Fallen seal hunters, enviro-pirates & the Coast Guard in Canada - 2008

[Yrys]

Military to return home bodies of seal hunters ,
With a report from CTV's Jed Kahane

Canadian Forces jet in Halifax is set to return home the bodies of three seal hunters who died over the weekend when their boat capsized during a rescue effort
by the coast guard.

The bodies of the men -- who were all from Iles-de-la-Madeleine, Que. -- are currently in Halifax, where a coroner is preparing autopsy reports. A joint funeral is
to be held for the three men this Saturday. A fourth seal hunter, Carl Aucoin, is missing and presumed dead. His mother told CTV News that she is still dealing with her
"rage" over why the search for her son was cut short and she has no one to bury.

Iles-de-la-Madeleine's mayor says investigators looking into the deadly capsizing of the sealing ship have now been dispatched to the town. On Tuesday, investigators
disputed witness claims that no one was on the stern of the coast guard towing vessel. John Cottreau of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada says the board's
probe has found two crew members were in fact on the stern of the coast guard ship at the time of the accident.

The RCMP, the TSB, and the coast guard are all looking into the accident, which occurred near Cape Breton, N.S. Sgt. Mark Gallagher of the Halifax RCMP said the police
investigation would take at least a week. At this point, the RCMP has not declared the accident a criminal matter, Gallagher added.

Looking for answers

Grieving family members are demanding an inquiry and the mayor of Iles de la Madeleine, Joel Arseneau, has said he wants the search for the missing sailor to resume.
The prime minister has ruled out a public inquiry. But Arseneau said that he's not sure a public inquiry is worth putting the families of the sealers through the extra grief.
"A public inquiry . . . would probably be something very tough for them to go through," he told CTV News.

The accident has left many people in Iles-de-la-Madeleine angry and looking for answers. The accident was a "tragedy that never should have happened," a sealer who
witnessed the hunters' boat capsize says. Wayne Dickson, who was trailing the L'Acadien II from his own fishing boat Saturday, told Canada AM on Tuesday that he
is disappointed that the search for the missing man has been called off. He said it should have continued as long as the capsized vessel was still afloat.

"The divers who were at the scene (after the accident) checked the boat out. I don't think that they did quite a thorough job as they probably should have," Dickson said.
Dickson has said that the 12-metre trawler rolled over after hitting an ice cake. After it flipped, Dickson and his crew were able to rescue two men, including Bourque's
son. Dickson told Canada AM that area residents have been devastated by the tragedy and that many in the community "feel powerless." The dead have been identified
as:

    * Bruno Bourque, the ship's captain
    * Gilles Leblanc, a hunter in his 50s
    * Marc-Andre Deraspe, 20, an aspiring hockey player

In addition to speaking to witnesses, the TSB is still collecting electronic data and interviewing the crew.

Link

 

[Yrys]

Paul Watson, activist, says that the slaughter of young seals is a greater tragedy then the deaths of the hunters.

http://news.therecord.com/Wire/News_Wire/National/article/331000

 

[Thompson_JM]

Paul Watson, activist, says that the slaughter of young seals is a greater tragedy then the deaths of the hunters.

http://news.therecord.com/Wire/News_Wire/National/article/331000

Typical of those types of people....

sounds like he should be working for PETA... another one of those "Animals have more rights then humans" people....  :

And for the record, I detest animal cruelty.... but there is also that whole thing where if you dont control the population it will end up harming the eco system worse in the long run.... and last I heard although furry and cute, Harp seals are not endangered... or even close to it....

 

[Yrys]

And for the record, I detest animal cruelty.... but there is also that whole thing where if you dont control the population it will end up harming the eco system worse in the long run.... and last I heard although furry and cute, Harp seals are not endangered... or even close to it....

We forget it in the day-to-day, but we are animals  ... We are in the family of "apes"...

Humans, or human beings, are bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise man" or "knowing man") in the family Hominidae (the great apes) 

However, I presume that you do not  advocate for the control of human population (it was the question isn a debate show, last week)...

 

[ambex]

Paul Watson, activist, says that the slaughter of young seals is a greater tragedy then the deaths of the hunters.

http://news.therecord.com/Wire/News_Wire/National/article/331000

Watson is a joke, it was a pain in the *** having him in the news the last 2 years regarding the Japanese whaling fleet (he likes to ram their ships with makeshift "can openers" and throw chemicals at the whalers. I cant explain how happy I am to hear that now he has decided to grace us all with his presence.

"Engineers have fitted a solid steel hydraulic ram with a bulldozer-strength blade to the Farley Mowat. Captain Watson confirmed the "can opener" was far more effective than a version used last year to scrape the side of the Japanese resupply ship Oriental Bluebird.

He said its placement at deck level meant it could damage, but not endanger, the hull of another ship, forcing it to return to port.

The Sea Shepherd flagship is flying the organisation's version of the skull and crossbones — featuring a shepherd's crook and Neptune's trident instead of bones — but has been stripped of its registration in Belize.

According to Monash University lecturer Eric Wilson, a specialist in maritime law, by sailing without a national flag, Farley Mowat could be considered legally to be a pirate vessel.

"It can now be interdicted at will by a naval or other official vessel of any country," Dr Wilson said. "They can arrest the crew and sink it.""

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/antiwhaling-pirates-get-more-muscle-for-antarctic-skirmish/2007/01/09/1168104983880.html

So really I guess our navy could just confiscate his boat and sink it, as long as they havn't changed their flag by now.

Watson said he wasn't too concerned about violating the maritime rules of the road. "They are not really rules so much as guidelines and I believe that the violation of international law and the killing of the whales provides for special circumstances for these rules to be secondary to our objective of shutting down these pirates."

http://www.earthdive.com/site/news/newsdetail.asp?id=1506

I guess that would be why he doesn't care about getting too close to our sealers, and wow I thought he was the  :skullirate :skull: I guess not...... 

In a ceremony on July 4, Watson signed an agreement with the National Police of Ecuador that will allow the Sea Shepherd to work with the police to patrol the Galapagos Marine Reserve to detect and destroy illegal fishing operations.

From the sounds of the entire article he should stay down there, they want him and he is actually doing something good for a change. That just sounds wierd to me.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2007/2007-07-12-03.asp

 

[fire_guy686]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/04/03/sealing-protest-hearn.html

Hopefully Mr.Watson gets dinged for all this. I am sickened by this guy and his gang and the fact that a lot of them on various forums actually praise the deaths of the Sealers and are happy about it all. I hope they ban him and his group, especially after he was warned at the start of the season to behave, and not allow them to come back and protest anymore. If this guy keeps up he will eventually kill somebody.


Maybe they should send out the Navy out and watch for him. If his boat doesn't have Canadian Regulations applied to it they should look at him as invading and sink it. I surely won't complain.

 

[NL_engineer]

I guess that would be why he doesn't care about getting too close to our sealers, and wow I thought he was the  :skullirate :skull: I guess not...... 

I think we should let them come into Canadian waters...



And treat them like an invading force, and sink them on the spot  ;D

I wonder how it will stand up to a harpoon missile?  ;D

 

[Yrys]

A francophone journalist send Paul Watson a key ring with an ornement of seal skin,
with the words :"Phoque (seal/f*ck) you, Paul Watson"


J'aime la fourrure de phoque

Ah, j'oubliais. J'ai pris un des porte-clés, je l'ai déposé dans une enveloppe. Sur l'enveloppe, j'ai écrit: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, P.O. Box 2616,
Friday Harbor, WA 98 250 USA.

Dans l'enveloppe, j'ai mis une petite note. J'ai écrit quatre mots: Phoque you, Paul Watson.

 

[tomahawk6]

I do not like the seal hunters but the greenies are way out of bounds in mocking the deaths of these hunters. The wacko environmentalists would rather obstruct rather than work towards compromise.

 

[ambex]

I think we should let them come into Canadian waters...



And treat them like an invading force, and sink them on the spot  ;D

I wonder how it will stand up to a harpoon missile?  ;D

lol not too well I would imagine, I wonder if we could charge a hitman fee to the Japanese? They would certainly be happy with an ending like that. And what irony, they are out protesting whalers trying to get them to stop harpooning whales and then they get harpooned themselves.

 

[Jaydub]

The leader of a militant conservation group says armed Canadian Coast Guard officials have raided his flagship vessel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

"I received a call at 1100 hours Atlantic Time from our communications officer on the Farley Mowat," Paul Watson, head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, told CTV Newsnet on Saturday.

"She said that two icebreakers from the Canadian Coast Guard had dispatched four inflatables full of armed men that were coming towards them.

"While I was on the line, they boarded the vessel rather quickly at gunpoint, and while I was on the line, and I could hear them screaming at our crew to lie down on the deck."

:

More on Link...

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080412/sealing_confront_080412/20080412?hub=TopStories

 

[Kirkhill]

So where can I find a Newfoundlander that will make me some decent sealskin Mukluks?

I remember they were all the rage back in Ontario (along with Grebs and Adidas) when I and the MacKenzie brothers were in school.

 

[McG]

Here's an interesting spin on it:

Sea Shepherd Ship Farley Mowat Has Been Illegally Stormed and the Crew Assaulted
by SSCS r
Saturday Apr 12th, 2008 9:43 AM

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/04/12/18492355.php

 

[McG]

Here's a photo:

 

[Jaydub]

Who was it though?  The Coast Guard is not armed.

It would have to be RCMP, DFO Officers, or a Naval Boarding party.

 

[NL_engineer]

I hope it has a towing accident and sinks  ;D

or when they bring it to court, we can release the ship, then sink it for being in Canadian waters  ;D



I thought we controlled 200 miles offshore, or is it only 12 miles ???

 

[McG]

A quick search shows this ship & the Robert Hunter have a history of collisions at sea.  It appears they have a well developed tactic of puttiing there smaller ships in positions where their "adversaries'" larger ships are unable to avoid colliding. 

 

[vonGarvin]

The limit of 12 miles is for territorial control.  There is also a 200 mile economic zone.  I'm not sure of the whats and the hows, but I would crystal ball that Canada will argue that under internationally recognised customs of the seas, they had every right to take this ship as it was out with a stated purpose to disrupt our economic harvest. 
But I'm no lawyer.  Heck, I'm not even a barrister or solicitor ;D

 

[Yrys]

So where can I find a Newfoundlander that will make me some decent sealskin Mukluks?

I remember they were all the rage back in Ontario (along with Grebs and Adidas) when I and the MacKenzie brothers were in school.

.
"C'est motivé par Watson que j'ai trouvé le numéro de téléphone d'Odette Leblanc, aux Îles-de-la-Madeleine."

Try to find her, maybe with www.411.com ...

 

[Nfld Sapper]

Well according to World Shipping Registry the Farley Mowat is still Canadian:

#    IMO        Ship Name Call Sign Ship Type              DWT  DOB      Flag
460 5172602 FARLEY MOWAT  Standby-Safety Vessel 242 1958 00 Canada