Operation Krill Wars

Aker BioMarine released the video through AP within hours of the incident. It shows the Bandero steaming at low speed toward the stern quarter of the Antarctic Sea, correcting its heading slightly before making contact on the port side. The impact is not high-speed. It is measured, controlled, and sustained for several seconds before the Bandero pulls away.

Aker CEO Matts-Olof Barstad said the Bandero came within centimetres of the Antarctic Sea's diesel fuel tank. He said the crew was put at risk in some of the most remote waters on earth, where rescue response times are measured in days. Aker announced it would pursue all available legal action.

This was a terroristic attack on our vessel and crew in the most remote waters on the planet.Aker BioMarine director, CBS News / AP, 1 April 2026

The Watson Foundation's account of the same event uses different language. It described a five-hour intervention against two Aker vessels. During that period, the Foundation says, its crew deployed what it called giant metal net-shredding devices and disrupted all krill fishing operations in the area. The Foundation said the ramming was intentional and that no crew member on either vessel was harmed.

Watson, speaking to media from Paris, called the collision a gentle nudge. His description: we make sure that nobody is hurt and all we did was rub a little paint off of their boat.

The M/V Bandero is a Mongolia-flagged vessel that departed Australia in February 2026. The ship is named after a tequila brand owned by John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of Paul Mitchell hair products and a long-standing financial backer of Watson's operations. DeJoria has funded multiple Watson campaigns over the past decade.

The Bandero's crew was led by Lamya Essemlali, president of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation's French chapter and one of Watson's most trusted lieutenants. Essemlali has participated in multiple Sea Shepherd and CPWF campaigns dating back more than fifteen years.

The Mongolia flag is significant. Flag-of-convenience registrations allow vessel operators to register ships in countries with minimal regulatory oversight, and Mongolia, a landlocked nation, has become a popular choice for vessels that anticipate operating outside conventional naval jurisdictions. The Bandero's Mongolian registration complicates any legal response, because the flag state has limited capacity or incentive to discipline the vessel's operators.

Watson himself was nowhere near the Southern Ocean. He coordinated the operation remotely, as he has done with increasing frequency since his arrest and imprisonment in Greenland in 2024. At 75, Watson has transitioned from the bridge of a confrontation vessel to a strategic command role, directing operations from Paris while younger crew members carry out the physical work.

Aker BioMarine is a Norwegian company that controls more than half of the global Antarctic krill catch. Its products include krill oil supplements sold under the Superba brand, fishmeal for aquaculture, and feed ingredients for salmon farming. Krill harvesting is a billion-dollar industry, and Aker is its dominant player.

Krill are small crustaceans, typically two to six centimetres long, that form the foundation of the Antarctic marine food web. Whales, penguins, seals, and seabirds depend on krill as a primary food source. The Antarctic krill population is estimated at several hundred million tonnes, but it is concentrated in specific feeding grounds that overlap with commercial fishing zones.

The most recent Antarctic krill fishing season saw catches surge to record levels. In response, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the international body that regulates Southern Ocean fisheries, ordered its first-ever early season closure. The closure was triggered when catch limits were reached ahead of schedule, a development that alarmed conservation scientists.

Watson's argument is that krill harvesting at industrial scale threatens the entire Antarctic ecosystem. Remove the krill and the whales, penguins, and seals that depend on it will starve. The argument is not without scientific support. Multiple studies have documented declining krill density in areas of heavy commercial fishing, and the relationship between krill abundance and whale feeding success is well established.

Aker BioMarine disputes this characterisation. The company says its operations are sustainable, independently certified, and conducted within CCAMLR-set limits. It argues that the total krill catch represents a small fraction of the overall biomass and that its fishing technology minimises bycatch.

The collision presents a jurisdictional puzzle that may take years to resolve.

The Bandero is registered in Mongolia. The Antarctic Sea is registered in Norway. The collision occurred in international Antarctic waters governed by the Antarctic Treaty System, a framework designed for scientific cooperation rather than criminal prosecution. No single nation has clear jurisdiction.

Norway will almost certainly seek to prosecute. It has the strongest interest: a Norwegian-flagged vessel was struck, a Norwegian company's operations were disrupted, and Norwegian crew members were, by Aker's account, endangered. But prosecuting the crew of a Mongolia-flagged vessel for actions in international Antarctic waters requires either the cooperation of Mongolia's maritime authorities or the physical presence of the accused in a country willing to try them.

Watson's own legal position is ambiguous. He was not on the ship. He was in France, on a video call, offering what his foundation describes as strategic guidance. Whether coordinating a ramming operation by video call constitutes a criminal act under French, Norwegian, or international law is an untested question. Watson's lawyers will argue he was exercising free speech. Aker's lawyers will argue he directed an assault on a commercial vessel.

The Greenland precedent offers Watson some comfort. In 2024, Denmark held him for five months on a Japanese warrant and ultimately declined to extradite. The Interpol Red Notice was subsequently removed. Watson is, for now, a free man in a country that has shown no inclination to surrender him.

The collision also exposed the widening gap between Watson's foundation and the organisation he originally built.

Sea Shepherd Global, the entity that emerged after Watson's acrimonious departure in 2022, responded to the Bandero incident with what it described as notable distance. Sea Shepherd's current leadership has pivoted toward watchdog patrols, scientific monitoring, and policy advocacy. It no longer rams ships. It films them.

The contrast is deliberate. Sea Shepherd Global has spent three years repositioning itself as a professional, legally compliant conservation organisation. Watson's continued escalation, and the media coverage that comes with it, complicates that repositioning. Every time the Watson Foundation rams a vessel, Sea Shepherd Global is asked whether it endorses the action. Its answer, consistently, is no.

Watson views the split differently. He considers Sea Shepherd Global's evolution a betrayal of the organisation's founding principles. He built Sea Shepherd to confront. He did not build it to observe. The Watson Foundation, in his telling, is the legitimate continuation of the original mission. Sea Shepherd Global is the deviation.

The reality is that both entities now operate in the Southern Ocean with overlapping mandates and incompatible methods, and the conservation community is divided over which approach is more effective.

Watson is 75. He spent five months in a Greenland prison in 2024. He was released 107 days before his foundation rammed a Norwegian krill trawler. The Interpol Red Notice that shadowed him for more than a decade was removed nine months ago.

He is not retiring. He is not moderating. He is coordinating naval confrontations from a houseboat in Paris and describing collisions with commercial vessels as gentle nudges.

We make sure that nobody is hurt and all we did was rub a little paint off of their boat.Paul Watson, Media statements, April 2026

The Watson Foundation's stated position is that krill harvesting in the Southern Ocean is an ecological crime being conducted legally, and that direct physical intervention is the only effective response. This is the same argument Watson has made about whaling for fifty years. The target species has changed. The logic has not.

Whether Operation Krill Wars will generate the public sympathy that the anti-whaling campaigns did is uncertain. Whales are charismatic. Krill are not. The footage of the Bandero hitting the Antarctic Sea looks less like conservation and more like a maritime collision, which is exactly what it is. Watson has always relied on the public's ability to distinguish between property damage and violence. That distinction may be harder to maintain when the property in question is a ship full of people in Antarctic waters.

Watson does not appear concerned. He has spent half a century putting steel hulls between industrial fleets and the animals they harvest. He has been expelled from Greenpeace, lost control of Sea Shepherd, been arrested on four continents, imprisoned in Greenland, and freed by Denmark. He is coordinating from Paris now. The method, at its core, has not changed since 1979.