Sea Shepherd is hoping to avert another whale catch like this one.

FAROE ISLAND, DENMARK — The ocean conservation organization Sea Shepherd has rammed, disabled, or sunk nine illegal whaling, driftnet, and dolphin-killing vessels in the course of enforcing international conventions prohibiting whaling and destructive fishing practices, and another confrontation looms today in the Danish Protectorate of Faroe Island. Residents of the Faroe Islands conduct sport hunts locally called "grinds." Each year, up to 2,000 pilot whales and various species of dolphins are hand-butchered after being driven into sheltered bays by the islander's boats.
In the most recent confrontation, police attempted to board Sea Shepherd's ship Ocean Warrior, though they were repelled by crew. Captain Paul Watson says the encounter took place while the ship was in international waters and so it is an act of piracy, while the Faroe police maintain the ship was already in the waters of the Faroe Islands. The Sea Shepherd crew has also heard from several sources that a Danish warship is on its way to the Faroe Islands to provide cover for the whalers. "If Denmark moves against our vessel to protect the whale hunt of the Faeroe Islands, Sea Shepherd will immediately go to the European Court and charge Denmark with violation of EU treaties," said Captain Paul Watson. "Denmark is a member of the European Union and Denmark signed treaties against whaling. We would be interested to see how Denmark would justify any action to assist in a whale hunt."
Faroese authorities take the position that "a sustainable harvest of pilot whales occurring in the waters around the Faroe Islands is a legitimate activity." The scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission has estimated that there are approximately 750,000 pilot whales in the Northeast Atlantic. When a Sea Shepherd vessel first came to the Faroes in 1985, Faroese police boats firing tear gas attacked it. Faroes Prime Minister Atli Dam promised Captain Watson that the pilot whale hunt would be made more humane through cooperation with the IWC and the United Nations Environment Program, and children would no longer be involved in the slaughter. But Watson says the hunt is still "an exercise in abject cruelty, and children are still involved." Watson calls the pilot whale hunts "a relic of the islands' Viking past, carried out in the name of tradition."
Sea Shepherd has orchestrated a Europe-wide boycott of Faroese seafood over the past nine months, which has led to four of the largest food importer/distributors in Europe to terminate their contracts with the Faroes until the hunt is halted—a loss of more than 20,000 retail outlets, Watson says.
Captain Watson is a Canadian conservationist and environmental activist who has become internationally renowned for his daring, innovative, and aggressive approach to the field of wildlife conservation. As one of the founding members of the Greenpeace Foundation, he sailed into a nuclear test site in Alaska in 1971, and in 1975 became the first man to place his body between a harpoon and a whale, capturing the attention of the media worldwide.
Sea Shepherd was founded in 1977 after Watson, having led the first Greenpeace whale and seal protection campaigns, left the organization he co-founded in order to take more direct action. The 54-meter, 657-ton former icebreaker Ocean Warrior is poised to do just that, as her one-inch thick riveted and welded steel hull was built to withstand the violent pounding of the storm-haunted North Sea, and is up to challenging any pirate whaler on the high seas. For more information see http://www.seashepherd.org/.