Paul Watson reportedly shot in chest by Japanese Coast Guard

No worries Eric. I'll keep quiet. It doesn't make a difference anyway as we all just keep restating the same points over & over. I don't know anyone that has changed their mind on the subject because of any posts. That's why I yawned.

my mouth is now zipped, see?

Zippsy -- the is that some folks are trying to have a conversation. Some threads are clearly made better by humor and sarcasm, but this one is not.

Whatever anyone on this thread thinks of SS's tactics and the reactions to these, they have succeeded in their aims well and truly. They have raised the profile of the topic of whaling and have raised the profile of this highly emotive subject and got people talking about it. This thread is absolute evidence of that!

 

What baffles me about the whole subject of current whaling is that economically it MUST be damaging in overall terms. Whenever I talk to anyone at all interested in cetaceans (a surprisingly large number of people) the response is always the same - they tend to operate a bias in favour of buying goods sourced from non-whaling countries whenever they are able to do so (myself included). SS's actions will IMHO, raise the whaling debate in parts of the media and whatever people think of their actions I would say that the knock on effect of this raised profile has to be negative economically on Japan and other whaling nations.

Paul

I would agree in principle that it raises awareness but I seriously doubt it's effectivenmess. Let's take this forum. We've heard many show outrage etc...but they also continue to use Sony, Nikon, Canon etc.

The other issue is the products from the whaling countries like Norway and Iceland are pretty much rare in our normal everyday life that I can honestly say I've boycotted them. But Japan is so much into consumer electronics that we can't ignore them.

The key to tackling this problem is realising that the Japanese government is run by old guard nationalist. Like every other human being on earth, when some foreigner tries to force doctrine down on someone else, it's doomed to failure because it builds resentment. Whaling in Japan will probably disappear in 10-15 years, phased out gradually by new politicians and voters. Raising nationalistic feelings just prolongs the defiance.

Drew

I do take your points, however from a European perspective I am sure that I have read the odd news item in papers and heard the odd radio broadcast that indicates that within a European context, countries such as Iceland and Norway have found whaling to be economically detrimental, and as a result I suspect that we will eventually see their whaling ambitions decline and eventually end - money, as they say, talks!

I know far less about the Japanese and the extent of any nationalistic fervour for old traditions like whaling. However I am not personally impressed by the attitude displayed by the Japanese government and will try to source any equipment I need from the used market rather than new wherever possible (and ok, I accept that its not always possible and that we live in a complex world economically). I can't do a great deal but what little I can do I will - money, as they say, talks!

Paul I agree with Iceland. They stopped after killing a few whales because they couldn't get rid of the meat. Norway however is bankrolled by their petroleum industry and the subsidies will just keep coming for a long while. They could pay these guys to sit on their butts but they have to launch and catch something. It's unfortunately like the spanish fishing fleet ... a big voting base with political clout. Same for the Japanese, whose economic piggy bank is so deep that they can support the industry indefinitely. What's more for the Japanese is the fight to stake claim to resources. They know the seafood fisheries are collapsing in many parts of the work. I suspect it's a longer term thinking to secure a natural resource. Being a country with very little natural resource and an economy that's moved away from agriculture, it's not hard to see why they do so. Plus the various whaling villages that is a voting base. Hopefully the mercury buildup will put them off.

I hear you on the boycott but if the companies don't know you are avoiding their products because of japanese whaling, your abstinence is wasted as just a poor quarter.

Also seriously, we have more urgent issues with sharks than whales. And I seriously don't see anyone boycotting Chinese goods, again because now they are a manufacturing powerhouse. Casinos in Vegas will listen because their main customers are still americans, although a significant number of their bigger spending clients are of Asian background.

Nonsens ! Yes , read it again " Nonsens !!!!

If you are shot with a high calibre rifle , as the slug he shows suggests , wearing a Kevlar , the force is so high that you will be lifted off your feet and experience flight yourself. You will lie on the ground , struggle to breathe and need hospitalisation .At the hospital they will find compression fractures all around the area , and the bruise will be as large as approx 4 hands and increasing. A shot on the heart will cause such symphatic response, that he would have been vomiting all over the place and heart failure could have been inevitable.

Emaltorio, I doubt very many people think this was a high caliber rifle. No way a kevlar jacket will protect against that. Watson seems to barely notice the impact. So it's either a very slow pistol round, or some kind of shrapnel.

I hope we get some more info about it, if only to solve the mystery.

Cor

Nonsens ! Yes , read it again " Nonsens !!!!

 

If you are shot with a high calibre rifle , as the slug he shows suggests , wearing a Kevlar , the force is so high that you will be lifted off your feet and experience flight yourself. You will lie on the ground , struggle to breathe and need hospitalisation .At the hospital they will find compression fractures all around the area , and the bruise will be as large as approx 4 hands and increasing. A shot on the heart will cause such symphatic response, that he would have been vomiting all over the place and heart failure could have been inevitable.

Emaltorio

Actually the physics of that happening is not possible. It's not like the movies Technically the inelastic collision of the bullet against the kevlar is less after traveling the distance from the gun to the target. The kinetic energy is changed into force via shock waves (causing bruising etc) and heat (burns). The mass of a bullet (even a high caliber rifle round) and the momentum it carries is not enough to knock a person off their feet, especially one as massive as Paul Watson. What knocks them down is the pain of the impact but you don't have a person flying backwards like say Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 1 (the best was LW4 but I like Jet Li ). I think even Mythbusters took a look at this at one point.

Which brings me to whether the round was a full metal jacket(the preferred round of infantry for the piercing ability) or a hollow point round (the preferred round of law enforcement for the damage).

Part of the reason of my disbelief it is a gun round is because of the physics involved. If it were shrapnel, I'd be less vocal about this. With an ex-cop on board, I think the identification of a bullet vs shrapnel should be pretty definitive. It is also very difficult for the 'truth' to be determined. If they hand in a bullet and examine the JCG guns and it's not from their issued guns, SS can claim the japanese dumped the gun in the Antarctic (opps gave them another idea). Maybe if the JCG don't do laundry for the next month it'll be possible to do a GSR test ... I'm going to suggest this as an episode for one of those CSI shows.

Still the JCG were crazy to throw flash balls at a boat, even the very latest devices are adviced to be used at least 5 ft away from any one. That's what happens when things escalate.

If you look at the vest, it's really quite basic. This is not a military style vest. The way he just goes in there with his hands and bends the material it seems like it's got no ceramic or metal plates whatsoever, at least at the point of impact. The insert plates are what stop the high velocity rifle rounds, a regular vest can not.

What it could be is a .22 long range rifle round (which is a very popular cheap round). Those can be stopped by almost anything and carry relatively little kinetic energy compared to other rounds. But still, you'll know if you get hit by one of those.

It's interesting to read how the Japanese foreign office keep changing their story.

Cor

Ok Drew

I have a house near Port Edward. Next time you go to S.A on your sardine trip, drop me a mail. I have a SADF issued Kevlar vest .

I aso have a 38 special, .22 (balistic) , and a 303. You can wear the vest , I am crack shot.

Lets test your theory ! ;->

Sorry, I only stop in Port Edward for a bathroom break... you don't have any nice restaurants there.

I should add when I mean knock a person back, I mean a few feet.

Cor, where did you get any new stories? Last I heard they denied it. There was some confusion when Stew Smith reported they fired warning shots, but that was a miscommunication. The Aussies clarified the statement later. The japanese admitted to throwing warning balls, not warning shots. It must be Inwood's accent LOL.

Nonsens ! Yes , read it again " Nonsens !!!!

 

If you are shot with a high calibre rifle , as the slug he shows suggests , wearing a Kevlar , the force is so high that you will be lifted off your feet and experience flight yourself. ...

from www.mythbustersresults.com Myth busted, sorry.... http://mythbustersresults.com/episode25

"REVISITED: A body struck by a bullet will be propelled violently backwards. (From episode 25)

re-busted

Even a .50 Caliber bullet does not have the momentum to knock a person backwards. If it were possible, the shooter would be knocked backwards as well - as per Newton’s Third Law."

Looking at the low res images, the bullet showed mushrooming typical of a semi-jacketed lead or pure lead hollow point pistol round.

I was a gun nut for years prior to the more passive pursuits of diving and photography, have shot handgun calibers from .22 to .38/.357 to .45.

Stu

Thanks Stu but even those guys have it wrong I think. I don't think it's newton's 3rd law. If my high school physics doesn't desert me, I believe the action/reaction has to occur at the same instance. Whereas the bullet hitting the target happens later than when the bullet is ignited and the resulting recoil. The recoil begins at the time the bullet is fired. The recoil is a product of the hot gas expansion and the resulting force to propel the bullet. Since the only thing that hits the target is the bullet and not the hot gases, plus the air resistance from travelling from gun to target, the momentum is less than when it leaves the gun.

I'm probably talking out of my butt but I had this FBI guy explain it to me years ago. He was complaining about bad movie physics. Still Emaltorio's description of the impact on the body seem to be accurate. Kevlar only deforms the bullet but not the momentum. The bruising etc should be there.

[Edit]

I just googled body armor and found this gem:

http://www.ecvv.com/product/vp981333/China...or-type-H2.html

Our body armor have very excellent performance in defense of steel-cord bullets, UV irradiation (preventing from aging), internal injury and moisture. Besides, our body armor have other advantages, such as no ricochet, easy to store, long usage life and so on. With a light weight, the body armor wear very comfortable.

Premature aging protection too! WOW

Hi Drew,

I was simply responding to his comment "the force is so high that you will be lifted off your feet and experience flight yourself"

Yes, bruising etc will be present even when wearing a kevlar vest, it simply protects you from penetration. If someone were to hit you with a hammer even when wearing a basic kevlar vest, it would still hurt. You'd likely double over from the pain as well. Though I think given the choice ...folks would rather be hit by a hammer than shot. The Mythbusters simply prove that no bullet fired from a typical hand holdable firearm (and they used the Barrett 50cal rifle) would be capable of lifting a person (especially someone the size of P.W. ) off their feet. I saw that episode and they shot at a 100+ lb pig carcass from less than 10 yards. The carcass simply moved a smidge!

Regardless, this is still inexcusable, I learned long ago to never point a gun, from BB to powder burner at anyone unless you're intending to hurt them...or worse.

s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_kv4p65q3s...feature=related

Well , Port Edward may be your Piss -stop , but its my paradise , brew!

Good diving , fishing , sunshine etc, Make a stop I will show you around

Regardless, this is still inexcusable, I learned long ago to never point a gun, from BB to powder burner at anyone unless you're intending to hurt them...or worse

Well the issue is whether the Japanese did or not. Throwing flashbangs is already bad enough.

Well , Port Edward may be your Piss -stop , but its my paradise , brew!

Good diving , fishing , sunshine etc, Make a stop I will show you around

Thanks, brew. I have based myself in the 'other' PE before. But the viz was too bad for the sards.

But it's a lot more civilized than in the EC.

Wish I would have been around when this thread started. I’ve been out diving for quite some time and it takes me a while to get into blogging like this...

Sorry to re-open this thread, though I wanted to throw in my tuppence on this too as I believe quite strong in what Paul is doign and has done!

First and foremost I' shocked to read some of the comments here, especially PACMAN and his Paul Watson's big head these days comment.

I don't think anyone agrees with Pauls methods, however who else has done as much as this guy to bring to light many of the big issues in the oceanic environment we all love so much?

If it weren't for this guy there would be far less media coverage on ilegal whaling and the likes...

I've met Paul Watson on two occasions and he seems an honest fellow. Perhaps I am easily persuaded, but he convinced me that he's doing the right thing, that he has asked to be arrested and that foreign countries refuse to do so. I've met Rob Stuart (Sharkwater) and perhaps he is young and impressionable, but he seems to like Paul Watson after having gone through some pretty hairy moments with him, filming the movie.

The bottom line is that all whaling and shark fishing will end when there are too few of the animals to hunt profitably. Paul Watson has had an emotional connection to animals, including whales, which makes it impossible for him to sit still when he knows there is something that can be done about it. If there are international treaties banning the killing, so much the better, he can feel justified as being an international police officer enforcing international treaties.

Are there better ways to solve the problem? Of course. There is a better way to do anything. The trick is to find it. Until then, people do what they can, and he is really putting himself on the line doing something about something he believes in, and he's never killed or gotten anybody killed, doing it.

Before criticizing the man, of course, ask yourself what you are doing to solve the problem. Eventually there may be no problem to solve because of extinction. Until then, some believe action is required rather than more and more talk.

By the way, movies such as Sharkwater may in fact do a lot more for raising awareness than Paul Watson's activities, but there has to be a combination of awareness (to change behavior and laws) and action. That's why it was so cool to have Watson and Stuart together in the movie.

One Diver's Perspective.

I don't think anyone agrees with Pauls methods...

I do!

It was matter of time before the Japanese retaliated to the acid attacks.

 

Being a skeptic, without having investigated this, 2 things come up to mind:

 

1. Why was Watson suddenly wearing a bullet proof vest on his boat? Was he expecting to get shot at? There's no thermal value with kevlar vests.

2. They have video of the flash grenades, but none of the apparent gunfire. Was it shrapnel from the flash grenade, which wouldn't be a flash grenade then because flash grenades are incapable of producing shrapnel, being designed as a non-lethal.

 

They must have a skilled marksmen as well since they hit him right in the heart area. Also a pretty low powered round since he didn't seem to suffer too much from the bullet hitting him. In the video, it seemed he didn't flinch much.

 

However, without accusing anyone, I find it VERY dubious and would insist on further information before condemning the Japanese. It would not be the first time events like these are fabricated for attention and disruption. However if they have video evidence, not designed for PR effect, I'd definitely like to see the Japanese arrested for attempted homicide.

Of course, the Japanese are denying they did anything other than the flash/bang "warning balls".

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23336322-2,00.html

I agree with Drew, a direct shot at that distance from a standard rifle would cause some nice bruising on his chest. It could be a ricochet, that would explain the low power of the impact [but it looks . I think Sea Shepherd has to release the so called bullet and vest for independent analysis, it doesn't look very credible as is.