"Eco-pirate" Paul Watson is losing a race against time to
recover his flagship boat, the Steve Irwin, which has been impounded in
Shetland.
The world's most radical conservationist, Watson is being sued for $1.4m (£850,000) by a Maltese
fishing company, Fish and Fish, one of Europe's leading tuna processors. The law suit against Watson's Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society was filed last year after activists aboard the Steve Irwin freed 800 bluefin tuna from a pen in the Mediterranean.
Watson
has just 10 days to raise the bond required to release the boat, which
was named after the late Australian conservationist. It has been
impounded in the harbour at Lerwick ever since the company sued him for
damages. By last night, the society had raised about $500,000, after a
global Twitter campaign and appeals to celebrities who have helped
Watson in the past.
A co-founder of Greenpeace, Watson was picking
up volunteer crew and restocking the Steve Irwin in preparation for a
trip to protest against whaling in the Faroe Islands when he was served
with the writ. The tuna cage that had been intercepted 40 miles off the
Libyan coast in June last year held an estimated 35 tons of fish.
After
a fracas in which there was hand-to-hand fighting between the two
crews, Sea Shepherd sent in divers to release the 800 tuna.
Joseph Caruana, the owner of Fish and Fish, declined to speak to the
Observer,
but has claimed in the Maltese press that two of his divers were
injured in the encounter, an allegation strongly denied by Watson. "Sea
Shepherd cannot continue behaving this way. My aim is for justice to be
done. I wanted to show that we mean business and we will fight our
cause," he said.
Malta
has become a global capital of tuna fishing, exporting £80m-worth of
the fish, mainly to the Middle East and Japan. Ships surround the fish
with nets and then tow them to cages, where they are fattened for
export.
Catches are limited to two weeks a year and ship owners
have been given strict quotas to meet by governments, but, with little
policing, the industry has been able to openly flout the law in Libyan
waters.
Greenpeace and WWF called last month for a suspension of
the Mediterranean tuna fishing season, saying that stocks were at
critically low levels. "Mediterranean bluefin tuna is on the slippery
slope to collapse," said Dr Sergi Tudela, of WWF Mediterranean.
In
a statement last week, Watson said that if Sea Shepherd could not raise
the money, the Steve Irwin could be held indefinitely and possibly
sold. "This would not only be a financial hardship, but it could
threaten our ability to defend whales in the Southern Ocean Whale
Sanctuary from the Japanese whaling fleet this December. Fish and Fish
are claiming damages for bluefin tuna we believe were illegally caught
after the season had closed," he said.
In a separate incident, the
Namibian government has declared Sea Shepherd a "threat to national
security" after it tried to film the annual slaughter of 90,000 Cape fur
seals on the west African coast. It is a crime to document seal
clubbing in Namibia.
"The group tried to document the seal
slaughter, but was detected by Namibian special forces," said Watson.
"It was a good plan, but Sea Shepherd is no match for the Namibian
military." The group fled to South Africa, having had its rooms burgled
and cameras destroyed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/31/eco-pirate-paul-watson-flagship###