Sea Shepherd in pursuit of ‘Thunder’

The ships are now approximately 1,000 nautical miles south-east of South Africa.

Meanwhile, the Sea Shepherd ship, Sam Simon, is continuing to retrieve illegal gillnets which have been abandoned by Thunder inside the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living resources (CCAMLR) area of management, when it fled from the Bob Barker on 17 December.

Sam Simon captain, Sid Chakravarty said, “The Thunder has been mocking CCAMLR’s conservation measures and its member states for over 10 years. The poaching vessel has covered the entire Banzare Bank with gillnets exceeding 100 kilometres in length. These curtains of death, criss-crossing the seabed in every direction, is decimating vulnerable toothfish populations and the Antarctic Marine Ecosystem. In addition to this, we know that the bycatch numbers of these banned gillnets are equal to the targeted catch numbers; a statistic that would be an outrage in any regulated fishery.”

The Sam Simon completed the retrieval of the first illegal gillnet on 29 December. In an operation that spanned five days, the crew hauled 25 kilometres of illegal gillnet out of the Antarctic waters. Over 200 toothfish and other marine creatures were found dead in the net.

Retrieval of the second net, which measured 19 kilometres, was completed on Tuesday. Despite being shorter than the first net, this net contained over twice the catch of the previous haul. Approximately 500 toothfish, and hundreds of other marine creatures were found dead, many in advanced stages of decomposition.

Captain Chakravarty has also confirmed the presence of at least two more gillnets in the area.

The use of gillnets has been outlawed by CCAMLR since 2004, and the Commission has specifically expressed concerns regarding the impact of this fishing method on the marine ecosystems of Antarctica.

The Nigerian-flagged Thunder was issued with an Interpol Purple Notice following a joint effort by Norwegian, New Zealand and Australian authorities, and is currently included on CCAMLR’s black-list of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing operators.