Sea Shepherd flagship now running as a Pirate

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety flag­ship Far­ley Mowat is now offi­cial­ly a pirate ves­sel. The ship cleared Aus­tralian Cus­toms in Hobart, Tas­ma­nia, on Decem­ber 29th, 2006, only hours before the nation of Belize struck our flag. The Far­ley Mowat has no home port and can be siezed and sunk by any navy.

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety flag­ship, ‘Far­ley Mowat’, is now offi­cial­ly a pirate ves­sel. We are at sea with­out a flag, in search of ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions in hos­tile and remote waters at the bot­tom of the world.

The Far­ley Mowat cleared Aus­tralian Cus­toms in Hobart, Tas­ma­nia, on Decem­ber 29th, 2006, only hours before the nation of Belize struck our flag. The Belize reg­istry had only been issued ten days before on Decem­ber 19, 2006

The Belize reg­istry was sought after Britain pulled the reg­istry in ear­ly Decem­ber the same day it was issued. In Octo­ber, the Far­ley Mowat, reg­is­tered under the Cana­di­an flag since April, 2002, had her reg­istry sus­pend­ed by Cana­da.

This is all appar­ent­ly part of a strat­e­gy by Japan to use its eco­nom­ic mus­cle to lean on any nation that allows us to be reg­is­tered under their flag. Accord­ing to a cred­i­ble legal source in Mel­bourne, the Far­ley Mowat as an unreg­is­tered pirate ves­sel may be inter­dict­ed at will by any naval ves­sel of any gov­ern­ment, its crew arrest­ed, and the ship sunk.

‘This is incred­i­ble but not sur­pris­ing’, respond­ed Cap­tain Paul Wat­son, ‘The oceans are crawl­ing with poach­ers fly­ing flags of con­ve­nience and the Japan­ese and Nor­we­gian reg­is­tered whalers are ille­gal­ly slaugh­ter­ing whales in sanc­tu­ar­ies and killing endan­gered species, yet we are forced to have our flag struck for oppos­ing these ille­gal activ­i­ties.’

The Far­ley Mowat will con­tin­ue on to the South­ern Oceans with­out a flag.

‘We have a mis­sion and that mis­sion is to save whales’, said Cap­tain Wat­son, ‘We will not sur­ren­der this ship to any navy and we will not com­ply with any order to can­cel our cam­paign. If any­one wish­es to stop us from pro­tect­ing whales they will have to sink us.’ The cap­tain and the crew of the Far­ley Mowat are not con­cerned about being called pirates.’

‘It was not the British Navy that end­ed pira­cy in the Caribbean, it was Cap­tain Hen­ry Mor­gan who did that and he was a pirate’, Said Cap­tain Wat­son, ‘I am proud to add my name to the long list of hon­ourable and noble pirates like Sir Fran­cis Drake, John Paul Jones and Jean LaFitte. To that end we have our own ver­sion of the Pret­ty Red or Joli Rouge and it is the crossed shepherd’s staff and Neptune’s tri­dent under a human skull engraved with the yin and yang of a dol­phin and a whale. If they want us to be pirates than we will be damn pirates but we will not aban­don the whales to the agony and mis­ery of the har­poons with­out a fight. We are pirates of com­pas­sion in pur­suit of pirates of prof­it.’

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety has been oppos­ing ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties since 1977 and 2007 marks the 30th anniver­sary of Sea Shep­herd high seas inter­ven­tions against whalers and ille­gal fish­ing oper­a­tions in the world’s oceans.

Dur­ing the entire three decades of Sea Shep­herd activ­i­ties not one per­son has been injured and not one Sea Shep­herd activists has been con­vict­ed of a felony crime. Sea Shep­herd inter­venes against ille­gal activ­i­ties in accor­dance with the prin­ci­ples estab­lished by and con­tained with­in the Unit­ed Nation World Char­ter for Nature.