Posts Tagged ‘whaling’
Crew Uses Crazy Futuristic EarthRace Boat and Lasers to Fight Japanese Whalers [Boats]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News, Technology on December 31st, 2009
Regardless of your feelings about whaling, you have to admit the fight just got a whole lot more interesting. Check out this video of a Sea-Shepherd-manned (from Whale Wars) carbon-fiber, biofuel-powered EarthRace Trimaran blinding a Japanese whaling boat with lasers.
Looks to us like the laser is mostly for warning and intimidation, which probably works considering they're zooming around in a ferocious-looking 1080-horsepower, 78-foot trimaran. The crew manning the EarthRace is the Sea Shepherd society, which you might know from Whale Wars, where they're usually getting outwitted and outgunned in a boat nowhere near as cool as this one. The MV Steve Irwin, which is the ship followed by Whale Wars, travels a maximum of 16.5 knots—this EarthRace hits 50, which actually lets them chase down and intercept whalers. [StokeReport]
Matte Black Earthrace Power Boat Hunts Those Who Hunt Whales [Boats]
Posted by: Gadget Boy in Gadget News on November 8th, 2009
Last we heard from Earthrace, the super sleek 78-ft. power boat that runs on its captain's fat, it was circumnavigating the globe. Today, the ship has a new Batman paint job and a new mission: Hunting whalers.
Specifically Japanese whalers. The same Japanese whalers who were made famous by the camera-happy efforts of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. You know, the group whose anti-whaling, conservationist exploits on the high seas can be seen on a reality TV show near you, right now?
Now, the paint job and wild design aren't just for aesthetics. Nay, they also turn this sleek trimaran into a radar-deflecting stealth boat. Presumably, this will allow the Earthrace to sidle up to unsuspecting whaling ships, where it will then "protest" peaceably.
The boat leaves Perth on December 7 on a three-month journey alongside the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's Steve Irwin to protest Japan's industrial whaling program. Good luck, and be careful. Stealth or not, last I checked matte black wasn't harpoon-proof. [LIFE via Boing Boing]
