4 — Sunday, August 19, 199G —- North Shore News

Going to war,
against
‘ecological
criminals’

SEATTLE -

Tied up at the end of 2 pier dusted with metal

shavings at Lake Union Dry Dock just below the Interstate
5, the Sea Shepherd’s horseshoe-shaped stern is streaked

with rust.

The supports for the upper
deck are twisted like something in
a Salvador Dali painting, the
result of having been rammed by
a Canadian Coast Guard
icebreaker in the St. Lawrence
River many years ago.

Before that, when she was

Bob
Hunter

ECOLOGIC

known as the St. Giles, working
as a North Sea trawler, she had
been butted up against by ships of
the Icelandic Navy during the
'*Cod Wars,”’ when Iceland drove
the British fishing fleet out of
disputed territorial waters.

In the years since Paul Watson
took her over, she has been pur-
sued by Soviet warships, fired-
upon by the Faroese Navy, held in
custody (and allowed to nearly rot
to death) by Canada, hounded by
tuna ships off Central America,
and run aground in the Orkney
Islands.

So if she has a battered and
bent look to her, no surprise!

Still, it is slightly dismaying to
find her in such a state of seeming
disrepair. The original departure
day had been set for June 13.

But, apart from the desperate
need for a paint job, the Sea
Shepherd faced a daunting array
of mechanical problems: the crane
for lifting small boats in and out
of water was broken, the engine
tests hadn’t been completed, it
turned out that silicon from the
induction valves had got caught in
the turbo-charger, which then had
to be ripped apart and put back
together; batteries for the single
sideband radio were utterly dead.

Oh, well. In the following days,
one by one, the problems would
be overcome. The crew of
mostly-young volunteers, plus a
team of four Filipino engineers,
drilling, welding, scraping, paint-
ing and re-wiring, would perform
the usual miracles of endurance
and ingenuity which are the stuff
of a sea-going protest.

The protest, in this case, is
aimed at the Asian driftnet fleet
currently taking the North Pacific
in search of squid and salmon, us-
ing 30-mile-long monofilament
nets that are as indiscriminately
destructive as they are indestruc-
table.

Although a “protest” isn’t real-
ly the word for this particular ex-
pedition.

Watson’s plan is to find the
fleet, somewhere between the
West Coast and Hawaii, and to
attack their nets.

On the foredeck of the Sea
Shepherd squats an ancient but
highly-effective-looking winch.
This brute of a machine is to be
used to grab one of the driftnets
— worth $1 million — and haul it
on board.

The word Watson uses to
describe this action is ‘tcon-
fiscate.”*

The owners of the nets will no
doubt call it theft and destruction
of private property.

Watson, as readers will recall
from his previous exploits —
throwing seal hunters’ clubs into
the water, ramming a pirate whal-
ing ship, illegally landing on the
Siberian coast, blockading the
mouth of St. John’s harbor, firing
signal flares at a naval! boarding
party, sinking two Icelandic whal-
ing ships in harbor, etc. — does
not give a damn what the owners
of the driftnets call his action.

So far as he is concerned, the
driftnet fleet — comprised of
some 600 Japanese, Taiwanese
and North Korean ships — are
ecological criminals.

With his usual disregard for
diplomatic niceties, he has taken it
upon himself to act in defence of
the tens of thousands of
defenceless turtles, seabirds,
dolphins, porpoises and unknown
number of whales that become en-
tangled in the nets and die every
year.

Among the enormous driftnet
fleet, Watson estimates, there are
at least 50 vessels that are pirates,
ignoring any internationally
agreed-upon quota systems entire-

ly.

Watson is unabashedly looking
for an international incident to
create enough political heat to
drive the driftnet fleet into extinc-
tion before the fleet itself can do
that to the fish and marine mam-
mals that it wastes.

He quotes Jacques Cousteau to
justify his undertaking, Cousteau
having said recently that “the
navies of the world should go out
and sink the driftnets to the bot-
tom of the sea.”’

The navies, unfortunately, have
no authority to take such action,
thanks to the Law of the Sea, laid
down centuries ago by Hugo
Grotius, who established the idea
of international waters as a realm
where no one nation could dictate
to any other.

Laudable as the goal may have
been, it has resulted in the 20th
century in the oceans being left
wide open to exploitation by any
country with the technology and
short-sightedness to push its lust
for profit to whatever limit it sees
fit.

So the battle lines are drawn. It
is closer to naval combat,
perhaps, than it is to protest.

Whatever the case, the Sea
Shepherd, battered and bent as
she may be, is all but ready to
take on the task that Jacques
Cousteau would have the **navies
of the world"’ perform.

And your correspondent will be
on board to report on the out-
come of the confrontation, when
different versions of law — and
lawlessness — come into open
conflict on the open sea.

Stay tuned.

ST

NEWS photo Neil Lucente

COUNTRY AND Western performers harmonize moments before thunderous skies break open at
fast week’s Dundarave Hoedown. The annual West Vancouver event got soggy, bdut a little rain

didn't dampen spirits.

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