A ship operated by a group founded by anti-whaling activist Paul Watson collided with an industrial krill trawler in Antarctica in what the ship’s Norwegian owner said was a “deliberate attack” that endangered its crew and could’ve caused a disaster in the same environmentally sensitive waters the activists claim they want to protect.
A two-minute video provided to The Associated Press by the Aker QRILL Co. shows the moment Tuesday when the M/V Bandero, operated by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, slowly steams toward the stern of the fishing vessel, hitting its port side at a slight angle.
The collision underscores the growing battle in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean over the future of Antarctic krill, a shrimplike crustacean central to the diet of whales and critical buffer to global warming that’s also in demand for use in health supplements, fishmeal and other products.
Aker said Wednesday that the Bandero came within centimeters of striking a diesel tank on its vessel, the Norwegian-flagged Antarctic Sea, and put at risk a habitat teeming with multiple whale species, seals and seabirds — all feeding on the Southern Ocean’s abundant but environmentally sensitive krill population.
The company said its multinational crew was shaken but unharmed and it would pursue all available legal action.
“Our crew were put at risk in some of the most remote waters on Earth, and only luck avoided potential environmental damage,” Aker CEO Webjørn Barstad said in a statement.
“If the steel plates (…) had ruptured, it could have caused a spill. It was probably just luck that it didn’t cause more damage,” Barstad told the Reuters news agency.
In a statement to Reuters, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation said that it was “an accidental collision” and that it was committed to “lawful, responsible, non-violent action in defense of marine ecosystems”.
In its own news release, the foundation characterized its actions as “aggressive nonviolence.” It said the crew, led by French activist Lamya Essemlali, managed to disrupt all krill fishing during a five-hour “direct intervention” against two Aker-owned vessels. It also provided images showing the crew launching giant metal net shredding devices intended to disrupt fishing.
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