They may not have eye patches or peg legs, but the crews aboard the Farley Mowat and the Robert Hunter officially became a band of buccaneers when the two Sea Shepherd vessels were deregistered. Without registered flags, the ships are legally classified as pirate ships under maritime law. Over the past six months, the two ships–captained by controversial marine conservationist Paul Watson–have pursued Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. The six-ship Japanese fleet consists of three harpoon-equipped chaser vessels, two whale spotters and the Nisshin Maru–the world’s only factory whaling ship, referred to by Watson as a ‘floating slaughterhouse.’ In spite of a moratorium on commercial whaling enacted by the International Whaling Commission in 1986, Japan continues to hunt whales thanks to a loophole allowing research. Insisting the slaughter is necessary for their research, the Japanese began to hunt under such auspices in 1987, almost immediately following the moratorium’s institution. Due to the IWC’s ‘no waste’ rules, Japan is then ‘forced’ to process and sell the resulting whale products, generating an estimated $52 million annually in profit. Despite killing thousands of whales, Japan’s whale research is extremely poor, providing virtually no valuable information. Not […]