Sea Shepherd’s Operation Blue Rage 2011 has enraged Tunisian fishermen operating on Melita Bank, roughly 70 nautical miles off the Libyan coast and 20 miles inside the NATO no fly zone.
On 11 June, the Sea Shepherd vessels Steve Irwin and Brigitte Bardot approached a number of Tunisian-registered tuna seiners to inspect their operations.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is searching for illegal fishing operations.
“We are not here to protest legal fishing, we’re here to stop illegal fishing so any legal operation has no cause to be concerned about our presence in these waters,” said Captain Paul Watson.
The organisation says that it quickly became apparent that the seven vessels and two floating tuna cages were suspicious. The attitude of the fishermen was clearly hostile and they refused to answer if they had an ICCAT (International Commission on the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna) inspector onboard. They refused to allow an inspection of the cages.
One of the fishing vessels radioed the French Navy and claimed that Sea Shepherd was attacking them and cutting their nets – which Sea Shepherd says was absolutely not true.
Then Tunisian seiner Tapus came close alongside the Steve Irwin and the crew reportedly began to hurl stones and steel chain links at the Sea Shepherd crew on deck. The Sea Shepherd crew responded with bottles of rotten butter that they smashed onto the decks of the seiner to force them to back off.
The Sea Shepherd Delta inflatable attempted to inspect the tuna cage but was attacked by two small boats throwing chunks of metal at the Sea Shepherd crew.
Shortly after a French naval jet flew over numerous times to document the situation.
The seven seiners were then joined by another seiner. All the vessels are flying a Tunisian flag and appealed to the French Navy for protection.
Sea Shepherd says it is remaining with these vessels until an ICCAT inspector can found to communicate with. The regulations require these vessels to have an ICCAT inspector onboard and the organisation says it has not had any response to its request to speak with an ICCAT inspector to determine the legality of the operation.
This came the day after Sea Shepherd received an injured Tunisian fisherman named Lotfi on the Brigitte Bardot, who had severed the veins in his left wrist and was losing a great deal of blood. Medic Megan Jolley was able to stop the bleeding but advised that Lotfi would need hospitalisation within 15 hours or the wound could be life threatening.
