A collision Tuesday with a Japanese whalers destroyed a $2 million high-tech speedboat operated by Paul Watson and his anti-whaling outfit, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. It was probably the costliest collision yet for the group. But Watson has a long roster of mishaps at sea.
Paul Watson calls his reality TV show “Whale Wars” for a reason: When he says he’s “fighting” to save whales he isn’t using a metaphor. For decades, Mr. Watson and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have rammed, sabotaged, shot water canons at and thrown stink bombs on whalers and commercial fishing vessels. The Ady Gil, the high-tech speedboat he sought to deploy against Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean this winter, may have been his most expensive loss so far at sea but his has been a career filled with dangerous mishaps and financial losses – both for his crews and for the boats he’s targeted. The jury is still out on who caused Wednesday’s collision. Watson’s group says they were deliberately rammed; the Japanese say the Gil steered into them. A view of the video shows some merit to both claims, though typically larger vessels are expected to make every effort to steer away from smaller ones on the high seas, and the Japanese were clearly well-aware of their proximity to the Gill, given that they were directing water canon fire at it before, during and after the collision.
More on Paul Watson here.
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Here are a couple videos of the collision…
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