MONTREAL \u2014 An animal-rights activist from Saskatchewan is among those detained off the coast of Reykjavik, Iceland\u2019s capital, on a ship operated by a group founded by anti-whaling activist Paul Watson. <\/p>\n
The Icelandic Coast Guard boarded the protest vessel Bandero on Thursday and detained its crew. Crew members are now in limbo, said Shannon Mann, a Canadian, who is on board. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re told we\u2019re not (under arrest), but we\u2019re also told we can\u2019t leave the vessel. So we\u2019re not allowed to set foot on shore, but we can\u2019t leave Iceland,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Icelandic national broadcaster RUV reported that police will seek to deport the crew and ban them from returning to Iceland.<\/p>\n
The Icelandic Coast Guard said the seizure of the vessel came after the crew of whaling ship Hvalur 9 requested assistance on Thursday evening because they believed their safety was under threat. It said the Bandero ignored coast guards\u2019 instructions to leave Icelandic waters, and later an order to stop its engines.<\/p>\n
Coast guards and the police special forces Viking Squad boarded the vessel around midnight on Thursday and detained its crew. Watson was not aboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey rounded up all the crew, put us in one room, and then overtook the vessel and drove the vessel back to port,\u201d said Mann.<\/p>\n
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation confirmed in a statement that the vessel had been seized and said the 21 crew members were being detained aboard the ship without their phones. The foundation also claimed the crew were denied access to their lawyer and that police refused to show them a warrant to search the ship and seize some of their property. <\/p>\n
On Friday, law enforcement interviewed members of the crew and asked them to sign legal documents in Icelandic, Mann said. She said they have not been told why they are being detained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were told that we aren\u2019t arrested but we aren\u2019t allowed to leave the vessel for up to four weeks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mann started volunteering at the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 2006. Now living in Calgary, she was in Iceland as a deckhand on Bandero as part of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation\u2019s Operation 86, which aims to end the practice of whaling in the Arctic island nation.<\/p>\n
Along with Norway and Japan, Iceland is one of the only countries still practising commercial whaling. The hunt is increasingly contentious in Iceland, where whale meat is now rarely eaten.<\/p>\n
This practice taints the country\u2019s reputation, believes Mann. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful country with a lot of beautiful people, and right now it\u2019s being known for whaling,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Canada-born Watson, 75, is a former head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, whose high seas confrontations with whaling vessels have drawn support from celebrities, been featured in the reality television series \u201cWhale Wars\u201d and regularly landed him in jail. He left Sea Shepherd in 2022 to set up his foundation.<\/p>\n
Watson was imprisoned in Greenland for five months in 2024 after being arrested on a Japanese warrant over charges of obstructing a whaling ship in 2010. In 2012, Watson was made the subject of a \u201cred notice\u201d by the international police organization Interpol. He was removed from the most-wanted list in 2025.<\/p>\n
His hard-line tactics have split the movement he started, and marine firms have accused the anti-whaling activists of endangering vessels and lives.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the Bandero collided with an industrial krill trawler in Antarctica in what the ship\u2019s Norwegian owner said was a deliberate attack that endangered its crew and could have caused an environmental disaster.<\/p>\n
With files from The Associated Press<\/p>\n
Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n
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