Norwegian Whaling Vessel’s Career is Finished

Sea Shep­herd News Releas­es 10/16/2007

Nor­we­gian Whal­ing Ves­sel’s Career is Fin­ished

The Willassen Senior, the Nor­we­gian whal­ing ves­sel that was scut­tled on August 30, 2007 in the north­ern city of Svolvaer in the Lofoten Islands, will not be killing any more whales—ever again. The dam­age sus­tained by the ves­sel that was delib­er­ate­ly sunk by whale defend­ers exceed­ed $22 mil­lion kro­ner (over US $2 mil­lion). Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety was pleased to learn that the Willassen Senior was not insured. The own­ers of the ves­sel have decid­ed to scrap the ship, because they can­not afford to pay to repair the exten­sive dam­age caused to the elec­tri­cal and mechan­i­cal sys­tems by salt water. A group called Agen­da 21 has tak­en cred­it for scut­tling the whal­ing ship.

Sea Shep­herd News Releas­es 10/16/2007

Nor­we­gian Whal­ing Ves­sel’s Career is Fin­ished

The Willassen Senior, the Nor­we­gian whal­ing ves­sel that was scut­tled on August 30, 2007 in the north­ern city of Svolvaer in the Lofoten Islands, will not be killing any more whales—ever again. The dam­age sus­tained by the ves­sel that was delib­er­ate­ly sunk by whale defend­ers exceed­ed $22 mil­lion kro­ner (over US $2 mil­lion). Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety was pleased to learn that the Willassen Senior was not insured. The own­ers of the ves­sel have decid­ed to scrap the ship, because they can­not afford to pay to repair the exten­sive dam­age caused to the elec­tri­cal and mechan­i­cal sys­tems by salt water. A group called Agen­da 21 has tak­en cred­it for scut­tling the whal­ing ship.

“One less whal­ing ship on the water trans­lates into few­er whales being killed by these crim­i­nal whalers,” said Sea Shep­herd Founder and Pres­i­dent Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “The Agen­da 21 team did an excel­lent job: no injuries, no evi­dence, no mis­takes, and no more whal­ing. These are results that we can appre­ci­ate and admire.”

Imme­di­ate­ly after the whaler was scut­tled, the own­ers of oth­er whal­ing ves­sels in Nor­way placed their ships under 24-hour guard. This trans­lates into increased secu­ri­ty costs for whal­ing ships, which cuts into whal­ing prof­its. “The whalers should be afraid of being scut­tled,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “A ves­sel that is being oper­at­ed in clear defi­ance of inter­na­tion­al con­ser­va­tion law and is involved with the ille­gal slaugh­ter of these intel­li­gent and gen­tle crea­tures has only one place—on the bot­tom of the sea!”

Nor­we­gian police have been unsuc­cess­ful in iden­ti­fy­ing the Agen­da 21 team mem­bers. All they have done so far is to seize a hard dri­ve from an inter­net cafe in Svolvaer, based on a report that one of the sab­o­tage team mem­bers may have been using a com­put­er there. Police have con­firmed that the Willassen Senior was delib­er­ate­ly sunk by a sabo­teur (or sabo­teurs) unknown. The ship was sunk when a pipe used to pro­vide salt water cool­ing to the engine was removed. It took four hours for the ship to sink, allow­ing the whale defend­ers plen­ty of time to leave the area.

“This was not a crime,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “The Willassen Senior was a ship engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty specif­i­cal­ly vio­lat­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ing Com­mis­sion’s glob­al mora­to­ri­um on com­mer­cial whal­ing activ­i­ties. Sink­ing this whaler was an act of law enforce­ment, and we applaud this suc­cess­ful retire­ment of an ille­gal killing machine.”

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