The Sea Shepherd conservation organisation, with its emphasis on direct action, is no stranger to controversy. Founded in 1977 by Paul Watson (a founding member of Greenpeace), early action saw the first Sea Shepherd ram and sink the whaler Sierra. Sea Shepherd herself sank immediately prior to being impounded, and handed over to the whalers in compensation.

The high profile activity, has gained a lot of high profile supporters, allowing the organisation to retain a fleet of 15 ships; with two high speed RIBs based in the UK. Conservation challenges being addressed by the organisation include:

• Illegal whaling
• Commercial overfishing
• Shark fishing and de-finning
• Seal culs
• Cetacean drive hunting
• Plastic litter and ‘ghost nets’

Cetacean hunting, in all its forms, is one of the most emotive subjects in Marine Conservation. The demonstrated intelligence, and sociability of these animals, should be taken into consideration when judging their commercial, sporting and recreational use. Some of the areas touched on in Amanda’s talk included:

In the UK, Sea Shepherd is engaged in two main areas:

The Marine Debris Campaign is a beach clean initiative. See SSUK’s events calendar for beach cleans in your area!

The Ghostnet Campaign aims to tackle the enormous, and greatly under-reported, issue of ghost fishing. SSUK estimates that 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear are lost around the UK every year. This total includes 1250 kilometres of fishing net. The gear continues to take marine life, even though it is not in anyone’s quota, and the fish killed will not end up on anyone’s plate…

Sea Shepherd are helping to train experienced volunteer divers, giving them the skills to remove nets and other gear safely. The Ghostnet Retrieval Course is in partnership with Scuba Diving International (SDi). See the Sea Shepherd website Ghostnet Campaign (link above) for minimum qualifications, and how to get involved.

Sea Shepherds was a talk by Amanda Newton to Lancashire MCS on 12th February 2020.