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
Copyright � 2005 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
All rights reserved.
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