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Ships collide during seal hunt
01/04/2008 07:22 - (SA)
Nova Scotia - A coast guard icebreaker and a ship owned by an activist conservation group collided in the Gulf of St Lawrence as tensions mounted over the annual Canadian seal hunt.
A spokesperson for Canada's federal Fisheries Department said on Monday that the icebreaker was "grazed" twice on Sunday by the Farley Mowat, a 54-metre vessel owned by the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
But the conservation group countered that its ship was rammed twice by the 98-metre icebreaker Des Groseilliers about 64 kilometres north of Cape Breton.
"It rammed the stern end of the Farley Mowat and when the Farley Mowat was stopped, it came back and hit them again," Paul Watson, head of the society, said from Los Angeles. "It was twice so it was intentional."
Department spokesperson Phil Jenkins denounced the claims, calling them "absolutely false" and part of a strategy to discredit the coast guard.
"The allegations that the Des Groseilliers rammed the Farley Mowat are complete nonsense. That's a piece of fiction," he said.
There was no damage done and no injuries were reported, Jenkins said.
The collision came just days after four seal hunters were killed when their small boat capsized as they were being towed by the coast guard icebreaker Sir William Alexander.
Witnesses have said the crew aboard the Alexander were not monitoring the tow as they ploughed through thick ice floes north of Cape Breton.
Several agencies have said they will investigate the accident that killed the sealers.
The seal hunting industry finds itself under pressure from animal rights activists who believe the hunt is cruel and badly monitored. Sealers and the fisheries department defend it as sustainable, humane and well-managed, and say it provides supplemental income for isolated fishing communities that have been hurt by the decline in cod stocks.
- AP
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