Please Do Not Tap On the Glass

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society sent an update via e-mail recently, and their Web site has been very active. One of the most interesting posts details information from Canada’s National Post newspaper on the “colossal” waste of taxpayer money that the seal slaughter represents. The story details corrupt practices of Canadian officials who are trying to get the EU not to ban seal products, as well as the money spent subsidizing a “hunt” that yields “one-tenth of 1% of Newfoundland’s GDP. (This year it will be even less, because pelts of three to four week old “beaters” that make up 95% of the catch are selling for between $6 and $33.)”

It also mentions HSUS’ brilliant Canadian seafood boycott and the incredible effect its has on the Canadian economy: “Fourthly, there is the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) led boycott that is largely responsible for the inflation adjusted $465-million drop in the value of Canadian exports of snow crabs — the main seafood export to the United States from Canada’s sealing provinces — since April, 2005. The value of 2007 snow crab exports is 44% lower than it was in 2004, the year prior to the boycott.”

HSUS has to date persuaded almost 3,600 U.S. businesses to participate, including heavy hitters Publix (annual sales $24-billion), Whole Foods ($7-billion), WinCo Foods, Lowe’s Foods, Harris Teeter ($3-billion each) and smaller, seafood-driven ones like Legal Sea Foods ($400-million). Sealing creates less than 1% of the value of the sealing provinces’ fishery. Sacrifice 99% for the sake of 1%. Now there’s a business plan!”

For the record, I shop only at stores that participate in the boycott and I’m currently not purchasing anything made in Canada.

You’ll also find on the site a really good editorial written by Silver Donald Cameron who writes for The NovaScotian. His biting wit details the conflict between Department of Fisheries and Ocean (or as Capt. Watson calls it, the “department of fishy business”) Minister Loyola Hearn and Paul Watson and how Sea Shepherd came out ahead. He writes “Paul Watson is not a cuddly figure. He doesn’t mind risks, and he is not intimidated by the authorities. If they don’t give him a permit, he goes to the ice without one and takes the consequences. If he has to go to jail, he goes. If the authorities bar him from the ice, he organizes a shipload of others. If they harass his Canadian ship, he registers it in the Netherlands. If they tell him he can’t enter Canadian waters, he stays 13 miles offshore and lets the hunt come to him.

He is utterly devoted to what he’s doing. And his passionate commitment reduces DFO and its successive ministers to gibbering, frothing incoherence.”

Amen, brother!

If you haven’t read the news already, the Japanese Agriculture Deputy Minister, Toshiro Shirasu, said: “Sabotage by activists is a major factor behind our failure to achieve our target.” The Japanese had planned to slaughter 1,035 whales but failed to take 484 whales.

Capt. Watson has a plan for the whale hunt later this year and he needs your help. “The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is working to raise the funding to return to the Southern Ocean again in December 2008 for a fifth campaign to oppose illegal Japanese whaling. This season the Japanese killed only 53 percent. Last year they took only 51 percent and the year before that Sea Shepherd prevented them from killing 84 whales or 10 percent.

Since interventions by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the Japanese have consistently failed to reach their quotas.

“If we can get the support to secure a second ship, we will be able to keep the Japanese whaling fleet on the run continuously and if we can do that we can prevent them from taking any a whales at all,” said Captain Watson. “My goal is to save 100 percent of the whales that the Japanese want to kill in the Southern Whale Sanctuary.”

You can join me in becoming a member of the Direct Action Crew by making a monthly donation. You’ll get a free Sea Shepherd Conservation Society T-shirt and you’ll be part of a group that takes action to save marine wildlife and succeeds.

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