The international crew of the Sea Shepherd trawler Farley Mowat, pirate flag a'flyin.
With the release of the documentary At the Edge of the World, the activities of the Sea Shepherd eco-pirates are gaining wider media attention. In brief; Sea Shepherd has been around for 30 years, and, with crews composed of members from more than 15 nations, uses array of re-fitted ships known as "Neptune's Navy" to confront, sink or stop whalers. The tactics vary; including ramming, boarding actions and destroying drift nets.
They've also been known to undertake land-based operations, sabotaging whaling stations and sinking ships in harbor. Their reach, like their membership, is international: they've hit all over the world.
Most recently, they've become known for confronting the Japanese whaling fleets, who, in contravention of international treaties on whaling, hunt and slaughter about 1,100 whales a year for "research purposes." Their opponents have dubbed them "terrorists" (an overused word if ever there was one), but as the Sea Shepherd group goes out of their way to avoid causing deaths, to the point of offering to assist searches for lost whaling ships, the description is ludicrous.
The title of "pirate" however, they proudly claim, as can be seen from the imagery on their flag, or bailing one of their captains out with doubloons.
I first became aware of Sea Shepherd through an excellent New Yorker profile of their founder, ex-Greenpeace activist Paul Watson.
In many ways their very existence reflects our changing times. Ideology increasingly cuts across national borders, as evidenced by Sea Shepherd's polyglot crews and multiple bases. The abundance of cast-off equipment created by industrialization also allows them to carry out their operations on a relatively shoestring budget, while the pirates of old (fighting for money, not ideology, as their Somali descendants still do) had to capture their vessels. They seem to have adroitly managed both the legal and confrontational aspects of their work: Sea Shepherd is a legit non-profit (tax deductible donations and all), and its website even touts special Visa cards with pictures of frolicking marine life.
Of course, they're far from the only subculture to have such international reach, or combine a public face with a more subversive underbelly. But they're a particularly militant and durable manifestation, because unlike most, their confrontations with the authorities has demonstrated how hard it is to shut down an ideology in a globalized world.
More than one national government has condemned them as criminals and set out to stop them; said government will then arrest members or stop certain operations, but Sea Shepherd's been in operation for three decades and show no signs of stopping.
If the trailer is any indication, At the Edge of the World, which I look forward to seeing, seems to side pretty heavily with Sea Shepherd, but offers a (dramatically scored) glimpse into their operations and the ideals that drive them.
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