Armed Canadian Coast Guard Storms Sea Shepherd Ship and Arrests Crew

12.04.2008 At 0700 Hours (PST) and 1100 Hours Atlantic time the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ves­sel Far­ley Mowat was attacked by offi­cers from two Cana­di­an Coast Guard ice­break­ers the Des Gro­seil­liers and the Sir Wifred Gren­fell. Cap­tain Alex Cor­nelis­sen informed the board­ers that the Far­ley Mowat is a Dutch reg­is­tered ship in inter­na­tion­al waters and that Cana­da had no legal right to restrict the free pas­sage of the ves­sel through inter­na­tion­al waters. The ship was in the Gulf of St. Lawrence well beyond the Cana­di­an twelve mile ter­ri­to­r­i­al lim­it. It has been report­ed that both the 1st offi­cer and the cap­tain of the ship have been arrest­ed and will be brought before a court in Syd­ney, Cana­da. Accord­ing to Fed­er­al Fish­eries Min­is­ter Loy­ola Hearn, the “safe­ty and secu­ri­ty” of the seal­ers is the gov­ern­men­t’s main focus and the seiz­ing of the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel will ensure a “safe and order­ly” seal hunt. Last week, the same Mr. Hearn announced that Cana­da would lay charges against the cap­tain and first offi­cer of the anti-seal­ing ves­sel for com­ing too close to the seal hunt.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son was speak­ing by phone with Far­ley Mowat com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer Shan­non Mann when he heard the voic­es of men scream­ing for the crew to fall to the floor. The men car­ried guns accord­ing to Mann and could be heard by Cap­tain Wat­son threat­en­ing the Far­ley Mowat’s crew. As Cap­tain Wat­son was speak­ing with Shan­non Mann, the Satel­lite phone went dead and noth­ing more has been heard from the Sea Shep­herd crew. The Far­ley Mowat was doc­u­ment­ing vio­la­tions of the humane reg­u­la­tions and gath­er­ing proof that the seals were being killed in an inhu­mane man­ner. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety is assum­ing that the video tapes will be seized by the Cana­di­an author­i­ties. There are 17 crewmem­bers onboard the Dutch reg­is­tered Far­ley Mowat from the Nether­lands, the Unit­ed King­dom, France, Swe­den, South Africa, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States.

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety has been cut off from com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the crew and has no infor­ma­tion on where the ves­sel will be tak­en. Sea Shep­herd has no infor­ma­tion on the con­di­tion of the crew and the Soci­ety is deeply con­cerned for their crew. “This is an act of war,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “The Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment has just sent an armed board­ing par­ty onto a Dutch reg­is­tered yacht in inter­na­tion­al waters and has seized the ship. Con­sid­er­ing that the mis­sion of the Far­ley Mowat was to doc­u­ment evi­dence of cru­el­ty by seal­ers to sup­port a Euro­pean ini­tia­tive to ban seal prod­ucts, I can pre­dict that the Euro­peans will not be very pleased with this move and most like­ly this move by Loy­ola Hearn will guar­an­tee that this bill is passed. In oth­er words the Min­is­ter of Fish­eries and Oceans has just hand­ed us the vic­to­ry that we were look­ing for.”

The Sea Shep­herd has been doc­u­ment­ing the Cana­di­an seal hunt off the coast of New­found­land since the mid­dle of March. On the 30th March, the Cana­di­an Coast Guard rammed the Sea Shep­herd ship twice, in an attempt to keep it away from the scene of the seal hunt. On 5th April, the ship (Far­ley Mowat) was attacked by a mob of 30–40 angry seal hunters. The attack took place while anchored in the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The Far­ley Mowat was berthed in St. Pierre to trans­fer video footage of the Cana­di­an seal slaugh­ter onto shore and await the resump­tion of the slaugh­ter, which was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed after the death of four seal­ers.

Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety
http://www.seashepherd.org/