The Captain Paul Watson Foundation is launching Operation Ice Storm from Albert Dock in Yorkshire to oppose Iceland’s last whaling company, Hvalur hf, the organization said in a press release.
Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace and founder of Sea Shepherd, has a history of intervening in Icelandic whaling operations. In 1986, members of his group successfully reduced the whaling fleet of Hvalur hf by half.
“Time is up for the world’s most notorious hunter of whales, Kristján Loftsson,” Watson, who will lead this summer’s anti-whaling campaign on his flagship the John Paul DeJoria, a 72m former Scottish Fisheries Protection vessel, declared.
Loftsson operates Hvalur hf at a loss, the foundation said in the release. The whaler’s business empire includes large shareholdings in banks and information technology companies. According to the foundation, he uses his wealth to hunt up to 209 fin whales each season. Fin whales are protected under international conservation law and listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.
Despite widespread opposition from the Icelandic public—a recent poll suggests over 51% of Icelanders oppose whaling—and Iceland’s fisheries minister temporarily revoking Hvalur hf’s whaling licence last summer, the country’s whaling boss continues to leverage his political influence in pursuit of resuming whaling operations, the foundation said.
Loftsson plans to deploy two ships armed with explosive harpoons—Hvalur 8 and Hvalur 9—in June, according to the foundation. “Our volunteer crew members are making necessary preparations to depart U.K. in June,” said Capt Locky MacLean, who sailed the John Paul DeJoria to Iceland’s coast last summer to intercept Hvalur’s vessels when the company’s licences were suspended. “From our standpoint, Loftsson is planning to hunt whales this summer and we will be ready.”
In 2023, the USA-based Captain Paul Watson Foundation and its U.K. arm, CPWF U.K., worked in conjunction on land and at sea on “Operation Paiakan” during which a pause on whaling permits was issued by Iceland’s Fisheries Minister Svandis Svavarsdottir, as the John Paul DeJoria lay-to off the western coast of the North Atlantic country, ready for a confrontation to stop Hvalur hf’s vessels from hunting fin whales. This summer, the foundation’s flagship will set sail in mid-June from Hull, England, to block Loftsson’s harpoon ships if permits are issued.
CPWF U.K.’s Rob Read, who has been running a ground operation in Iceland each summer for several years and documenting the whale-processing factory in Hvalfjörður since 2018, states “Whaling is the calculated, intentional, cruel killing of one of the planet’s most intelligent marine mammals. Whales are a key species proven to be critical not only to saving the oceans but ultimately all life on earth.”
Last May, Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST) alleged that Hvalur hf was in violation of Iceland’s animal welfare laws. They cited instances of multiple fin whales failing to die instantaneously during the hunt, and a median time-to-death of 11.5 minutes. Iceland, alongside Japan and Norway, persists as one of the final nations to engage in commercial whaling, defying the global moratorium imposed by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. Only last week, Watson and his team announced that they would embark on a mission to thwart Japan plan to resume whaling activities at the end of this year.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation, founded in 2022 by Watson alongside tech entrepreneur Omar Todd, is a USA-based non-profit dedicated to marine conservation. Committed to halting habitat destruction and wildlife slaughter in the world’s oceans, the foundation aims to safeguard marine ecosystems and species and uses innovative direct-action tactics to expose and confront illegal activities at sea.
Source: PR Newswire
