> They're sometimes violent. "Mr. Watson and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have rammed, sabotaged, shot water canons at and thrown stink bombs on whalers and commercial fishing vessels"

Lets see:

1) Ramming (non-physical person to person)

2) Sabotaging (vague; the rest are all examples of sabotage. I can't take this vague term serious)

3) Shooting water cannons (again, non-physical person to person)

4) Stink bombs (apparently this is violence in 2017; laughable)

You define all of this as violence? You know what I call violence? Killing whales. Using grenades. Using napalm/agent orange on trees, innocent civilians, friendlies and enemies alike, using depleted uranium, cluster bombs, the usage and sale of (semi) automatic weapons. All of this crap causes way more deaths than anything you summed up. Nothing even close to what in this example the US government resorted to in the previous and current century ever since WWII (I'm just using the US as an example since its an easy one I know a wee bit about; there are other ones as well of course). Never mind the term terrorism which is without base (the above is not terrorism as per the definition of Alex P. Schmid), flat out character assassination / the pot calling the kettle black (fallacy). Violence is a very relative term, indeed what Sea Shepherd have resorted to is at the very worst 'modest violence'. There's a better, less loaded term for their behavior which also covers their intentions: activism.

> There is an odd symbiosis between the Sea Shepherd's vigilantism and the Japanese government's protests. Peacefully tailing and documenting would be more effective in the long run. But de-esclating would piss off the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's donors. In the meantime, Japan uses the Sea Shepherd's vigilantism to distract from its own activities.

That's a theory, and a theory you can have about any proactive activism vs pacifist protests. Even in WWII, resistance fighters had different methods. Some more proactive, some more pacifist. At the very least, being pacifist won't save any injustice on the short term.

> The ICJ's jurisdiction is complicated, e.g. "compulsory" jurisdiction is limited to cases where both parties have agreed to submit to its decision [2]. (Japan has rejected the ICJ's jurisdiction over this issue [3].)

If you can avoid a jurisprudence because you don't wish to respect the court in the first place I call that a loophole within the law. Would be something, if I as civilian of The Netherlands can decide to flat our ignore jurisprudence from the courts of The Netherlands because I don't like the subject or the outcome.

Furthermore, they have the law on their side because Japan isn't using these whales for scientific purposes AFAICT. It doesn't seem Japan has to defend that case which is another loophole.

> In any case, the Sea Shepherd regularly breaks suites of international maritime laws. Advocating for the limited application of the law is advocating for no law.

Action -> Reaction, and Predator vs Prey. Like with bullying, if you bully (or troll) someone, and that victim ends up eventually biting you back, then you got only yourself to blame. The way I see it, Sea Shepherd is protecting the weak, the victim, the pray (literally).