One of the Sea Shepherd crew was captured by the Japanese after illegally boarding one of the whaling vessels. Apparently he was the guy who lent the crew the three million dollar boat that sank in the Antarctic seas.
I hope the Japanese whalers take him back to Japan and try him for piracy.
I wonder if he isn’t doing it for the publicity. Get arrested, have a trial that will be all over the media, act like some sort of martyr.
Just my opinion.
I think they should try him on deck and then keelhaul him if he is found guilty!
Yeah…why feed him until they head back to Japan?
And speaking of feeding him, I hope whale is on the menu
I predict that mentioning the Sea Shepherd will get you logs of hits from Australia/New Zealand and lots of negative comments and emails.
The guy definitely wants to be a martyr. Will New Zealand let him? Given the circumstances of the collision in questions (the shepherd ship purposefully darted in front of the other ship) I hope he’s also tried from that standpoint and New Zealand ignores the whole thing and leaves it to Japanese courts. He recklessly endangered many lives.
I’ve done it before without too much in the way of that.
Japanese prison is very bad: this guy is in for a rough time. People don’t realize Japan is a police state and unless New Zealand can work something out with Japan, he’s in for a pretty rough couple years.
I’ve seen documentaries on Japanese prisons. They made it look like non-stop boot camp. I was wondering if it might be safer than our prisons or actually do something worthwhile for the people in them.
I did a couple of posts on sea Shepherd videos and got several comments and emails from Australians. I assumed this blog being 40x bigger would get 40x as many. glad to hear not!
If I’m at sea and board another vessel, and I’m not in distress, I’m a pirate. Bad choice on his part.
I voted for throwing him overboard without a life vest, but I’ll accept trial for piracy.
Why would New Zealand have jurisdiction? The offenses were committed on a Japanese registered vessel (piracy, and intentionally hazarding your vessel – which is a violation of the ColRegs (International Regulations for Prevention of Collisions at Sea), specifically sections 7,8 and 18 – the whaling vessel was engaged in fishing, and the other vessel was obliged to stand clear of it. Violations of admiralty law on a vessel are usually adjudicated by that vessels home country, and New Zealand doesn’t have any claim to the international waters they were in. Oopsie!
This putz is hopefully going to discover that his money won’t help him in Japan. I would suggest to the Japanese that they keep him onboard until the ship returns to Japan, and not try to transship him through New Zealand (certainly)…and that members of the Japanese SDF or national police take custody of him.
The plank. Definitely the plank.
Admiralty court wherever the vessel is homeported; and a good stiff sentence. And, yeah – a Japanese prison is not someplace I would consider to be any kind of comfortable…
I’m a long time reader from New Zealand, most of my friends I’ve talked to think the guy is a moron. A lot of people hate the fact that the Japanese are whaling in waters not far from NZ, but they also think the way Sea Shepherd has protested is completely inappropriate. They are not doing their cause any good by pulling stunts such as this!