The Online Annotated Power Moby-Dick explains the more obscure seafaring and whaling terms, 19th Century slang and topical jokes in Melville's epic. Hey, didja know there's a fart joke right there in Chapter 1? [more inside]
posted by Quietgal on Nov 11, 2008 - 50 comments

Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator [more inside]
posted by nthdegx on Jan 22, 2008 - 31 comments

A complex situation has arisen in the Southern Ocean where the Japanese Whaling fleet run by The Institute of Cetacean Research is attempting to slaughter nearly a thousand whales for the much scoffed at purpose of scientific research. Greenpeace located the fleet and claims to have chased the whalers out of hunting grounds. An Australian Federal Court judgement meanwhile has ruled the expedition illegal and imposed an injunction against the illegal whaling in Australian waters. The Japanese do not recognise Australia's claim. The Japanese responded by ignoring the judgement. Now Sea Shephard an activist group have put two of their members aboard a Japanese Ship and claims they were tied to the mast. Despite the Japanese Government saying the activists would be released the ships captain refuses to do so. Recent related post.
posted by dodialog on Jan 16, 2008 - 69 comments

"Australians must not use whales to justify the racist ideology" The Australian government's [proto] stance on Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean has drawn a strong response by an anonymous youtube poster, citing racism as the core reason the Australian Government is taking a stand on the Japanese Whale Research Programme [caution, gruesome video and yet more racist youtube comments]. It seems Steve and Terri Irwin are trying to stop them.
posted by mattoxic on Jan 7, 2008 - 75 comments

A list of Watson’s campaigns in the eighties reads like a catalogue of Tintin adventures. In 1981, he secretly entered Siberia to document a Soviet food-processing facility that was converting illegally harvested whale meat into feed for animals at a fur farm. He succeeded in avoiding the K.G.B. and in outmaneuvering the Soviet Navy around a pod of gray whales. (Greenpeace, which visited the facility the following year, got caught; one of the Greenpeace activists told me, “I was taken into a room with a K.G.B. guy who asked, ‘Do you know Paul Watson?’ ”) In 1982, from a chartered airplane, Watson dropped paint-filled light bulbs on a Soviet trawler in the northern Pacific. He has used spoiled pie filling, fired from water cannons, as a weapon at sea. During the Falklands War, he contacted the British Navy and offered to assist its fleet by ferrying medical supplies to the front—“so I could head off any Argentine move to kill penguins,” he told me. The British declined the offer.

Neptune's Navy [print], the life and opinions of Paul Watson, anti-whaling vigilante and founder of Sea Shepherd. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus on Oct 30, 2007 - 9 comments

The Nisshin Maru is on fire. After being rammed by the Greenpeace Ship Sunrise, chased and harassed by anti-whaling activist Captain Paul Watson, and playing set to contemporary artist Matthew Barney's film Drawing Restraint 9 (which co-starred Barney's wife Bjork), the Nisshin Maru, flagship of Japan's whaling fleet has been crippled by an onboard fire fueled by whale oil, spelling a possible end to whaling in Japan.
posted by AtDuskGreg on Feb 20, 2007 - 105 comments

Yarrrr/Banzai! All you "Talk like a pirate day" keyboard swashbucklers take heed: The Sea Shepherd Society's flagship Farley Mowat is now officialy a pirate vessel after Canada, Britain, and Belize revoked their registration. As the Japanese winter Antarctic whale hunting season begins (previously), the M/V Farley Mowat is setting sail to meet them, armed with a hydraulic "can opener" battering ram, a pie cannon, and moral conviction. With the Japanese whaling fleet now majority owned by the Japanese government, a subject of international diplomatic intrigue, and after last year's confrontations, this could get ugly!
posted by anthill on Jan 14, 2007 - 54 comments

During the 19th century, thousands of men took to the seas to hunt for whales. The indigenous peoples of the Arctic practiced whaling for several millennia before that. Technological change and changes in mores have reduced the whaling industry to a heavily regulated shadow of what it used to be. But it hasn’t disappeared altogether. Even now, at the dawn of the 21st century, ships prowl the seas in search of a spout or a gigantic fin. A few months ago, Outside magazine published an account of a whale hunt aboard the Norwegian ship Sofie.
posted by jason's_planet on Oct 23, 2006 - 21 comments

Whale shot in front of tourists. What would you do if you were a tourist, eco or not, and you saw a whale being harvested right in front of you?
posted by pezdacanuck on Jul 6, 2006 - 99 comments

Now you too can feed your pet endangered meats! Meat from whales caught under Japan's "research" programme is so abundant that it is being sold as pet food. </one link newsFilter>
posted by Tryptophan-5ht on Feb 10, 2006 - 38 comments

(Knock, knock) "Candygram!" We don't know if ZDF has shown early SNL skits (nostalgic photo here), but German Greenpeace made a dramatic delivery to the Japanese Embassy in Berlin: a 55-foot-long fin whale that had been stranded in the Baltic. The dramatic gesture underscored the organization's contention that Japan's whaling, long defended as research, is in fact unnecessary: sufficient numbers of beached whales are available for research. The leviathan — 20 tonnes of blubber — was craned onto a truck and driven 150 miles from Rostock-Warnemünde to Berlin, and was due to be returned to the coast for study. (German-language stories on Greenpeace.de website here, here, and here, including logistical details for those curious about arranging their own special deliveries.)
posted by rob511 on Jan 22, 2006 - 12 comments

Got access to a daily satellite feed? Win $10 000. Not quite Sink the Bismarck, but the Sea Shepherds have offered a $10 000 reward for anyone who can tell them where the Japanese whaling fleet is this summer, as it prepares to scientifically study 950 minke and fin whales.
posted by wilful on Dec 7, 2005 - 19 comments

Minke whales, known as cockroaches of the sea are now available in burgers from Japanese fast-food chain Lucky Pierrot. This is somewhat controversial.
posted by quiet on Jun 24, 2005 - 52 comments

A beginner's guide to whaling.
posted by biffa on Sep 22, 2004 - 23 comments

Japan leads move to cut whaling by Artic natives [nytimes, reg. req.]. After being defeated in recent I.W.C. votes Japan wins one.
posted by rdr on May 25, 2002 - 11 comments

Japan To Host IWC Meeting in Whaling Port . . .the sheer volume of food they [whales] need has actually become a threat to the ocean environment.

Apparently they feel that when the rest of the world gets to taste whale bacon, or whale soup, they will suddenly realize who stupid we've been in banning commercial whaling. Am I hypocritical in eating tuna or salmon, but being horrified with the potential resumption of commercial whaling?
posted by Danf on Apr 18, 2002 - 16 comments