Minicap: Whale Wars

Whale Wars

By Saint Clare of Assisi | Saturday, June 18, 2011 | 1:58 pm | 7 Comments
Posted in: MiniCaps, Recaps, Whale Wars

Picture 6

Hey, Whale Wars warriors. I don’t know about you, but I’m really digging the fourth season and its fantastic satirical streak underlying everything. The show drove home the point that Sea Shepherd’s morale was at an all-time high coming off their successful third season, and then proceeded to show Sea Shepherd fucking up in a variety of ways. And the best part is, none of these fuck-ups are new. They’ve all pretty much happened before.

Picking up from last week, the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker are both being tailed by whaling ships, preventing them from finding their main target, the Nisshin Maru. Their only hope is using their super-fast Gojira to outrun their tails. But…the Gojira is out of fuel. They don’t say how or why this happened.

So to kick things off, Sea Shepherd has to attempt an incredibly dangerous and risky boat-to-boat refueling operation. At this point, the show takes us back to last season to remind us of the sinking of the Ady Gil. Remember how horrible that was? (If you don’t remember: it was horrible). The Ady was sunk during the course of…a dangerous ship-to-ship refueling operation. The Ady had to come to a full stop to refuel, allowing the Shonan Maru to crash into/trip over the Ady, depending on your bent. And with another whaling ship in the vicinity, Paul Watson is worried it will happen again.

The Steve Irwin dispatches a Delta boat to harass the whalers, letting the refueling operation go forward. First, the Steve Irwin and the Gojira must link up using a “bow line”–which is basically the same thing as a prop fouler, a long rope, but meant to connect the boats, not fuck up their propellers.


Which is precisely what happens. The Gojira crew messes up and the rope gets wrapped tightly around their propeller. (At least we get to see what a prop fouler would do if Sea Shepherd actually got those things to work, right?! Right). A diver is dispatched to cut the rope free.


While that’s going on, the Bob Barker has entered one of the whales’ feeding grounds to look for the Nisshin Maru. They figure the rest of the fleet would still be in this vicinity, even if they know Sea Shepherd is headed right for them. And sure enough, there’s a blip on their radar! Back on the Irwin, Chris Aultman, the helicopter pilot, is summoned to investigate this blip. And that’s when they discover: the helicopter battery’s dead. Time to get the jumper cables!

And I was totally joking, but that’s exactly what they do. Soon the helicopter is in the air headed for the mysterious ship.

Meanwhile, the Gojira has managed to untangle itself and get fueled up, and Paul Watson orders the Gojira to distract the Steve Irwin‘s trailer ship so the Irwin can sneak away. Unfortunately, that’s exactly when the Gojira loses an engine for no apparent reason. (So I blame an Animal Planet producer who wanted to amp up the drama). Things are pretty shitty back at the Barker, too. Chris Aultman has made it to the spot where the blip is, but it’s too foggy for him to see anything. All he can do is land on the Barker and wait.

But then, the Bob Barker‘s tailing ship approaches, its water cannons blasting. If the helicopter were to be sprayed with water it’d be all sorts of fucked up. Chris Aultman jumps back into the chopper to escape, and…the battery shits itself AGAIN.

And that’s the note we’re left with: the Steve Irwin trying to shake a tail for an entire episode and failing miserably, and Barker possibly losing their helicopter because somebody left the headlights on overnight. Nothing even RESEMBLING progress has been made. So, as good as things might get for the Sea Shepherds, let’s all remember that disaster is always five minutes away. Even if the Sea Shepherds forget that themselves.

And how about those whalers, huh? I know, I know, they’re dicks for killing the whales and all that…but they sure are good at it. That’s the kind of dick you have to watch out for.

 

Saint Clare of Assisi attended Boston University and has written for The Onion.  He took his name from the patron saint of television, who was a virgin and saved a boy from a wolf one time.

7 Comments

  1. 1
    Scott
    Posted June 18, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    And that is why I have no respect for PW or his organization. I don’t care where you fall on the “give your life for the whales” idea. If someone dies it will most likely be due to the stupidity of the leadership and the lack of proper equipment and training.

  2. 2
    JimmyT
    Posted June 18, 2011 at 11:33 pm

    What surprises me is that no one has been killed yet. SS has been around since 1977!

  3. 3
    BM2_7th Fleet
    Posted June 20, 2011 at 1:15 am

    Can’t wait for the full recap as the SeaIdiots’ seamanship reached new lows. Why didn’t they use a buoyant heaving line during refueling GZilla? They are abundantly available online and in marine stores. Further, did it look like they had trained for the unrep evolution ONCE? Oh, right, they aren’t real sailors.

    Also, are we to believe that SeaIdiots don’t have hull tech equipment to free one of their fleet’s screws from fouling by line, net or flotsam? They used a deck knife and hacksaw and not even a double bladed hacksaw (used by every hull tech and salvage diver I have ever met). This simple tools is standard kit for these specialists because it cuts both ways when sawing thereby saving the diver strokes with the saw while they are under a heaving ship or boat in current-filled or freezing water where time is critical. Forget about SeaIdiots having a pneumatic reciprocating saw, that would be like having working radios. In the 21st century.

    As I have said before and JimmyT intimated above, someone, or many persons, are going to die sooner or later. And we may not have to wait long. Next week in an attempt to place a “homing beacon” on a harpoon ship that’s underway at 15+ knots, it looks like a RIB is destroyed and at least one of the greenhorn Idiots goes overboard.

    Let’s hope the beacon works better than the rest of the fleet’s radios and comms gear.

  4. 4
    BM2_7th Fleet
    Posted June 20, 2011 at 1:26 am

    St Claire, didn’t you see the last few minutes with the chopper lost between the Barker and Irwin because the radios didn’t work? Chris is stuck in that heavy fog repeatedly trying to raise both ships as his fuel supply diminishes. Of course, Commodore Dipshit has moved the Irwin without relaying a new heading or course to the Barker or Chris before he took off to return to the Irwin. Chris and the chopper, and the camera man (who was probably freaking out – we really need a “behind the scenes” special) get to the spot where the Barker was and it’s gone. That was the final cliffhanger of episode 2.

  5. 5
    JimmyT
    Posted June 20, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    @BM2: Right there with you. My favorite act stupidity was when one of the deckhands on the Gogira actually pulled up the tangled line, cut it with a knife AND TOSSED IT BACK INTO THE WATER so that after the other piece was freed from the screw, they had to do the whole thing all over again.

  6. 6
    Saint Clare of Assisi
    Posted June 20, 2011 at 2:51 pm

    @BM2…good eyes. My show feed crapped out at the end of this one and I missed it. Which sucks, because that was pretty much my favorite part of the episode. It’s in the full recap, though, which’ll be up today.

    I’m totally with you on how scary it would be for the film crew, too.

    @JimmyT…that’s hilarious. I didn’t even think of that. Could they have still used that bow line after cutting it up? I don’t know enough about how they work.

  7. 7
    JimmyT
    Posted June 20, 2011 at 8:25 pm

    @St. Clare: I think so. From what they explained they needed the line to tow the boat so that it would move at the same speed as the other ship. The part that got stuck only seemed to be a line tied to a buoy.

    OK, off to read the full recap.

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