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HALIFAX — A coast guard icebreaker and a ship owned by a militant conservation group collided in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on Sunday as tension mounted over the annual seal hunt off Canada's East Coast.
A spokesman for the federal Fisheries Department said Monday that the icebreaker was “grazed” twice by the Farley Mowat, a 54-metre vessel owned by the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
The conservation group countered, however, that its ship was rammed twice by the 98-metre icebreaker Des Groseilliers about 60 kilometres north of Cape Breton.
“It rammed the stern end of the Farley Mowat and when the Farley Mowat was stopped, it came back and hit them again,” Paul Watson, head of the society, said from Los Angeles. “It was twice, so it was intentional.”
Department spokesman Phil Jenkins quickly denounced the allegations, calling them “absolutely false” and part of a strategy by the international conservation group to besmirch the coast guard.
“We completely reject these allegations – they are fiction,” Mr. Jenkins said from Charlottetown.
“The Farley Mowat approached the Des Groseilliers and brushed up against the side of the vessel.”
The crew aboard the Farley Mowat said they were told by the coast guard not to approach an ice-covered area where seals were being slaughtered on the third day of the hunt.
Mr. Watson's group, which is monitoring and videotaping the hunt, said the coast guard ship rammed its vessel twice when the Farley Mowat did not comply.
The assertions come just days after four sealers were killed when their small boat capsized as they were being towed by the coast guard icebreaker Sir William Alexander.
One of the two survivors from the L'Acadien II, the ill-fated fishing vessel out of Îles-de-la-Madeleine, said the coast guard pulled the 12-metre boat onto the ice early Saturday, flipping the vessel into icy waters of the gulf.
Witnesses have said the crew aboard the Alexander were not monitoring the tow as they plowed through thick ice floes north of Cape Breton Island at 1:30 a.m.
Several agencies, including the RCMP, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and Transport Canada, have said they will investigate the incident.
The captain of the overturned fishing boat, Bruno Bourque, and sealers Gilles Leblanc and Marc-André Déraspe died in the accident.
The coast guard ended the active search for the missing man, Carl Aucoin, saying there was no hope of finding him alive.
Îles-de-la-Madeleine Mayor Joël Arseneau said he will apply political pressure on the coast guard to keep on looking for Mr. Aucoin.
