In Africa, Somali poachers are shot on sight for poaching elephants and the world approves.

In India, Indian poachers are shot for poaching tigers.

Yet when the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society crew tosses rotten butter onto the deck of a wealthy high-tech Japanese whale poaching vessel in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, there is a gasp of horror from those who fear to offend the great economic bully from Asia.

The crew of the Steve Irwin did not injure anyone. The entire confrontation was documented by both ships and there has been no video shown by either side documenting violent actions against the very violent whalers. We even offered to send our medical doctor onboard the Nisshin Maru to treat the alleged injuries and to confirm the claim that there were any injuries at all. The Nisshin Maru denied the request.

With all the reaction in some media outlets, one would think the Japanese whalers are the innocent victims of a horrific act of violence.

Yet these same whalers are violating international conservation law and an Australian Federal Court order by illegally slaughtering endangered whales in an established whale sanctuary.

The Sea Shepherd crew did not shoot any of these poachers like the rangers in Africa would when they encounter elephant killers in the bush. No, we tossed rotten butter and fake banana peels onto their deck to discourage their illegal operations. The material tossed onto the deck of the Nisshin Maru was both organic and non-toxic.

The Japanese whalers are spinning the story describing butter acid as caustic and harmful when it is completely harmless. Not all acids are harmful; if they were we would not drink orange juice and some just smell bad.

It is a fact that butter becomes Butyric acid when it goes bad. That does not make it toxic, just obnoxiously smelly.

The objective in tossing a foul smelling substance onto the deck of the largest floating slaughterhouse in the world is simple - to discourage the grisly work of mutilating the bodies of some of the largest and gentlest creatures on Earth.

There is no industry on earth as horrifically violent as whaling. Whales die in prolonged unimaginable agony as blunt tipped harpoons smash into their backsides and shred internal organs. They may take up to forty minutes to die as they drown in a mixture of salt water and their own blood. They thrash and roll on the surface of the sea and scream piteously as they look up to see arrogant men gloating over their suffering.

Yet, some people get upset because these same people now have smelly decks and can't continue their foul sadistic work.

For the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, our clients are the whales and we are defending them by intervening to enforce international conservation law in accordance to the principles established by the United Nations World Charter for Nature.

We have not committed any crime. Despite the fabrications of Japanese public relations spin doctors, we have not injured anyone. In fact in over thirty years of high seas interventions the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has never caused an injury nor have we been convicted of a felony.

Yet in that time whalers, sealers, shark finners, turtle poachers and illegal fishermen have assaulted us, beaten us, bloodied us, rammed us, shot at us and threatened our lives but that never seems to be a story of interest because according to our critics we are exposing ourselves voluntarily to the violence of the ocean rapists. In fact, after being assaulted by sealers who struck my crew with clubs and injured them the Canadian police refused to press charges against our attackers because we "had provoked the violence by opposing the killing of seals."

We have had a very successful campaign this year in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. We have saved hundreds of whales. We have chased this Japanese killing fleet for thousands of miles and they will not fill their death quota and they are not very happy about it.

The crew of the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin are satisfied that we behaved responsibly, that we did not injure anyone, that we did not damage any property. They are satisfied that we have saved lives, hundreds of lives of the most social complex, gentle and intelligent creatures in the sea.

We did our planetary duty and we upheld the law and all of us on this gallant ship are both proud and satisfied at what we have accomplished.