January 20 2024 – the Sea Shepherd ship Allankay arrived off Penguin Point, the northwestern extremity of Coronation Island, an Antarctic Specially Protected Area where six supertrawlers were detected dragging massive nets to capture krill, a small crustacean that is a foundation species of the Antarctic ecosystem.
The Allankay leads Operation Antarctica Defense, a partnership between Sea Shepherd Global and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to protect the primary food source for baleen whales such as fin and humpback whales.
The supertrawlers—each one as large as two Olympic-sized swimming pools—were filmed darting between bits of iceberg that accommodated waddles of chinstrap penguins that looked on as the industrialized fishing vessels plowed through a feeding frenzy of whales.
The number of whales sighted by the crew on board Allankay surpassed that seen in a 2023 incident when Sea Shepherd crew documented eight supertrawlers fishing dangerously among pods of whales in what has been described by scientists from Stanford University as a growing conflict between hungry baleen whale populations recovering from the devastation of commercial whaleing and an intensifying industrialized krill fishery. That documentation helped to ensure that the krill quota was not increased for this year.
“In the Mediterranean Sea and off the Atlantic Seaboard, speed limits have been introduced to reduce whale deaths from ship strikes by merchant vessels. It boggles the mind that here, in such a sensitive and vulnerable sea area, there is no law preventing fishing vessels from dragging their fishing nets right through megapods of whales, targeting their very food source as whales spout right in front of the bows of ships as long as a 30-story tall building laying on its side”, said Captain Bart Schulting who is in command of the Allankay.
Coronation Island is the largest of the South Orkney Islands, critical habitat for seals and seabirds, especially chinstrap and Adelie penguins. Over the past forty years, chinstrap penguin populations have fallen by as much as 53%. They rely mainly on krill for food.
To protect the penguins, Argentina and Chile have proposed a marine protected area (MPA) that covers waters off the eastern coast of Coronation Island, where rafts ofare penguins are known to search for krill to eat. In 2018, Pplans for the MPA were presented to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Living Resources (CCAMLR), the intergovernmental body responsible for the conservation of marine wildlife in the Southern Ocean, in 2018, but since then, each attempt at creating the no-take fishing zone has been blocked by the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, both of which are members states of CCAMLR. CCAMLR is holding a special meeting to discuss the creation of new MPAs later this year to address the krill fishery.
A Ukrainian supertrawler, More Sodruzhedtva hauled their net on seeing Allankay, and then took a dangerous turn, heading straight for the Sea Shepherd vessel which had to undertake evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision.
Now that the Sea Shepherd vessel has arrived in the Antarctic, the crew on board Allankay will continue to track and shadow the krill fishing fleet, focusing particularly on their impact on marine wildlife in proposed marine protected areas (MPAs).
Crew from thirteen nationalities are represented on board Allankay: The Netherlands, Australia, Spain, United States, Czech Republic, South Africa, Belgium, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Israel, France, UK and Switzerland.
