According to Paul Watson from anti-whaling NGO Sea Shepherd, traditional Makah whalers had no plans to resume whaling. Then Watson's mate Wayne Johnson went out one Saturday morning and killed a gray whale:
According to Lynda V. Mapes reporting for the Seattle Times:
“It was about 6:30 on a beautiful summer morning, with gray whales all around, when Wayne Johnson decided he had waited long enough: It was time to hunt whales again.
Within minutes Saturday, Johnson and four other Makah tribal members were on the downtown dock at Neah Bay, boarding two motorized boats. By the end of the day, the men were in handcuffs and a whale was dead.”
“Sunday, even as tribal council members strongly denounced the hunt, Johnson said he had no regrets. "If anything, I wish I'd done it years earlier," he said.”
“Johnson confirmed that the hunt that shocked his own tribe and anti-whaling activists Saturday was carried out without the permission of his Tribal Council or Whaling Commission”
“And it was done without conforming to conditions of the federal permit that controlled that 1999 hunt -- permission from the tribe; prior notification to a federal observer who had to be in place at the time of the kill; restricting the hunt to the outer coast to protect "resident" whales in the Strait of Juan de Fuca; approaching the whale in a traditional canoe; and using first a harpoon and then a .50-caliber gun to dispatch the whale.
On Saturday, there was no permit, no observer, no canoe; no restricting the hunt to the coast. Just five whalers, four from the 1999 hunt, casting loose from the downtown dock.
"Why mess around with a canoe?" Johnson said. "It would have been more people in jail, and we would have lost the canoe."
“Saturday night, after the whalers were taken into custody, tribal officials met with community members for more than two hours to talk about what had happened. Some were concerned the rogue hunt would complicate and slow their efforts to legally hunt whales again.”
Journalist Ken Schram is even harder on Wayne Johnson:
"Don’t call it a hunt.”
“Never mind that they didn't have permission from the Makah tribal council to hunt the whale.
Never mind that they didn't have the necessary federal permit.
Never mind that the spiritual and cultural elements of a whale hunt were no where to be found.
Never mind any of that.
Wayne Johnson, the guy who says he's got whaling in his blood, just felt the time was right to go out and kill.
No blubber shared with the elders and the young.
No ancestral stories.
No respect for the whale or for Indian heritage.
It took 12 hours for the gray whale to die.
Meanwhile ...
An American animal rights activists has take responsibility for the sinking of the Norwegian whaling ship:
“On the night of august 30th we decided to celebrate the end of commercial whaling in Iceland by removing a large section of cooling pipe in the engine room of the norweigan whaler Willassen Senior.
“After ensuring that the vessel was unoccupied the salt water intake valve was opened unleashing a torrent of water into the heart of the killer ship that two years earlier took 14 minutes to brutally murder a threatened minke whale.”
“The sinking of the whaler and the silencing of its deadly harpoon is dedicated to the memory of the yangtze river dolphin who because of humankinds greed will never again grace the waters of our blue planet”
Of course now the whaler has been sunk due to anti-whaling activists, Norwegians will probably once again unite to defend whaling as was proved in the late 90’s. Indeed, the local Labour Party Chair has now stated this is a terrorist attack on Norway and wants political reaction.
Ann Novek,
Sweden
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Apologies to Ann for not posting this sooner.
Hi IceClass,
I'm afraid that your comment is not much read now when it has disappeard from the " front page".
Maybe you could post a guest blog to Jennifer on " eco -imperialism" ? She is very kind and usually post guest blogs on such subjects.
Looking forward to such a thread...
Alx Dark created a good site dealing with the Makah Hunt. It dates mainly from 1999 when the Makah went out and harvested their first whale in 70 odd years.
His piece is interesting and the section on eco-colonialism certainly wraps up most of the fatuous arguments our "compassionate" friends trot out:
http://www.ncseonline.org/NAE/cases/makah/index.html
Seems relevant to the Polar Bear thread too.
Icelandic turn around re commercial whaling.
The Icelandic commercial whaling season is extended to November 1.
We have no clue why the season is extended ( opposing the NGOs claim of a victory???) but according to Icelandic Minke Whaler's Association's website, the whale meat is selling fine.
http://www.hrefna.is
To understand many Norwegian's position on whaling you need only to listen to their politicians.
One politician in the Parliament stated today that Norway must understand what favour the whalers do to Norway( Guess he means that they hunt whales because they eat fish)and demanded the whole nations support for the whalers.
He also demanded that the State would compensate the whalers and their families if they were under attack by anti whalers.
He stated as well that this previous attack on the whaler was an attack on " the whaling nation Norway".
The whales' war....
Sorry for my poor English , but according to media in Norway , the sunken whaler must sign a " war insurance" to get compensation for the damage done by the whale activists. If they don't sign a war insurance they have to pay about 22 million Norwegian crowns for repair etc.
It seems as well that all whaling ships must now sign a " war insurance".
The Norwegian police state that the sabotage of the whaler was done in an extremely professional way and it's a work of professionals and not by amateurs.
I'm not going into any technical fetails here but the whaler started to leak at four difference places and the gasoline pumps were cut off so if somebody had come aboard when the ship was sinking it was impossible to restart the engines etc and start pumping out water.
I saw as well on the American activists site that the animal rights activists use butyric acid in their actions, something that Watson also did.
On one pic on the American website there was as well a pic on an action against a Norwegian fur farm with text in Norwegian.
" Tribal law requires the judge to consider not only what happened to the whale but damage done to the entire community. Possible penalties could include up to a year in jail in Neah Bay and a $5,000 fine.
"Of course I'm worried about what could happen," Wayne Johnson, one of the whalers, said. "That jail is like a dog pound. I had a friend in there and they fed him the same surplus-commodity TV dinners from Fort Lewis for three months."
But Johnson, who is unapologetic about the hunt, insists that the whalers can fall back on their treaty rights - an argument Vitalis and Doulik reject out of hand.
"We are just trying to follow today's standards and procedures"
http://www.examiner.com/a-938296~For_Makah_tribal_judges__case_of_killed_whale_is_personal.html
>Promise to improve myself and not being such a mean bitch ;-)!
Ann I like you just the way you are 🙂
Travis wrote:
>As far as I am aware, Greenpeace has not involved itself in captivity issues in the past.
George wrote:
>Actually Travis, GP has never had an official position on Live dolphin / marine mammal captures since the industry first started way back in the 1960´s...
Yup, that would be close to what I wrote.