Sea Shepherd's 'Bob Barker'. The controversial group is most known for their aggressive at-sea actions against Japanese whale hunters.
The New York Times' Ian Urbina recounts the
April sinking of one of the world's most notorious illegal fishing vessels.
It was an unexpected end to an extraordinary chase. For 110 days and more than 10,000 nautical miles across two seas and three oceans, the Bob Barker and a companion ship, both operated by the environmental organization Sea Shepherd, had trailed the trawler, with the three captains close enough to watch one another’s cigarette breaks and on-deck workout routines. In an epic game of cat-and-mouse, the ships maneuvered through an obstacle course of giant ice floes, endured a cyclone-like storm, faced clashes between opposing crews and nearly collided in what became the longest pursuit of an illegal fishing vessel in history.
Industrial-scale violators of fishing bans and protected areas are a main reason more than half of the world’s major fishing grounds have been depleted and by some estimates over 90 percent of the ocean’s large fish like marlin, tuna and swordfish have vanished. Interpol had issued a Purple Notice on the Thunder (the equivalent of adding it to a Most Wanted List, a status reserved for only four other ships in the world), but no government had been willing to dedicate the personnel and millions of dollars needed to go after it.
So Sea Shepherd did instead [....]
Unable to shake their pursuers, who continued to radio Interpol with the boat's whereabouts during a three-month chase intended to deny the
Thunder port or fuel, the ship's captain and crew appear to have scuttled the vessel in order to keep its contents from being searched by authorities.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—The O'Reilly Checklist:
No, Bill, of course that's not over the top!
In case you're keeping score, here's the Bill O'Reilly "Daily Kos is just like..." checklist.
Nice list. And it's highly convenient that rather than having to rummage through the cesspool of BillO's officially unmonitored web site, he provides the hate speech straight from his own snarling lips.
However, the fact that O'Reilly has had to dip into the Nazi well three times, shows that his repertoire of nastiness is sadly limited.
Tweet of the Day
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin straightens out all the apparent contractions, from fracking & health, to Trumpmentum, to support for the Iran deal. How Trump’s success is linked to the disaffection of voters. In the midst of sturm und drang, the candidates pair up. Who has The Big Mo, who does not? Mike Huckabee: Uniter. We visit the latest Trumpster Fire. Trump faces new and old questions. How Nixonian! Ted is taken to school.
Kagro in the Morning digs into the nitty gritty of what Mike Lee and Ted Cruz are in for, and how maybe they're not so good at Senating.
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