Ten years ago, we celebrated the new millennium in the far north, with lots of fishing and diving. Hayley and I then also dived the Rainbow Warrior by the Cavalli Islands outside Matauri Bay, its final resting place after having been bombed in Auckland harbour by secret French agents. This was when Greenpeace used the vessel to protest against France’s testing of nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Pretty arrogant by the French of course but personally I was in two minds about paying tribute to a Greenpeace vessel by diving it. I grew up in Norway, where Greenpeace in general is a dirty word and more of a show pony than a serious environmental group.
(There are many other and better environmental groups & important causes to support ahead of Greenpeace, in my humble opinion.) The organization was nothing but an insolvent little group of nutters until they jumped on the ‘save the seals’ wagon, a campaign completely built around emotion and misinformation rather than facts.
“Anchor Me” is a song by the New Zealand band The Mutton Birds from their 1993 album, Salty. In 2005, an all-star line-up of New Zealand artists collaborated to re-record the song, as a charity-fundraising single to mark the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of Rainbow Warrior. Vocalists on the single included Goldenhorse’s Kirsten Morelle, Che Fu, Anika Moa, Pluto’s Milan Borich, Adeaze, Hinewehi Mohi and Nesian Mystik’s David Atai and Donald McNulty. Links above: new version left, original version right.
That seal hunting eventually more or less stopped has contributed to an imbalance in the Arctic waters where the hunt took place. Every blimin’ European country still wants to over-fish the same waters, at the same time as they think stock of mammals should keep growing out of proportions. That does of course not make any sense. The seal population in those waters started growing with 30 000 animals per year(!). This has been followed by diseases and seals in huge numbers seeking all the way into the Norwegian coast to seek for food, with various bad consequenses. Now we need to educate the Norwegian killer-whales (orca) to eat seals, like they do many other places. (In Norway the orca diet mainly consists of herrings.)
Another great mass-misinformation, with much money making contribution from Greenpeace campaigns, has been regarding the whale hunting. I don’t know much about the Japanese whaling in the south Pacific, except they don’t seem to be targeting endangered species. The same is the case with the Norwegian and Icelandic hunts in the north Atlantic. The anti-whaling campaigns argue as if there only is one super whale. A bit more balanced and factual info would of course not do much for signing up new members and support for the so-called ‘environmental groups’. Recently in the media we saw another extreme group having a run-in with the Japanese, and then incredibly blaming the Japanese when their protest vessel was damaged and sunk. They are thugs and hooligans who have done dangerous and destructive stunts many other places before, including in Norway. Plain fishermen, who might shoot a minke whale or two between fishing seasons, have had their lively hoods destroyed by these people whom are hiding behind being ‘environmentalists’. This is the bigger scale protests compared to what we so far experience against us recreational small game hunters. Before people have an opinion against any hunting, I hope they will seek to be educated first.
