An activist group said it deliberately rammed a krill fishing vessel operated by Aker Qrill.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation confirmed that its vessel Bandero deliberately rammed a Norwegian-flagged trawler operated by Aker BioMarine in the Antarctic Sea. The escalation comes a year after the Antarctic krill season was closed for the first time ever due to the global catch hitting a ceiling of 620,000 metric tons (MT).
That high catch has lead a number of environmental organizations to urge world governments to take action against krill fishing, and, in the case of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, to directly attempt to interfere with fishing operations.
“Over the course of more than five hours, the Bandero disrupted krill fishing operations involving two industrial vessels, repeatedly intervening to disable their activities. During the encounter, The Captain Paul Watson Foundation obstructed their ecologically damaging activities to defend the primary food source of the Antarctic,” the Paul Watson Foundation said in a release.
In a release on 2 April, the foundation confirmed it deliberately struck an Ake BioMarine vessel.
“We scratched their paint and they reacted like frightened drama queens, in response to our message to cease and desist from causing further damage to the fragile eco-system of the Southern Ocean,” Paul Watson said. “Ecocide is terrorism and we oppose ecoterrorism with non-violent tactics to defend life in the sea from the greed of this voracious industrial enterprise.”
Aker has called the act a dangerous escalation that could have had serious consequences, and may have lead to a spill of fuel in the sensitive habitat.
"If the steel plates ... had ruptured, it could have caused a spill. It was probably just luck that it didn't cause more damage," Aker Chief Executive Webjoern Barstad told Reuters.
