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Junichi is a prominent anti-whaling voice in the media in Japan, and his arrest, along with colleague Toru Suzuki, on the eve of the International Whaling Commission meeting is probably not a coincidence. Some media in Japan are saying that the arrest, covered on television, was a warning to other activist groups that as the G8 approaches, voices of dissent in Japan will not be tolerated.

Kyodo Reported:

While he disagrees with Greenpeace’s anti-whaling stance, journalist Takao Saito said the way the police arrested the two men and the way they investigated the group as ‘’heavy-handed.”‘’(Greenpeace) is functioning as a whistleblower in our society so the authorities should give them a fair hearing to what they have to say. ‘’

So, to the barricades, bloggers — let’s GET THE TOKYO TWO OUT OF JAIL.

Digg this.

Blog this.

As part of the Great Whale Trail Greenpeace has been running a ‘name a whale competition’ followed by a ‘vote for your favourite whale name’ poll.”>vote for your favourite whale name‘ poll.

The results have been somewhat surprising - ‘Mr Splashy Pants’ is leading the field by an uncommonly large margin.

Both BoingBoing and Reddit are running the Mr Splashy Pants as a possible whale name story. There’s been around 42,000 votes for whale names so far and Mr Splashy Pants is well in the lead.

Let’s watch this thing ‘go viral’…

English posts that contain Mr Splashy Pants per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

For your enjoyment, here are some of the comments on the Mr Splashy Pants story on Reddit.

Well I’m an active member of Greenpeace and I voted for Mr Splashy Pants. Genius. It may seem like a piss-take, but imagine the negative publicity involved with murdering Mr Splash Pants. PR catastrophe.

I voted for ‘Mister Splashy Pants’, but I pronounce it ‘Stephen Colbert’. Hope that’s within the rules.

I can see the headlines now, “Whalers off the coasts of Japan have admitted last Tuesday to killing Internet star, ‘Mr. Splashy Pants’..”

Mr. SP is in the lead at 47%…and Greenpeace would be foolish to complain about the free publicity. How much media interest will they get for a whale named Aiko, and how much for Mr. Splashy?

The plot thickens though …

From the Greenpeace International blog:

What isn’t so well known is the identity of the unsung hero that made it all possible. We don’t know all the details but from what we have managed to piece together, it appears that someone found a way around our ‘one vote per person’ rule and began a clicking frenzy that was to change the face of the competition.

Want to help us keep our oceans safe for all the whales?

Become a Whale Defender.

Follow the migration of the humpback whales from the Pacific to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. You can help stop whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in the name of “scientific research” and fundraise to help Greenpeace make our oceans safe for all whales.

Its easy to get involved…

YouTube - Sir Anthony Hopkins speaks out for the whales.

Peter Talley of NZ’s own Talley’s Fisheries showing us how the fishing industry do PR in these parts. Good one Pete - you’re a master. Homer Simpson couldn’t have done it better. The kids probably need counseling and the shareholders will be stoked with this.

Here’s a choice quote:

I don’t believe in animal rights. I want to kill and eat them.

Oh yes. Our fisheries are in good hands.

It reminds me of an exchange between Andrew Talley and Dr Steve O’shea on TV1 a while back in the heat of the bottom trawling campaign.

“I see the fishing industry as a cancer, exploiting fish stocks further afield because we have exhausted everything within the EEZ. And once we’ve exhausted those further afield… we are just going to go deeper,” says O’Shea.

But the fishing industry says that’s nonsense - Talley says its neither destructive, barbaric or destructive.

“This misrepresentation that bottom trawling is unsustainable, that its bringing to the brink of extinction many species, that we are clearfelling acres or hectares or thousands of square kilometres of coral is unsubstantiated claptrap,” says Talley.

Deep sea bottom-trawlers use a massive net, approximately four metres high and 40 metres wide. It is lowered a kilometre and a half to the sea floor where it scoops up everything in its path. Fish, sponges and coral.

O’Shea says its fundamentally wrong.

“In effect, it’s the same as trying to herd cows up with a net and dragging a net through a farm. You catch a few cows. You catch the farmers wife. You catch a cattle trough. All this other stuff is incidental bi-catch, filth, bottom filth they refer to it. We just don’t do that on land. Why are we doing it in the oceans?” asks O’Shea.

Talley has his own version of that analogy.

“Certainly fishermen wont be able to drop the net down the chimney. But he will be able to put it through the barn doors and pick the three or four biggest cows that he wants. And he will come out of the barn doors. If he likes the look of the farmer’s wife he might take her too. But every now and then, he might knock at the barn door. He might grab the pig and the goat in the corner - but it is far more selective than that analogy,” says Talley.

There’s some pretty amazing sights to be seen on the webcam aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza in the Southern Ocean.

I’ve just spotted what looks like the wallowing whaler Nisshin Maru and just before that I’m sure I saw a penguin on an iceberg.

Now this is cool. Zetaprints has set up a website where you can choose a postcard, enter a message about why you think Japan should stop whaling, bung your name on it, pop through to paypal www.hotissues.org.nz/, and hey presto! They print it off and send it to a randomly generated address in Japan! It’s peer to peer social lobbying. Takes about 2 minutes and costs US$1.50.