbers.
email me at:  ritasorenson@yahoo.com

All I have to say is seal hunting is totally wrong.