NORWEGIAN WHALING IS A WASTEFUL PRACTICE, DENOUNCES GREENPEACE
Klaus Merkle
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NORWEGIAN WHALING IS A WASTEFUL PRACTICE, DENOUNCES GREENPEACE
June 14, 1999
Greenpeace continued today its efforts to prevent the Norwegian whaling
vessel Villduen from undermining international agreements and catching
further whales in the North Sea. Greenpeace started the actions against
the Villduen Friday and so far the boat has managed to catch three whales,
one medium sized and two smaller ones. Only a small part of the whales
killed have been kept on board the Villduen, while most of the carcasses
have been disposed into the sea. After having flensed and parted the
whales, the whalers are now continuing the hunt while three Norwegian
coast guard ships are patrolling the area.
Norway has strong laws about dealing with the disposal of waste from
fishing, which is a very wasteful practice, says Dr Ralf Sonntag,
Greenpeace marine biologist on board. "Norway has always been active in
international fora to ban discarding as a fisheries practice. It is ironic
that today the Villduen, a Norwegian whaling vessel , dumped nine tenths
of the whales caught back into the sea. And this happened under the eyes
of the Norwegian coast guard who did not react.
Greenpeace has managed to document the discarding of the whale
carcasses, despite attempts from the Norwegian cost guard to interfere
with the filming of the whalers waste disposal. "When we started
documenting the disposal of whale carcasses, the Norwegian coast guard
started to use their inflatables to push our observer boat away from from
the the scene, said Sonntag. Greenpeace started its peaceful protest
against the illegal Norwegian whaling on Friday, when the
environmentalists first spotted the Villduen whaling in the North Sea. On
Saturday, during a reckless and irresponsible manoeuvre by the Norwegian
coast guard patrol, a Greenpeace activist got seriously injured and is
still in hospital in Stavanger, Norway.
Updated information to be found on http://www.greenpeace.no/english