Posted on 04/12/2008 2:36:25 PM PDT by Clive
The Fisheries Minister defended the seizure of an anti-sealing group's ship Saturday, an act the group's leader called "an act of war."
An armed RCMP team, working in a joint operation with Fisheries and the coast guard, boarded and seized the Sea Shepherd vessel Farley Mowat that was monitoring the annual seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence Saturday.
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Loyola Hearn had little sympathy for the protesters' tactics.
"They are a bunch of money-sucking manipulators," said Mr. Hearn, "and their sole aim is to try to suck as much money out of the pockets of people who really don't know what's going on."
Mr. Hearn said the ship was boarded and the captain and first officer arrested because the Farley Mowat failed to comply with warnings and continued to violate marine and fisheries regulations. The Minister said that he wanted the activities of the Farley Mowat stopped before someone got killed.
"The action was taken because the Farley Mowat and its crew, acting under the direction of Mr. Paul Watson, contravened the Marine Mammal regulations and the Fisheries Act that govern the seal hunt," said Mr. Hearn.
Mr. Watson, who heads the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said he received a call during the raid from Albertan Shannon Mann, the onboard communications officer for the protest ship.
"Shannon said that the icebreaker the Des Groseilliers and the [offshore patrol ship] Sir Wifrid Grenfell dispatched four small boats carrying officers and they swarmed the vessel and came on board," said Mr. Watson. "They seized everything."
Mr. Watson said he could hear the raid while on the phone to Ms. Mann.
"While I was talking to her I could hear yelling in the background telling people to lie down on the deck," said MR. Watson. "The crew were forced down at gunpoint and then the line went dead. So they obviously cut the communications."
"The Canadian Coast Guard seized a European-registered yacht in international waters which technically is an act of war," said Mr. Watson.
The Minister strongly contested this, saying that the raid took place within Canadian waters and in accordance with Canadian fisheries legislation.
Mr. Hearn said that the crew were safe and well and en route to Sydney, N.S., where the captain and first officer would appear in court. If convicted the maximum penalty is six months in jail and a $100,000 fine.
Saturday's raid was the culmination of a series of incidents involving the Farley Mowat.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans had announced Sunday an investigation into a high-seas confrontation between the Farley Mowat and sealers near Cape Breton on Mar. 30 ended in charges laid against the vessel's captain, Alexander Cornelissen, and first officer, Peter Hammarstedt.
Sealer Shane Briand said the Farley Mowat, operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, endangered the lives of his crew when it came close to them Mar. 30 about 60 kilometres off Cape Breton.
Mr. Watson said the raid Saturday was a victory for his organization's campaign to end the annual seal hunt.
"I think that we just won the campaign," said Mr. Watson. "They did exactly what we thought they might do but I didn't think would be stupid enough to do."
But Mr. Hearn said Saturday that the boat was boarded to ensure the safety of the seal hunt.
"We will continue to protect sealers while ensuring the sustainable and humane management of the hunt so it continues to provide economic opportunities for Canada's coastal communities in the future."
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said that the Farley Mowat was gathering proof that the seals were being killed in an inhumane manner. Mr. Watson said that he assumed all the video tapes had been seized by the Canadian authorities.
There were 17 crew members onboard the Dutch-registered Farley Mowat from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, South Africa, Canada and the United States.
He knows how to call a spade a bloody shovel.
So much so that naming a Sea Shepherd ship after him is an insult.
First the French elect a pro-American badass, and now the RCMP is seizing ecopunks on the high seas? I need to go home and get my broadsword! The good times are back!
Crew of anti-sealing ship charged
French fishermen in St-Pierre chase away seal hunt protesters
"Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia by Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing vessel Nybrænna in 1992,[2] but Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend at least 60 days in detention in the Netherlands before being released.
Thus far, other attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd have failed. Watson himself defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers. Watson caught a Costa Rican fishing boat poaching in Guatemalan waters while he was on a journey to Costa Rica, having been invited by its president to help in the fight against shark poaching there. The authorities in Costa Rica later filed seven charges of attempted murder against Watson and a colleague, Rob Stewart, in what Watson and Stewart have described as an effort to cover up mafia-funded illegal shark finning operations. They eventually fled to international waters to escape arrest by Costa Rican coast guards after they had filmed what they attest was mafia-funded shark-finning in private docks. These events are featured in Sharkwater [3], a documentary about sharks and activism.
Watson was also told to leave Iceland after having turned himself in to the Icelandic police after disabling two ships in harbor.,
Actions taken by Watson and Sea Shepherd to protest a resumption of whaling by the Makah tribe in Washington in 1998 have also proven controversial. The protests resulted in some unusual alliances, with environmental, animal rights groups, and conservative former Congressman Jack Metcalf protesting the whaling, while native rights groups and "wise use" groups supported the whaling.
In early April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt may be considered tragic, he feels that the killing of seals is even more tragic. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said that Watson is gutless, shameless, and without a shred of human decency.[4]
" Over a lifetime of fighting for freedom, I have suffered the loss of dirt bike riding areas and hundreds of miles of trails to this scum watson and Bill Clinton ! Now we are corralled into tiny "off road prisons", caged in with hordes of lawless, littering drunken Mexicans, thanks to Watson when he was with the Sierra Club"
d’accord
What is the number of baby seals they "humanely" beat to death each year? Who buys the furs? Oh, the advance European state of Norway. The Asians buy the penises as an aphrodisiac. Who would know that it's a Chinese tradition to dine on seal pup penises from North America. Canada sucks.
You could add Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, PeTA, the NRDC, Earth First! and a few other organizations to that list. Money-sucking manipulators, the lot of them...
To contact the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, please send an e-mail message to:
E-Mail: Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
(Please include your postal and e-mail address)
Or write to:
The Honourable Loyola Hearn
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans
Parliament Buildings, Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada, K1A 0A6
I misread this for a moment. I thought he called them "monkey sucking manipulators." Sort of like tree huggers, I thought.
I don't know. Perhaps you could supply that information. As for myself, I trap and shoot coyotes for the fur trade.
Pirates should be hanged immediately upon capture, but this is a good start.
I couldn't agree more. Environmental nut jobs have no respect for life even though they claim to.
Yep.
That about sums it up.
I absolutely detest, have no respect, for "advocates" of inanimate objects or dumb creatures who can neither confirm or deny that they want or need their help.
Controlling twits who assume that they are beyond the law or rules of civilized behavior because they discovered a lucrative scam, which beats getting a job like most of us.
Did I mention these people piss me off just hearing about them?
Barf alert! Yeah, right. Whose going to fight your war for you, Mr. Watson?
Probably a lot fewer than the number of cows "humanely" electrocuted each year in slaughterhouses, and certainly the number is miniscule compared to the number of chickens "humanely" strung up and beheaded each year.
Surely fewer than the number of bugs "humanely" smashed on your very own windshield as you drive around each year in your car.
So, why should I have to abide by where you choose to draw the line? Because seals pass the "fluffy test" and cows don't?
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