Greenpeace Puts Zodiacs Between Harpoons and Sperm Whales

On June 27, 1975, activists from the chartered fishing boat Phyllis Cormack found a Soviet whaling fleet actively hunting sperm whales near the Mendocino Ridge, about 40 miles off the California coast. Robert Hunter and Paul Watson took small inflatable Zodiac boats out between the Russian catcher ships of the Dalniy Vostok fleet and the whales, betting the gunners would not fire with people in the line of the harpoon. The Soviet ship Vlastny fired anyway, sending a harpoon over the activists' heads and into a whale. Greenpeace had the whole thing on film, and when US networks aired it, a stunt by a small Canadian group became a story the country could not look away from.