Three Sea Shepherd Crewmembers Arrested in Faroe Islands for Protecting Hundreds of Dolphins

Sep­tem­ber 19th, 2014

Three vol­un­teer mem­bers of Sea Shepherd’s pilot whale and small cetacean defense cam­paign Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014 were arrest­ed today just out­side the Faroese cap­i­tal of Tor­shavn for pro­tect­ing a large pod of hun­dreds of Atlantic white-sided dol­phins, pre­vent­ing them from approach­ing the dan­ger­ous killing shores of the Faroe Islands.

The Dan­ish Navy chased, board­ed and seized Sea Shepherd’s UK-reg­is­tered boat, the Spit­fire, and arrest­ed its three crewmem­bers — Jessie Tre­ver­ton of the UK and Celine Le Diouron and Mar­i­on Seligh­i­ni, both from France.

Though it is against Faroese law to inter­fere with the mass cetacean slaugh­ter known as the “grindadrap” or “grind,” no grind had been called when Sea Shep­herd pre­vent­ed the dol­phins from reach­ing shore. More­over, white-sided dol­phins are a pro­tect­ed species and are not to be killed. The Dan­ish Police, how­ev­er, have charged the Sea Shep­herd vol­un­teers with fail­ure to report the dol­phin sight­ings to the grind mas­ter and police and, iron­i­cal­ly, with “harass­ing dol­phins.”

Sea Shep­herd Founder Cap­tain Paul Wat­son respond­ed, “Appar­ent­ly in the Faroe Islands it is per­fect­ly legal to kill a pro­tect­ed species, but it is ille­gal to push them back out to sea in order to keep them from harm’s way because that is con­sid­ered ‘harass­ment.’ So these three Sea Shep­herd women can proud­ly say that they suc­cess­ful­ly ‘harassed’ the dol­phins for the pur­pose of sav­ing their lives.”

“The good news is, how­ev­er, that a pod of hun­dreds of white-sided dol­phins were suc­cess­ful­ly ‘harassed’ away from the vicious knives of the whalers. Last year, in August 2013, 450 white-sided dol­phins fell to the cru­el knives of these cetacean-slaugh­ter­ing thugs. For­tu­nate­ly the hun­dreds spot­ted today remain safe at sea,” added Cap­tain Wat­son.

Sea Shep­herd cur­rent­ly has an attor­ney involved. The crew and the Spit­fire were released late this evening in the Faroes. They were escort­ed to the Spit­fire and per­mit­ted to leave. The crew is to appear in court tomor­row at 2 pm Faroes time. How­ev­er, the vol­un­teers face depor­ta­tion from the Faroe Islands by Den­mark, and if deport­ed, would not be allowed to return to the Faroes for at least one year.

Despite being an anti-whal­ing mem­ber nation of the Euro­pean Union, sub­ject to laws pro­hibit­ing the slaugh­ter of cetaceans, Den­mark con­tin­ues to show its sup­port and even col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Faroese whalers to kill small cetaceans.

The Spit­fire is the fourth ves­sel seized by the Dan­ish Navy in the Faroe Islands dur­ing Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014, as Sea Shepherd’s three small boats — the Loki, the Mike Gale­si and the B.S. Sheen (spon­sored by actor Char­lie Sheen) were seized on August 30th. They are being held as evi­dence await­ing the tri­al of eight Sea Shep­herd crew from those boats. Along with the small boat crew, 6 mem­bers of Sea Shepherd’s onshore team were also arrest­ed for attempt­ing to pre­vent the bru­tal slaugh­ter of a pod of 33 pilot whales on August 30.

“Though three vol­un­teers have been arrest­ed and the Dan­ish Navy has once again act­ed in defense of the bru­tal grind by seiz­ing one of our boats, Sea Shep­herd con­sid­ers this a vic­to­ry. Hun­dreds of dol­phins are still swim­ming safe­ly as a fam­i­ly because of our brave vol­un­teers, and Sea Shep­herd will con­tin­ue to act in defense of its clients,” said Lamya Essem­lali, Pres­i­dent of Sea Shep­herd France and Grind­Stop 2014 Off­shore Leader.

There are two Sea Shep­herd ves­sels cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing in the Faroes — the Spit­fire, and the Clemen­tine, from France. Thor had to be removed from the water ear­li­er today, as for­eign ves­sels can only be in Faroese waters for a max­i­mum of three months.

Sea Shep­herd has led the oppo­si­tion to the mass slaugh­ter of cetaceans in the Faroe Islands since the 1980s. Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014 is Sea Shepherd’s largest Faroese cam­paign to date, and a mul­ti-nation­al team of Sea Shep­herd vol­un­teers has been patrolling land and sea in the islands since mid-June. Sea Shep­herd will remain in the Faroes until the begin­ning of Octo­ber. The cam­paign spans the typ­i­cal­ly blood­i­est months of the grindadrap hunt sea­son, in an effort to save as many lives as pos­si­ble.