Greenpeace activist pulled grappling hook from his leg

A Greenpeace activist is recovering well at St James Hospital after undergoing surgery for an injury caused by a grappling hook slung by commercial fishermen.

Frank Hewetson, 45, was trying to free tuna from a commercial fishing net in a protest off Malta yesterday afternoon when the fishermen threw the hook at the Greenpeace dinghy he was in and it pierced his left leg, he said. Greenpeace originally said he was harpooned.

"I managed to pull the hook out myself," said Hewetson. "It was very painful."

The hook "got between the bone and the muscle," the London resident said.

The environmental group said yesterday that Hewetson and other Greenpeace activists were trying to lower the side of a purse seine net with sand bags to free the fish when the confrontation occurred.

Hewetson said the fishermen used the grappling hook to pull his boat close to theirs, then "began beating us with sticks," without causing any serious new injuries.

The fishing boat, the Jean-Marie Christian VI, was one of several French tuna vessels in the area, in international waters off Malta, Greenpeace said in a statement.

Several boats surrounded the Greenpeace zodiacs, threatening them with knives attached to long poles, and some of the fishermen also fired flare guns at a Greenpeace helicopter hovering overhead to monitor, the statement said.

Greenpeace had stationed two ships in the Mediterranean, the Rainbow Warrior and Arctic Sunrise, to confront tuna fishing boats during the short tuna fishing season.

Bertrand Wendling, head of Sathoan, which represents the owners of many of the French tuna fishing boats including the one whose nets were targeted by Greenpeace, accused the group of interfering with a legal business activity and jeopardising the livelihoods of ordinary fishermen.

Industrial-scale fishing and harvesting on the high seas has caused stocks of bluefin tuna to plunge by up to 80 percent in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, where they come to spawn in the warmer waters.

About 100 fishing vessels sail the Mediterranean during the short tuna fishing season.

Many of the boats carry net cages used to encircle the tuna shoals, which are then towed offshore to be fattened and shipped in giant freezer ships to Japan, where tuna is a mainstay of sushi and sashimi.

Earlier this year the European Union and the United States backed an international trade ban on tuna fished from these waters, but Japan lobbied successfully and the proposal was defeated.

France's national fisheries body backed the fishermen Saturday, saying they "were attacked by helmeted Greenpeace activists, equipped for and engaged in a violent operation -- the destruction of a work tool."

"After trying to get the species classified as endangered, based on an erroneous reading of the scientific facts regarding the stock of bluefin tuna, now (Greenpeace) assumes the right to attack fishermen out at sea," it added.