Sea Shepherd

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The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is a non-profit, non-governmental, primarily maritime and self-proclaimed policing organization, that claims to undertake campaigns guided by the United Nations World Charter for Nature (1982) and other statutory laws protecting marine species and environments.^[1][2]

The society was founded by Paul Watson in 1977 after Watson, one of the three founders of Greenpeace, concluded that "bearing witness" to environmental damage was an inadequate response compared to actual enforcement of international laws, regulations, and treaties.^[3]

Sea Shepherd is more confrontational than Greenpeace.^[4] Watson has since referred to Greenpeace as "The Avon ladies of the environmental movement."^[3]

Sea Shepherd is based in Friday Harbor, Washington, in the United States, and has a fleet of three vessels it calls "Neptune's Navy": the ships being the Farley Mowat, the Robert Hunter and the Sirenian, as well as several smaller boats.^[5]

Contents 1 Operations 2 Background 3 Current priorities 4 Bibliography 5 See also 6 External links 6.1 Official and pro Sea Shepherd 6.2 Critics 7 References

[edit] Operations

Sea Shepherd operations include interdiction against whaling in Antarctic waters, patrols of the Galapagos Islands, and action against Canadian seal hunters.^[4][3][6][7] Sea Shepherd has an affiliated organization, O.R.C.A. Force the president of which is Watson.^[8]

Sea Shepherd claims to have sunk ten whaling ships since 1979, referring to these ships by the political epithet "pirates".^[9]

[edit] Background

Sea Shepherd engages in direct enforcement actions to protect such marine wildlife as seals, dolphins and whales. These have included more conventional protests, as well as, at times, scuttling and sinking fishing boats engaged in fishery operations while in harbor, sabotage of vessels in harbor, ramming the whaling ship Sierra in Portuguese harbor,^[10], and seizure and destruction of drift nets at sea. Sea Shepherd has also conducted an intense media campaign against Japanese high-seas whaling and the Canadian sealing industry in particular. Despite the violence of such actions (as contrasted with the actions of groups such as Greenpeace), there have been few reports of injuries or deaths during Sea Shepherd actions, the most recent being two Japanese crewmen reportedly splashed with the foul-smelling butyric acid during Sea Shepherd's recent (February 2007) action in the Ross Sea.^[11] The Sea Shepherds admitted to throwing six one-litre bottles of butyric acid onto the deck of the Nisshin Maru although Paul Watson denied that any Japanese crew could have been harmed, saying that butyric acid is "a simple non-toxic butter acid, basically rancid butter".^[12]

Sea Shepherd bases its actions on enforcement of international maritime law under the United Nations World Charter for Nature; however, the organization has no official mandate or authorization to enforce any legislation. Sea Shepherd was deprived of its status as an International Whaling Commission observer after sinking Icelandic vessels in 1986. In 1994, IWC Secretary Ray Gambell stated "the IWC and all its members ardently condemn Sea Shepherd's acts of terrorism."^[13] However, Ray Gambell has been reported as having told the BBC in 2000 that "It would be much better if Japan and Norway were brought within the process," a position inconsistent with international law.^{[citation needed]} In 2006 the outgoing Vice Chair of the IWC, Horst Kleinschmidt, joined the Board of Sea Shepherd as an advisor. Sea Shepherd is supported by private and corporate donations and operated by volunteers and paid staff, including Watson's current wife. Critics, including its targets, refer to the organization with political epithets such as "pirate" and "terrorist,^[11] and consider Sea Shepherd's harassment of lawful fishing and resource-extraction operations to be outside the law.

Supporters maintain that countries such as Australia are too fearful of losing Japanese trade to enforce what those supporters describe as law,^{[citation needed]} and they claim that small countries in the IWC which support whaling have been bought by Japanese development aid^{[citation needed]}(Japan is behind only the US as an aid donor^[14]). This does not address the issue of countries, primarily in Europe and South America, which have allegedly been pressured to join by countries with a preservationist stance.^[15]

In the course of these operations, associates of Sea Shepherd have been threatened, endangered, imprisoned, and tried for commission of crimes on the high seas including maritime piracy, but with little success as Sea Shepherd can rely on international law to protect it.^{[citation needed]} Paul Watson, the founder of the group, was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland; but he was found not guilty through relying on Canadian ratification of the UN Charter for Nature (1982.).^{[citation needed]} In 1997, he was convicted in absentia by Norway on charges of sinking a Norwegian whaling ship, but Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities.^{[citation needed]} Costa Rica filed attempted murder charges against Watson for an incident after he caught a Costa Rican fishing boat poaching, but charges were dropped after prosecutors were shown a film of the incident that was shot by a team making a documentary of Sea Shepherd.^[16] Several nations, including Japan, have pressed the United States to declare Sea Shepherd a terrorist organization. Animal rights activist Rod Coronado, who has had numerous legal problems stemming from his activism, got his start in activism with Sea Shepherd, participating in one of its best-known and most controversial actions, the scuttling of two ships from Iceland's whaling fleet while in port in 1986.

Despite their frequent legal troubles in various nations, Sea Shepherd currently has working agreements with several countries, including Ecuador, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Indonesia, to help those countries fight poaching, and in the past has worked against poaching in co-operation with the United States government.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Current priorities

Sea Shepherd's current priorities are a permanent naval patrol in the Galapagos Islands to protect sea turtles and other marine wildlife, and a campaign against the 2005 seal hunt in Canada, which includes a boycott of Canadian seafood products.

Between December 2005 and January 2006 Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace vessels were in the Southern Ocean to confront Japanese whalers. Sea Shepherd declared that they would do whatever they considered necessary to prevent the whaling, even if it meant losing their ship. The Farley Mowat rammed a Japanese supply ship called the Oriental Bluebird. On January 16 the organisation declared that their fuel supplies had run out and that they were heading to shore. They claimed credit for chasing the whalers from whaling grounds and hindering operations for over 15 days.^[17]

Sea Shepherd returned to the Antarctic region during January and February 2007 in a campaign called "Operation Leviathan". The Robert Hunter, a recent addition to "Neptune's Navy" (purchased from the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency in December 2006, and originally named FPV Westra) joined the Sea Shepherd flag ship Farley Mowat in the successful search for, and subsequent hindrance of, the Japanese whaling fleet. Preparations for a further Antarctic campaign later in 2007 are currently underway.^[18]

Sea Shepherd has many critics, but also many outspoken supporters including actors Richard Dean Anderson, Pierce Brosnan, Martin Sheen, Sean Penn, and William Shatner, environmental activists Dave Foreman and Farley Mowat, and the late writer Edward Abbey. Corporate sponsors include John Paul Mitchell Systems and Patagonia.

[edit] Bibliography

• Paul Watson, Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (Los Angeles: Chaco Press, 1993). ISBN 0-9616019-5-7
• Paul Watson, Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994; Key Porter Books, 1996). ISBN 978-1550135992
• Paul Watson, Seal Wars: Twenty-five Years in the Front Lines with the Harp Seals (2002; Firefly Books, 2003). ISBN 978-1552977514
• David B. Morris, Earth Warrior: Overboard with Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1995). ISBN 1-55591-203-6
• Neptune's Manifesto: How a few good pirates can save the oceans. Whole Earth Review, Fall 1998.
• Rik Scarce, Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement, second revised ed. (1990; Left Coast Press, 2005), Ch. 6. ISBN 978-1598740288

[edit] See also

• Rod Coronado
• Animal Rights

[edit] External links

[edit] Official and pro Sea Shepherd

• Sea Shepherd Conservation Society website
• Videos of the 2006/2007 Antarctica campaign and confrontation: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

[edit] Critics

• Sea Shepherd's Record of Violence

[edit] References