There's a lot of noise on the internet today about Christopher Cox's "Consider the Oyster" which carries the slug/page title "It's OK for vegans to eat oysters" and the subhead "Why even strict vegans should feel comfortable eating oysters by the boatload."

Cox's basic thesis is that oysters don't feel pain and that commercial oyster production/harvesting is far more ecologically friendly than most other industrial food production. He goes out of his way to say that oysters are sustainable for food use in a way that clams and mussels are not. He gets a qualified endorsement from Peter Singer. One can certainly argue with these things, but he's basically done his homework. Except for seeming to have no clue what it means to be vegan.

When I became a vegan, I didn't draw an X through everything marked "Animalia" on the tree of life. And when I pick out my dinner, I don't ask myself: What do I have to do to remain a vegan? I ask myself: What is the right choice in this situation? Eating ethically is not a purity pissing contest, and the more vegans or vegetarians pretend that it is, the more their diets start to resemble mere fashion—and thus risk being dismissed as such. Emerson wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

The only way for me to read this is that Cox doesn't know what "vegan" means. He never became a vegan, and needn't worry himself over remaining a vegan. Because of our very consistency (foolish or not) there's no gray area for vegans when it comes to eating animals. Cox is trying to be ethical about his consumerism, and that's great. I just don't understand how the hell anyone thinks the way he's going about it can be described as any form of veganism. It isn't.

Vegans do not knowingly/willingly/actively consume or purchase any part or bodily product of an animal that was taken from a living animal or for which an animal was killed. (I know that's a lot to pack into a sentence, but there it is. End of story.) You can argue that this isn't the most constructive approach to ethical consumerism, as Peter Singer does. But Peter Singer does not claim to be vegan, nor does he endorse the point of view that eating oysters can ever be vegan.

An update on the current Antarctic campaign, from Sea Shepherd crew member Andrea Gordon.

This message was transmitted to New York from the Bob Barker vessel via satellite.


So lots went on here yesterday - everything has been a really intense emotional rollercoaster. In the morning, we were told the campaign was over and we had to go back to port. I took the news really hard. Every day we were with the Nisshin Maru, I was just so happy knowing the whales were protected and safe. We had such an amazing and successful campaign, but going back to port knowing the whalers were still down here with the whales isn't easy. I didn't have much time to dwell on it though, because 30 minutes after that, we saw the Yushin Maru #3 on the horizon. We hadn't seen that ship since it rammed us at the beginning of the month. Everyone jumped back into gear, we sent the small boat after the Yushin, packed with butyric acid, paint, and some angry Sea Shepherds ;) The small boat chased the Yushin through the ice at 15 knots, and the Yushin just slammed into a lot of the ice, risking damaging their ship to get away from our boat.

An update on the current Antarctic campaign, from Sea Shepherd crew member Andrea Gordon.

This message was transmitted to New York from the Bob Barker vessel via satellite.


Hey Tod!  I never know if its Saturday or Tuesday down here!  No days off on Antarctic whale saving duty!  Its amazing that with a ship full of volunteers no one complains about not getting a day off or paid for over three months.  There's actually not that much to do on deck at the moment since the seas are still pretty big.

The Nisshin Maru seems to be sticking with the rough weather at the moment, headed east.  We're about 30 miles north of the ice shelf, and equidistant to Australia and Africa.  The days are certainly shorter than they were when we first got down here a couple of months ago.  At the end of December, the darkest it got was a few hours of twilight.  Now, there's over eight hours of darkness.  The rough seas and darkness make it really hard to see growlers - the smaller pieces of ice that have broken off from the icebergs.  They blend into the white-capped ocean and are quite dangerous because they can do a lot of damage to a ship.  So now we're keeping a deck person on night bridge watch to help look for the growlers.  I have the 4-8am tonight.

An update on the current Antarctic campaign, from Sea Shepherd crew member Andrea Gordon.

This message was transmitted to New York from the Bob Barker vessel via satellite.


Hey Tod!  I just watched the video of Pete Bethune entering the Shonan Maru #2. Very bold!  Boarding was the one thing he could do so that the Shonan wouldn't get away with the attempted murder of him and his crew.  He originally wanted to board when the New Zealand and Australian governments didn't do anything after the Shonan sunk the Ady Gil.  Pete went for one daylight boarding attempt from our small boat, but it was too dangerous in the small boat with the anti-boarding spikes.  But he's one intensely determined guy. He stayed on the Bob Barker until we met up with the Steve Irwin.  Then he went all the way back to Australia, only to leave the safety of home, his wife and kids, to come back to the Southern Ocean and do a dangerous nighttime boarding of the Shonan.

It was definitely dangerous.  He went on a jet ski with two other people - a driver and a camera person.  Then he had to balance on the jet ski, avoid the spikes, and cut the anti-boarding net - all in the dark at 14 knots! That's pretty fast.  Unfortunately, there's no video of the actual boarding. There was a camera person on the jet ski, but apparently it was too hard to get the shot in the dark while staying on the jet ski.

An update on the current Antarctic campaign, from Sea Shepherd crew member Andrea Gordon.

This message was transmitted to New York from the Bob Barker vessel via satellite.


HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!

We had a spectacular Valentine's Day down here in the Southern Ocean.  The whales got love of love and the whalers got a new paint job, butyric acid!

This morning, the Steve Irwin sent their Delta boat after the Nisshin Maru.  Using a potato launcher and some very good driving, they dodged the NM's water cannons and shot butyric acid right onto the slipway and flensing deck of the death ship.  We could smell the stench all the way on the Bob Barker!

An update on the current Antarctic campaign, from Sea Shepherd crew member Andrea Gordon.

This message was transmitted to New York from the Bob Barker vessel via satellite.


On the Bob Barker, right now it's Feb 11th and 1:26am.  I'm waiting for my 2am shift to start and just still so super happy that the whalers are still running -  five days and counting! Yesterday, we chased them north out of the JARPA 2 zone.  It's their self-appointed kill zone starting at 60 degrees latitude South.  In order to give them a proper Sea Shepherd send off, the Steve Irwin circled the Nisshin and hosed them down with their water cannon.

An update on the current Antarctic campaign, from Sea Shepherd crew member Andrea Gordon.
This message was sent from the Bob Barker vessel via satellite, on:
Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 6:12 AM


Hey Tod!! I am soooo happy we found the whalers and got them running!  I can't even tell you what a relief it is to know the whales are safe for now.  We hadn't seen the Nisshin Maru since the Ady Gil was sunk a month ago.  Then, three days ago, we knew we were getting close to finding them because there were whale guts in the water.  Grim, but we were hot on their trail.  Peter [Hammarstedt] asked for someone to go up on the mast to do watches up there for about four hours.  One crewmember, Darius, was just at the end of a watch, and was taking his gloves off to come down, when he took one more look and spotted the NM!  Wow!  We were so lucky to find the factory ship before any of their other  ships found us first.  They must have been in the middle of processing too because there were more whale guts in the water and they weren't moving.  It took them a little while to get moving, so we caught right up to them.  

Our friends aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel the Bob Barker have found the whaling fleet, and caught up to the Nisshin Maru factory ship. The Bob Barker is blocking the slipway of the factory ship, which means the Nisshin Maru won't be able to take on or process any whales. This means that despite the attacks against Sea Shepherd ships by the massive and government-funded Japanese whaling fleet in the past couple months, the unarmed Bob Barker and its tiny crew of volunteer vegans have still managed to stop this year's Antarctic whaling operations.

Four other whaling harpoon vessels are surrounding the Bob Barker, including the Shonan Maru #2, which rammed and sunk the SSCS vessel the Ady Gil. But as long as the Bob Barker is blocking the slipway of the whaling factory ship, the harpoon vessels and their arsenals won't be able to continue whaling operations.

AR photographer Jo-Anne McArthur has been documenting the Sea Shepherd Antarctic campaign this year, and many of her pics are now up at her website.

She's been taking photos from Sea Shepherd's heretofore secret ship, the Bob Barker. So you'll see a lot in these photos that you haven't been able to follow just from the press releases of the campaign.

You'll see things that happened to the Bob Barker well before its existence was made public. You'll see the crew getting the ship ready for the campaign, you'll see the ship getting surrounded by whaling ships, and you'll watch the Bob Barker crew rescuing the crew of the Ady Gil after the Shonan Maru #2 rammed the Ady.

If you're like me and some of your best friends are on those ships, these pics will seriously brighten your day.

The Sea Shepherd fleet has been chasing the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctica for about a month now, continually fighting off attacks from the harpoon vessel the Shonan Maru No. 2. Yesterday revealed quite a bit about the players on both sides of the conflict.

The Japanese harpoon ship Shonan Maru No. 2 rammed the tiny Sea Shepherd vessel Ady Gil. The attack ripped about eight feet of the Ady Gil's bow completely off the ship. The Ady Gil is sinking and will, most likely, be unsalvageable. As the Ady Gil lurched during the ramming and the crew struggled to keep from falling overboard, the Shonan Maru No. 2 fired high-powered water cannons at the teetering Sea Shepherd members while shooting their LRAD at the Ady Gil. View video of the attack here.

At first the Japanese did not acknowledge the Ady Gil's post-attack distress signal. The Nisshin Maru finally acknowledged the signal without offering assistance to the ship sinking in Antarctica.

This behavior is getting a bit lethal for even the Japanese Antarctic crew. Even when they chucked grenades at my friends and I on the Steve Irwin two years ago, they weren't quite so brazen about trying to cause fatalities. New attacks like these suggest they're more malevolent towards humans than even we thought.

Luckily, the Japanese didn't know that Sea Shepherd has secretly acquired a third ship for the fleet this year, which has now caught up with the Japanese fleet and rescued the six crew members of the sinking Ady Gil. I'm personally quite glad my friends are now safe and not sinking alone in Antarctica.

Perhaps understandably, the people of Australia are a tad annoyed that their federal government is letting the Japanese sink a ship full of Australians with impunity.

The Australian people and the Green Party of Australia have been wonderful, level-headed supporters of Sea Shepherd, and we think they have a right to be miffed about the Australian aid given to the Japanese whalers to help them attack Australians.

Update: This post at first stated that the Ady Gil wasn't moving when the Shonan Maru No. 2 rammed and dragged the Ady's bow before ripping it off. I since removed that statement because the debate of "was it moving?" became everyone's sole focus of the attack. I'm keeping that statement off since the rest of the post seems to go unread if that statement is in, even though I stand by Captain Chuck Swift. But in case people are still curious to see if the Shonan Maru No. 2 actually did swerve to hit the Ady, here's video of the ramming from the point of view of the vessel the Bob Barker.