For Immediate Release
April 17th, 2007
Seal Killer’s Boat Burns, Sinks at Newfoundland Dock
Port au Choix, Newfoundland – In a thus-far unclaimed action, a 65-foot boat used by Newfoundlander Ben Gould and his crew who club baby seals to death, burned and sank last Friday morning at its dock in Port au Choix. Gould and crew had just returned from killing infant seals and was preparing to sail again to kill more when the restocked boat caught fire and mercifully was destroyed around 3pm. The incident remains under investigation, and no one has been charged.
Despite some of the warmest weather on record that has decimated the number of surviving newborn seals, the Canadian government has continued to subsidize the killing this year of 275,000 surviving seals. After weeks of mass drownings, as baby seals slipped from melting, crumbling and broken ice in the cold blackness of the Atlantic, the merciless clubs of Canada ‘s barbaric sealers began once again on April 2nd to smash in the fragile skulls of defenseless seal pups. This is a massacre; an attempt to exterminate a species.
“It is obvious that the vessel was a target of opportunity,” said Captain Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. “Boats just don’t catch fire in the middle of the night by accident. I am happy to hear that no one was injured. That would have been a tragedy, but this event is nothing if not good news for the seals. Many lives will be spared because of this sinking and one less sealing boat on the seas is an even better thing. Who ever did this is a hero as far as I’m concerned.”
Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a former Sea Shepherd board member and current Press Officer with the Animal Liberation Press Office, went even further. “The seals got a break; Ben Gould and his fellow seal killers will not get the chance to bludgeon any more baby seals, at least not this year. Sadly, Gould and his crew didn’t go down with the ship; but hopefully we have not heard the last of the warriors who put him out of business this season,” said Vlasak.