From eco-defender to environmental menace
HOW A DECREPIT SHIP TURNED THE NAME ‘FARLEY MOWAT’ INTO A DISGRACE
It used to be an ecoactivist icon, but these days it’s better known as an oil-leaking threat to the environment.
So much so, in fact, that this week coastal Nova Scotians literally partied as the M/V Farley Mowat — the derelict former flagship of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society — was finally towed away by federal contractors.
Cake and coffee was served to giddy onlookers, an overjoyed Shelburne, N.S., Mayor Karen Mattatall told media she was “elated” and “thrilled,” and local musician Jay Pilzer led locals in song with a specially penned “farewell ditty.”
“You’ve been in our town ‘bout three years too long; goodbye, farewell, so long!” sang the crowd.
There was even a bagpiper.
The story of how a ship named after the late Farley Mowat became a Nova Scotia pariah is a sordid tale of vigilantism and criminal neglect.
It started in 2008, when the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society brought the vessel to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in order to disrupt the annual seal hunt.
Twice, the ship bumped up against the Coast Guard vessel the CCGS Des Groseilliers. While Sea Shepherd claimed they were “rammed,” the Coast Guard shot back that the Sea Shepherd vessel had been repeatedly getting in their way.
“The vessel had failed to respond to repeated warnings to exit and remain out of Canadian waters as well as posed a hazard to Canadian sealers,” read a statement at the time by the Coast Guard.
An RCMP boarding team then seized the ship and arrested the ship’s captain and first officer. Under federal regulations, the pair were charged with unlawfully getting within 900 metres of the hunt without a proper observer licence.
However, both crew members were soon deported after getting bailed out of jail using $10,000 put up by Farley Mowat himself. Sea Shepherd head Paul Watson, who frequently refers to himself as a pirate in media interviews, paid part of the bail in toonies, calling the coins “doubloons.”
The Farley Mowat was originally taken to Sydney for auction, but after a failed bid to rechristen the ship as an expedition vessel, it was sold for scrap in 2014 in order to pay off accumulated docking fees.
Nova Scotia scrap dealer Tracey Dodds bought the ship, but after a tug malfunctioned while pulling the hulk away from Sydney, it was brought in for an emergency docking in Shelburne.
Dodds then abandoned the ship, repeatedly ignoring court orders to remove the Farley Mowat, which resulted in his being jailed for contempt of court in 2016.
Meanwhile, the ship began to sink in 2015, adding to authorities’ costs as they were forced to surround the vessel with oil booms and repeatedly pump out polluted water in order to keep the Farley Mowat afloat.
A year later, it also caught fire.
In June, the Canadian Coast Guard dubbed the ship “an imminent pollution threat to the environment.”
As the ship was towed away Wednesday, local MP Bernadette Jordan called the Farley Mowat such a “mess” that it had helped serve as the “poster child” for her efforts to implement a national derelict vessel strategy.
Under that program, the Oceans Protection Plan, a federal contractor was hired to dispose of the vessel, and federal authorities will now move to recover costs from Dodds.
Sea Shepherd now has a newer, smaller M/V Farley Mowat in their fleet, and they have persistently changed their story about how they view the seizure of the original.
Initially, Watson decried the seizure as an “act of war” and vowed to steal the vessel back from whoever bought it at auction.
More recently, the society has expressed jubilance that the ship has become such a problem, claiming that having the vessel seized by Canada was their plan all along, as they didn’t want to pay to have the ship safely decommissioned.
Now, the group is claiming credit for the Oceans Protection Plan. “The M/V Farley Mowat has pushed the Canadian government to finally do something about abandoned ships,” wrote Watson in a Facebook post this week.
Mowat, who was famed as an author and environmentalist, died in 2014. One of his best-selling novels remains The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float.