Sea Shepherd has published a photography book to mark its 40th anniversary, telling the story of its battles — victories and defeats alike — in defence of the oceans and the animals that inhabit them.
In 1977, an organisation devoted to the protection of marine mammals and the fight against illegal hunting activities was founded in Vancouver, Canada: the Earth Force Society, established by Paul Watson after his departure from Greenpeace, together with Starlet Lum, Ron Precious and Al Johnson. In its first year of operation, the organisation managed to purchase its first vessel, a British fishing trawler called the Westella, thanks to financial support from the Fund for Animals. After months of repairs and preparation ahead of the first mission off the coast of eastern Canada to oppose the annual slaughter of seal pups, Paul Watson renamed the ship Sea Shepherd.
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The Sea Shepherd was the organisation's first vessel to set sail in 1979 among the ice with the precise aim of protecting seals. On that expedition the crew saved more than a thousand pups using a tactic that was subsequently replicated on account of its success: spraying a harmless dye onto the animals' fur to render it commercially worthless. And so began the story of the organisation dedicated to the defence of the oceans, renamed in 1981 the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
After its early campaigns to save seals and whales, Sea Shepherd declared itself a defender of all marine fauna and an opponent of any illegal activity at sea. Since then, amid clashes, controversial actions, legal disputes and the arrest of volunteers, the organisation has undertaken more than 200 voyages across all the world's oceans, contributing to the protection of ecosystems. Its 40-year history has been turned into a book that retraces, through spectacular photographs, the battles, the victories, the defeats and the key figures. The volume, published by Skira, was presented in La Spezia on 22 June at Sea Future, the event dedicated to the blue economy, on a day when it was also possible to visit the ship Sam Simon.
Some of the best-known campaigns that Sea Shepherd has pursued for years are those against Japanese whalers. The Asian country returns every year to the Antarctic Ocean sanctuary to hunt whales under the guise of scientific research. After years of battles that led to a significant reduction in Japan's fishing quotas, however, Sea Shepherd will no longer return to those waters to fight for whales. "We didn't go last year, we're not going this year, and we won't go next year either," Sea Shepherd Global captain and CEO Alex Cornelissen tells us from the deck of the Sam Simon, anchored in the port of La Spezia.
"The problem is that to go to Antarctica we would need our entire fleet and our entire annual budget — that would be the only way to make a difference. This is because Japan now uses military technology. They know exactly where we are, and if they see us coming they run, leading us on a chase until we run out of fuel. And so they keep killing whales. By using all our resources there, we can't do anything else. One example is the vessels that kill 500,000 sharks every year off Africa to produce shark liver oil. That would mean saving 500,000 lives, against perhaps five whales saved. Emotionally, it's a difficult decision. People care deeply about whales, and so do we. But it comes down to how effective we can be. So we found ourselves deciding whether to carry on and forget about everything else, or try to do something different. We chose the latter."
The fleet of sea pirates has thus charted new courses, heading to Africa to combat new forms of illegality in countries that lack the resources to defend themselves and prevent these crimes. "We now routinely have three ships in Africa: the Ocean Warrior off the east coast, the Bob Barker, which is currently in Gabon, and the Sam Simon, which is here in Italy right now," Cornelissen explains.
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After maintenance work in La Spezia, the Sam Simon — named in honour of the co-producer and writer of the animated series The Simpsons, who anonymously purchased a vessel from the Japanese fleet itself and donated it to the organisation — will return to Liberian waters, where it has been engaged for three years in Operation Sola Stella against illegal fishing. The number one enemy in African waters is indeed illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which causes the depletion of fish stocks, the destruct