‘Eco-warriors’ are getting increasingly more violent in their interventions.
While the eyes of the world are focused on the wars in Iran and Ukraine, or on Arctic tensions around Greenland, down in the waters around Antarctica, a conflict is developing that pits commercial fishing and environmental activism against each other.
On Wednesday (April 1st), a ship operated by a group founded by anti-whaling activist Paul Watson collided with an industrial fishing trawler in Antarctica.
The trawler’s Norwegian owner called it a ‘deliberate attack’ that endangered its crew and could’ve caused a disaster in the same waters the activists profess to want to protect.
The krill wars get real off Antarctica.
Activists from the @CaptPaulWatson foundation are accused of ramming a Norwegian vessel fishing for the tiny crustacean.
Legal action if not a criminal prosecution likely to follow.https://t.co/VncAMDsx3k
— Joshua Goodman (@APjoshgoodman) April 1, 2026
CBS News reported:
“A two-minute video […] by the Aker QRILL Co. shows the moment Tuesday when the M/V Bandero, operated by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, slowly steams toward the stern of the fishing vessel, hitting its port side at a slight angle.
The collision underscores the growing battle in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean over the future of Antarctic krill, a shrimplike crustacean central to the diet of whales and critical buffer to global warming that’s also in demand for use in health supplements, fishmeal and other products.”
The Bandero almost struck a diesel tank on the fishing trawler, putting at risk the many whale species, as well as seals and seabirds.
“’Our crew were put at risk in some of the most remote waters on Earth, and only luck avoided potential environmental damage’, Aker CEO Webjørn Barstad said in a statement. ‘If the steel plates (…) had ruptured, it could have caused a spill. It was probably just luck that it didn’t cause more damage’, Barstad told the Reuters news agency.”
The Paul Watson Foundation said their actions are ‘aggressive nonviolence’.
“Watson himself was not on the ship, which departed Australia in February as part of what the Watson foundation called Operation Krill Wars.”
Watch:
Increíble acción en la antártica
Buque de defensa ambiental de la fundación Capitán Paul Watson intervino a pesquero de Krill
La pesca de krill esta causando estragos al ser base de la cadena alimentaria de múltiples especies marinas pic.twitter.com/eIVsZwlbIj
— ❗️Defendamos Patagonia❗️ (@DefendamsChiloe) April 2, 2026
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