Icelandic coast guards and special forces seized a ship operated by a group founded by anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, detaining its 21 crew members, officials said Saturday.
The Icelandic Coast Guard stated that the crew of the whaling ship Hvalur 9 had requested assistance Thursday evening, citing threats from the protest vessel Bandero. The Bandero, operated by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK, allegedly ignored instructions from coast guards to leave Icelandic waters and later an order to stop its engines.
Coast guard and police special forces boarded the Bandero around midnight Thursday, detaining its crew. Paul Watson himself was not aboard the vessel. The Captain Paul Watson Foundation confirmed the seizure in a statement, adding that the 21 crew members were being held aboard the ship without their mobile phones.
The Bandero arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, on Friday. The coast guard agency reported that police have taken over the investigation, with national broadcaster RUV indicating that authorities intend to seek the crew's deportation and ban them from returning to Iceland.
Iceland, along with Norway and Japan, is one of the few nations that permit commercial whaling. The country sets annual quotas for fin and minke whale hunts in its waters, exporting most of the catch to Japan. However, demand in Japan has reportedly declined since the country resumed commercial whaling in 2019 after leaving the International Whaling Commission. The practice has become increasingly contentious within Iceland, where whale meat consumption is now reportedly rare.
Paul Watson, 75, a Canadian-born activist and former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, founded his current foundation in 2022. His previous organization gained notoriety for its high-seas confrontations with whaling vessels, which were featured in the television series "Whale Wars." Watson has faced legal challenges, including a five-month imprisonment in Greenland in 2024 following an arrest on a Japanese warrant related to charges of obstructing a whaling ship in 2010. Upon his release in December 2024, Watson stated he would avoid countries where Interpol might attempt to arrest him. He had previously been the subject of an Interpol "red notice" in 2012, from which he was removed in 2025.
Watson's confrontational tactics have historically divided opinions within the environmental movement, and marine companies have accused activists of endangering vessels and crews. Earlier this year, the Bandero was involved in a collision with an industrial krill trawler in Antarctica, which the trawler's owner described as a deliberate attack that endangered its crew and risked an environmental disaster.