07 January 2010

Sea Shepherd’s trimaran collision


On January 6th, the high-tech carbon fibre trimaran ‘Ady Gil’, belonging to the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, was destroyed after a collision with a Japanese vessel.

The Ady Gil was designed to run on low-emission renewable fuels and was built with peculiar materials to reduce the probability to be detected by the radars of whaling vessels. Its goal was to intercept and physically prevent ships from slaughtering whales, and at least reduce the illegal whaling occurring in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

After only one month from its official departure, however, the Ady Gil was crashed by the Japanese security ship Shonan Maru 2, the boat used by whalers to "protect" the Japanese fleet.

All six crew members of the Ady Gil were rescued, but there are no chances to save the trimaran.

Despite this catastrophic damage, the anti-whaling group is not giving up. As the Sea Shepherd’s captain, Paul Watson, said: "If they think that our remaining two ships will retreat from the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in the face of their extremism, they will be mistaken.”

Silvia Bonizzoni

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Photo by: AFP/GETTY

For more information:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6939571/Anti-whaling-ship-sinks-after-collision-with-Japanese-vessel.html
http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/news-100105-4.html

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