Description of Attack on Sea Shepherd Crew

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Description of Attack on Sea Shepherd Crew

 

 

Sea Shepherd News

 

03/31/2005

 

Attack of the Hak-a-Piks

 

Sea Shepherd Crew Assaulted by Sealers then Arrested

by Fisheries Officers

 

 

 

Farley Mowat Update

 

 

 

March 31st, 2005

 

2300 Hours Atlantic Standard Time

 

1900 Hours Pacific Standard Time

 

 

 

Position:

 

 

 

46 Degrees 40 Minutes 28 Seconds North

 

61 Degrees 45 Minutes 40 Seconds West

 

15 Miles off Prince Edward Island

 

 

 

Tonight the Farley Mowat is locked into the ice. We

must go where the ice takes us and it has moved us

some fifty miles from the point close to the Magdalen

Islands where we were when the storm moved in. The ice

pressure continues to build.

 

 

 

Of the nearly one hundred sealing ships that were in

the ice on March 29th, only about 30 vessels remain.

Two have sunk, others have been abandoned and others

have been damaged, their hulls being squeezed by the

increasing pressure. Most have returned to port.

 

 

 

One Newfoundland sealer was overheard to say on the

radio, " These seals ain't worth this trouble b'ye. "

 

 

 

The radio was alive with desperate sealers calling for

help from the Coast Guard.

 

 

 

But one Coast Guard ice-breaker was busy elsewhere.

They dropped all their other activities to respond to

a complaint from the Newfoundland sealer Brady Mariner

that some Sea Shepherd crew were taking pictures of

their activities.

 

 

 

At 1330 Hours, 18 crew from the Farley Mowat had

crossed a mile of ice to witness and photograph

sealers from the Brady Mariner. Eight sealers came

towards them armed with hak-a-pics and began to shout

and swear at them. Within minutes the sealers became

violent and attacked the Sea Shepherd crew. 19-years

old Lisa Moises, from Germany, was slapped in the face

and punched in the stomach by one burly sealer.

Another attacked photographer Ian Robichaud with a

hak-a-pik, striking his camera and hitting him in the

side of the head. Adrian Haley was struck in the face.

Jonathan Batchlor was punched in the mouth. Jonny

Vasic was hit in the side of the head with a club.

Petite Lisa Shalom of Montreal was struck by a sealer

as she took pictures of the assault on her crewmates.

When another sealer swung his hak-a-pik to strike

Jonny Vasic's camera, Dr. Jerry Vlasak, (a surgeon

from Los Angeles), jumped in his way and took the blow

across the face.

 

 

 

The crew radioed back to Captain Paul Watson that they

had been attacked. Captain Watson called the Coast

Guard Icebreaker Amundsen and requested that the

Mounted Police officers on Board investigate the

assault. They did not reply.

 

 

 

Instead, a helicopter was dispatched to arrest the Sea

Shepherd crew on the ice. Of the 18 who left to

document the sealers, only seven were able to return.

They barely made it. The Amundsen was charging through

the ice to cut off their path of retreat to the Farley

Mowat. Lisa Moises and Ian Robichaud barely made it

back to the Farley Mowat. They watched as the massive

red hull of the Coast Guard Icebreaker Amundsen bore

quickly down on them in an attempt to cut them off.

They could see chunks of ice flying out from the bow

of the ice breaker but they kept focused on the Farley

Mowat and managed to make it across.

 

 

 

Behind them Jonny Vasic and Jon Batchelor raced to

cross the ice before the Amundsen could cut them off.

Jonny saw the hull looming above him and felt the ice

tremble as a jagged cut slithered before the bow and

opened up. He could see the dark black water widening

as he jumped and made it across, relieved to see that

Jon Batchelor had done the same. Both of them raced

towards the Farley Mowat.

 

 

 

Behind them Alex Cornelissen and Lisa Shalom were not

so lucky. They were cut off and unable to cross the

treacherous lead that the Amundsen had opened up.

They saw helicopters approaching and police officers

debarking the ice-breaker, their hands on their guns

approaching them.

 

 

 

The eleven captured were manhandled into helicopters

and taken to the Amundsen and charged.

 

 

 

The Amundsen then came towards the Farley Mowat in an

intimidating manner and stopped only a few hundred

feet off the starboard side of Farley Mowat for over

an hour. No one on the Amundsen said anything or would

provide information on the crew they had taken into

custody.

 

 

 

Captain Watson spoke with the Mounted Police in

Charlottetown and officially requested an

investigation into the assault charges. The entire

assault was documented on the crews’ video cameras.

 

 

 

The fate of the eleven arrested crew is uncertain.

They have all vowed to refuse bail and to refuse food.

The eleven represent five different nationalitie: Dr.

Jerry Vlasak, Colin Biroc and Andre Casanave of

California; Megan Southern and Ian Fritz of Arizona;

Ryan Goyette of Rhode Island; Matt Schwartz of Texas;

Lisa Shalom of Montreal, Quebec; Alex Cornelissen of

the Netherlands, Peter Hammarstedt of Sweden; and

Laura Dakin, an Australian citizen and resident of

Bermuda.

 

 

 

Assaulted with a deadly weapon, injured, and then

arrested, and all this because they attempted to take

a picture of a sealer.

 

 

 

You can almost smell the bananas growing in Canada

these days. What kind of a democracy makes it a crime

to take a photograph or shoot film of a wildlife

slaughter? What kind of democracy responds to an

assault by arresting the victim? What kind of nation

prides itself in the massacre of hundreds of thousands

of baby animals? What kind of government demands that

permits be picked up in the one place where the

applicants will be assaulted and where there is a

history of violent assaults against them? What kind of

nation could irresponsibly send ill-equipped vessels

into treacherous ice conditions so that seals can be

slaughtered?

 

 

 

The chaos that has erupted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence

this week - the sinking of sealing vessels, the

numerous distress calls, the assaults, and the arrests

illustrate yet once again that the Canadian Department

of Fisheries and Oceans is an incompetent bureaucracy.

It is the same incompetence that led to the collapse

of the cod fishery, the same incompetence that led to

charges of dumping waste by DFO vessels in Halifax

harbor, and the same incompetence that is mismanaging

and threatening the harp and hood seal populations.

 

 

 

The DFO officers have turned a blind eye to the

cruelty and the violations by sealers for decades.

They have fixated on protecting the killers from view

of the world and they have demonstrated that they have

lost all sense of objectivity and balance in their

approach to ocean resource issues.

 

 

 

Fourteen crew remain on the Farley Mowat. Eleven are

being held prisoner on the Amundsen. The seal

slaughter has ended it's third day in the Gulf.

Tomorrow morning will be the fourth day of this circus

of blood, gore, and violence by the arrogantly

ignorant. Yet we are still here – the guardians and

defenders of the seals. Here we will remain until our

ship is sunk or driven out or we are captured or die

out here on the ice doing what we came here to do – to

be shepherds to these young and beautiful creatures –

the harp seals.

 

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society welcomes your

support. To learn how to support our conservation

work, please visit our donation page.

 

 

P.O. Box 2616, Friday Harbor, WA 98250 (USA) Tel:

360-370-5650 Fax: 360-370-5651

2005 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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