Sea Shepherd, which battles to save endangered marine wildlife from extinction, is fighting for its own survival after it was yesterday forced to pay €594,000 in a bond to release its flagship, the Steve Irwin.
The vessel, used in all its campaigns on the high seas, was being detained in Scotland after Maltese tuna company Fish and Fish claimed damages over an incident off the Libyan coast last summer.
Despite Sea Shepherd’s appeal to release the ship without the need of paying any bond, a court in Scotland last week decided that the ship’s detention was justified and according to law.
Following another appeal in the past days to lower the bond to €457,000, the market value of the ship claimed by Sea Shepherd, the Scottish court decided the bond should remain unchanged at €594,000.
A spokesman for Sea Shepherd admitted with the British media that the eventual loss of the case against the Maltese company would put the international NGO in financial dire straits.
“We are confident we will get the money back but if we end up losing it we would be in a pretty dire situation in terms of funding. It would cripple our next campaigns, in the Faroe Islands and Antarctica,” Sea Shepherd’s UK director Darren Collis said.
However, Captain Paul Watson, the Steve Irwin’s commander, was more defiant in a comment posted online when he said: “We will not be unsettled or bullied by their wealth and their reputation of using litigation to silence their opposition ...”
A spokesman for Fish and Fish said last week the company was not excluding the possibility of trying to seize other Sea Shepherd assets, including another vessel, the Bridgette Bardot, if it was not assured the NGO could pay the damages being claimed through the British High Court. The case is expected to continue later this year with a hearing.
The issue between Fish and Fish and Sea Shepherd goes back to June 2010 when the Steve Irwin was involved in an incident with Maltese fishermen in inter-national waters off the Libyan coast. Hundreds of bluefin tuna were freed when the NGO’s activists rammed into a tuna pen owned by Fish and Fish on its way to a Maltese tuna ranch. A diver was seriously injured during the incident.
Sea Shepherd claims to have “documented evidence” that the bluefin tuna freed last year were caught illegally by the Maltese fishermen. But Fish and Fish is dismissing these claims and insists the tuna had been caught legally according to all relevant laws.
The action filed by Fish and Fish is intended to redress the damages caused to its property as a result of the incident.
The legal action has already crippled the NGO’s ability to conduct its normal business and it had to change its plans on a new mission in the Atlantic aimed to save pilot whales off the Faroe Islands.