Saskatoon woman deported back to Canada after anti

Saskatoon woman deported back to Canada after anti-whaling mission

Campaign in Iceland this summer ended with crew being detained and charged

A Saskatoon woman says she was deported back to Canada for taking part in activism against commercial whaling by Iceland earlier this summer.

Shannon Mann was protesting the whaling activities of Hvalur, a whaling company owned by Kristján Loftsson, one of Iceland's richest men.

Loftsson seems just as determined to kill the whales as protesters are to save them, Mann said.

The trip ended with detainment and deportation for her and other activists.

"I guess we've always had our eyes on Iceland," Mann said. "You know, since the global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, it's been Norway, Iceland and Japan that have continued to commercially whale, against that moratorium."

University of British Columbia marine mammal research professor Andrew Trites said the moratorium was put in place for a reason.

"Commercial whaling was occurring throughout the world and it decimated most of the wild populations, bringing them down to near extinction points," he said.

Every country can do as it pleases, he said.

"But for the most part, there's been a consensus around the world that we don't need that source of protein and whales should be protected."

Iceland is allowing fin whales and minke whales to harvested commercially in its waters.

"Fin whales are the second-largest whale on the planet. It's a species which is considered threatened or listed in Canada as vulnerable, [and] globally. It's a population which has not recovered from whaling," Trites said.

The proposed reason for killing fin whales is to produce iron supplements, he said.

"[They're] claiming that the world needs more iron supplements. And so they're going to be taking the flesh of the whales and trying to extract iron from it and put it into pills."

Mann was involved with a mission to intercept two whaling vessels using the anti-whaling ship Bandero, operated by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.

"We're always operating outside the 12-mile zone, so we weren't really in Icelandic territorial waters. They just slipped by us time and time again. We couldn't find them," she said.

On July 30, the group received a "horrific" video of the whaling activity, including the slaughter of a pregnant female, and decided to do something, Mann said.

"So that day, we actually crossed the 12-mile zone and entered Icelandic territorial water, which inspired them to hunt us down. After a significant chase, they boarded us with the coast guard and the Viking Squad," Mann said. (The Viking Squad is a special unit of the Icelandic Police.)

Mann said the coast guard took the activists passports and phones and took them to the lower deck of a coast guard ship, then took command of the Bandero.

"So we were all basically segregated except for the chief engineer; I believe they needed him to keep the ship running. And they just sailed this ship back to Reykjavik Harbor."

Back on land, they had to wait until the next morning for municipal police to board the ship and take over the investigation. Then everyone was deported back to their home countries, Mann said.

The activists now faces criminal and immigration-related charges, she said.

The experience was traumatic and she's had dreams about what happened, but it'll never compare to what whales go through, Mann said.

"There's no way to kill the second-largest marine mammal on earth humanely and quickly. They've had violations where it took a whale over an hour to die. It's hard for people to really feel that," she added.

"Hopefully this incident will make people do something, even if it's just to write someone in Iceland or write the government there and say, 'Look, you know, we're watching you and the international community is opposed to this.' I think that would be helpful."

Randi LaRocque is a Métis woman working as a reporter with CBC Saskatchewan. She can be reached at randi.larocque@cbc.ca

With files from Sasaktoon Morning