KEY POINTS:
When Paul Watson talks tough no one should doubt that he means what he says. Watson is the leader of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society which has a long record of harrying Japanese whale ships in the Southern Ocean.
At the start of this whaling season he made his intentions clear: "When we do catch them we won't be sitting down to tea with them," he was quoted as saying. "We intend to make this a season for them to remember."
Given his record - which includes direct attempts to damage, disable or even sink whaling ships - those fighting words should be taken at face value.
Watson is a master of one of the oldest tricks in the protester's book: he provokes confrontation to publicise his cause. The idea, which was honed by the protest movements of the 1960s, is to compromise the authorities in the eyes of public opinion. The sight of truncheon-wielding policemen, tear gas and water cannon is supposed to reveal the naked power of the state and lead right-thinking people to conclude that whatever it stands for must be wrong.
No question that the technique is an effective, if dangerous, way of attracting attention. Nothing is more likely to draw the cameras than an incident that shatters the normal course of events and generates loud confrontation. In recent years it has been taken from the streets to the chilly waters of the Southern Ocean where Greenpeace and the more extreme Sea Shepherd group have tried to hamper Japanese whaling operations at the same time as they draw attention to the abhorrent slaughter of whales.
There is, of course, a large difference between the two groups. Greenpeace, while their members have undoubtedly put themselves at risk, draw the line at the more extreme tactics of Sea Shepherd.
Obviously there is a real risk of physical injury, even death. This applies to any violent confrontation but all the more so in the hostile waters of the Southern Ocean, far out of reach of full emergency services.
But an even more significant risk is that the point of the protest will be lost in the fallout of the contrived publicity stunt. Perhaps because extremists are so sure of their own righteousness, they are simultaneously blind to the possibility that other good people might see events differently.
When that happens, as it has in the past few days, the focus shifts from the real issue - whaling - to the sideshow, namely whether the captain of the Yushin Maru No 2 was within his rights to detain two Sea Shepherd protesters who boarded his ship uninvited.
The to-ing and fro-ing that resulted from this incident illustrates clearly how far the extremists have drifted from the point. From setting out to save the whales they have now bogged themselves down in an argument about the law of the sea. Sea Shepherd argues the "outlaw whalers" are guilty of terrorism. The whalers say Sea Shepherd are pirates for forcing their way on to the Yushin Maru.
The argument is a sterile one. It will certainly not enlighten one person about the plight of the whales. If anything, it was likely to lead to more confrontation and even violence between humans as Sea Shepherd threatened to take "aggressive action" to free the two men.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace, which has refused assistance to Sea Shepherd, is helping the Australian Customs ship Ocean Viking to find the whalers.
This is a much more sensible course. The Australian ship is aiming to gather evidence for a possible prosecution and the protesters should be doing everything they can to help. In the long term they will be far more effective by bearing witness to the slaughter of the whales than by engaging in distracting and dangerous publicity stunts.
