Sea Shepherd Ship, Sam Simon, Resupplies Bob Barker For High Seas Stand-Off With Poacher
Yesterday, at approximately 1400 AEDT, the Sea Shepherd ship, Simon Simon, rendezvoused with fellow Sea Shepherd ship,
Bob Barker, on the Melville Bank in the southwest Indian Ocean.
The Sam Simon is now resupplying the Bob Barker with food, as the Bob Barker settles in to a high seas stand-off with
the Interpol-wanted, Nigerian-flagged poaching vessel, Thunder.
Captain of the Bob Barker, Peter Hammarstedt, said, “We have now commenced 'The Great Drift', as the Thunder attempts to
out-wait us in this war of attrition. We already knew that we had enough fuel to outlast the Thunder. Now, with the
arrival of the Sam Simon, we are confident that we also have enough food to stay with the poachers indefinitely.”
The Sam Simon will also assist the Bob Barker intervene against the illegal operations of Thunder should it try to lay
any more gill-nets on Melville Bank.
Captain of the Sam Simon, Sid Chakravarty, said, “The Sam Simon’s main aim is to ensure that the Bob Barker is equipped
to wait out this long drift. With the Bob Barker crew determined to deliver the Thunder to the gates of justice, this
re-supply will ensure that the end goal is achieved. Having dealt a blow to the Thunder from two different angles over
the past two months, the Sam Simon and the Bob Barker are now combining to deliver the final, knockout punch.”
The Bob Barker first intercepted the Thunder on December 17, 2014 on the Banzare Bank in Antarctica. Captain Hammarstedt
conducted a citizen's arrest of the vessel for its illegal fishing activity, and ordered it to return to port in
Fremantle, Australia.
The Thunder immediately fled from the Bob Barker. Over the next 60 days, the poaching vessel attempted to lose the Bob
Barker by deliberately sailing into bad weather and heavy ice, and by attempting to intimate the Sea Shepherd ship with
aggressive, close-quarter manoeuvring. Despite this, the Bob Barker has been able to maintain continuous pursuit of the
poaching vessel, effectively shutting down its poaching operations and costing the illegal fishing operation millions of
dollars in lost profits.
On January 16, the Sam Simon completed three week-long operations to remove the illegal gillnets that were abandoned by
the Thunder when it first fled from the Bob Barker, from the waters of Antarctica. More than 72 kilometres of illegal
gillnet was recovered over a three week period and over 1,400 fish, weighing a total of 50,000 kilograms, were returned
to the ocean.
Following the successful retrieval operations, the Sam Simon intercepted another two Interpol-wanted poaching vessels,
the Kunlun and the Yongding, in Australian waters in the Southern Ocean. Both vessels had illegal fishing gear on their
decks at the time they were intercepted.
Records from the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) indicate that both the
Kunlun and the Yongding have a long history of illegal fishing activity, including links to known Spanish crime
syndicate, Vidal Armadores.
Following aggressive manoeuvring and evasive actions aimed to deter the Sam Simon, both the Kunlun and the Yongding
fled. The Sam Simon subsequently engaged in a high seas pursuit of the Kunlun. On February 8, Captain Chakravarty
reported that he and the crew of the Sam Simon had successfully chased the poaching vessel out of its hunting grounds in
the Southern Ocean.
The poaching vessels, which target vulnerable Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish, are the focus of Sea Shepherd's 11th
Southern Ocean Defence Campaign, Operation Icefish.
Commencing in December last year, Operation Icefish is Sea Shepherd’s first Southern Ocean Defence Campaign to target
illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing operators in the waters of Antarctica.
ENDS