Comment from the Sea Shepherd forum.
"More likely the arrows were to ber (sic) used to take dna skin samples from whales to do real research. The arrows are fitted with small cookie cutters to take a miniscule wad of whale skin and blubber, real research, the sort of non lethal research the whalers try to bullshit the world that they are doing."
Pure fantasy. That comment is so completely ignorant that it begs for response. Whoever wrote that knows bugger all about arrows or archery. The arrows (or Bolts or Quarrels if you like) displayed are standard shafts fitted with standard target points. 'Cookie cutter' samplers would look quite different, rather like the business end of an endoscope.
Furthermore, there are no fixing points on the shafts for retrieval line, essential if using them for mythical Cetacean 'DNA sampling'. See the video below for how arrows behave in flight. Google Archers Paradox if you don't believe me. As additional proof, here's a slow motion video of an arrow in flight.
Crossbow bolts do not flex so much as they tend to be stiffer, but they do flex in flight, demonstrating a slight up and down flight pattern like the shaft in the video.
Update: Have been looking more closely at the tips of those arrows. They appear in that low resolution shot to have hardened chisel edged points. Not a high res enough shot to definitively identify the make though.
Update on the update: I'm looking at those arrows again. Again, too low res to be sure, but those look like arrow nocks on the back of the shafts. Crossbow bolts tend to have a half moon or blunt nock. Something doesn't quite gel here.
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4 comments:
Love some of the comments on the earlier vid which the one you've shown was responding to. Some cockwit blithely ruled out any chance it was an arrow or something like an arrow because what arrow could penetrate a steel hull. Who said it hit steel? Plenty of non steel structures around large ships for an arrow to stick in. And who says the thing they think is stuck in the ship is the arrow anyway? Looks to me too big to be an arrow (faked post facto or otherwise) and too close to the camera to be whatever was launched at the ship. Much more likely to be part of the ship I reckon, perhaps a bit of aerial or a support for a bit of cable or standing rigging. Hard to say with the low res and the constant movement, but I'm sure of two things - it's not an arrow and it's not what was launched at the ship. Neither conclusion means that no arrow was ever launched by the Ady Gil, but I suspect that might be thinking too logically for some of the eco-buffoons in the heat of their adoration of Sea Shithead and other radical environmentalists.
As far as I'm concerned it was a crossbow bolt. It behaved like a crossbow bolt does in flight, anything else would have had different flight characteristics. An arrow from a bow flexes side to side, a spear gun doesn't flex at all and doesn't have the range.
As you say, a bloody silly thing to fire at a ship of course, but then one doesn't expect logic from certain quarters.
With regard to arrows penetrating steel plating, a 150 grain field point shot from a 45lb draw bow will penetrate a car door at 30 metres or more.
Watch this video for a demonstration of various modern hunting broadheads.
Great blog as for me. I'd like to read something more concerning that matter. The only thing I would like to see on that blog is some pics of some devices.
Kate Flouee
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What a great post, I actually found it very thought provoking, thanks crossbows
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