Victory at Sea

A pirate whaler is rammed

Of all the ships still slaughtering whales, none is more loathed by conservationists than the infamous Sierra. Flying the Cyprus flag and owned by a shadowy Liechtenstein-based company, possibly with Japanese interests, the pirate whaler ignores all whaling agreements, hunts indiscriminately and makes its kills in a particularly cruel way: instead of the explosive-tipped harpoons used by most whalers, it employs the unarmed type. These do less damage to whale meat but only prolong the agony of the great mammals, often attracting other whales who, in trying to help their beleaguered brethren, are themselves caught. Last week, in a dramatic reversal, the hunter suddenly became the prey.

Sierra's Moby Dick-like nemesis was not a great whale, but the Sea Shepherd, a converted British fishing trawler purchased by Cleveland Amory's Fund for Animals. The conservationists' ship spotted Sierra 180 miles off the coast of Portugal and shadowed it toward Oporto, where it was expected to unload its cargo of whale products. Their probable destination: Japan. But when Sierra balked at entering the harbor, the leader of the antiwhaling expedition, Paul Watson, 28, of Vancouver, put Shepherd's captain and 14 crew members ashore, then headed back out to sea with two other crewmen.

Its bow packed with 100 tons of cement, the 789-ton Shepherd bore down on the lighter Sierra and struck a glancing blow. Explained Watson: "I tried to take off the harpoon." Then, after making a 360DEG turn, the avenging trawler opened up to twelve knots and hit again, this time punching a gaping hole amidships. Taking on water, Sierra limped into port, and, according to Watson, should be out of action for months, if not permanently. Watson's own ship suffered nothing more than a battered bow.

Four and a half hours later, as it steamed north to England, Shepherd was intercepted by a Portuguese destroyer and ordered back to Oporto. There Watson found that one of his crew, Richard Morrison, 27, of Boston, had been bashed on the head in a waterfront scuffle with Sierra crewmen and was hospitalized with a severe concussion. The Sierra sailors, many of them South Africans, were detained, but at week's end most had been discharged, and any legal action about the skirmishing on land or sea was still up in the air.

Melodramatic as the battle of Oporto may have been, it was largely anticlimactic. Major whalers are already in retreat, having suffered a stinging defeat two weeks ago at a London meeting of the International Whaling Commission (I.W.C.), which overwhelmingly voted to ban hunting of all whales (except the still numerous minkes) by factory ships on the high seas; only coastal whaling will be permitted. The I.W.C. also approved creation of a whale sanctuary in the Indian Ocean.

Though the Japanese grumbled that they were not endangering the great mammals, both they and the Soviets, the only nations owning fleets of factory whalers, are expected to abide by the I.W.C. decisions. Antiwhalers figure that may save some 10,000 whales next year, mostly sperms--assuming, of course, that pirates like Sierra do not step up their own operations. If so, conservation groups will surely retaliate, and that could be trouble for humans as well as whales.

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