Institute of Cetacean Research v. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Institute of Cetacean Research (Cetacean), Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha, Ltd., To-moyuki Ogawa, and Toshiyuki Miura (collectively, Plaintiffs) filed this contempt proceeding against Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (Sea Shepherd US), its founder Paul Watson, its administrative director Susan Hartland, and six volunteer members of the Sea Shepherd US board (collectively, Defendants). The Plaintiffs allege that the Defendants violated our injunction prohibiting Sea Shepherd US, Watson, and “any party acting in concert with them” from physically attacking or coming within 500 yards of the Plaintiffs’ whaling and fueling vessels on the open sea.

After we handed down our injunction, the Defendants adopted what they called the “separation strategy.” Pursuant to the strategy, they ceded control of the Operation Zero Tolerance (OZT) campaign, designed to thwart the Plaintiffs’ whaling activities in the Southern Ocean, to foreign Sea Shepherd entities. The Defendants knew those entities would use assets transferred to them by the Defendants in the OZT campaign, and that there was a “very high risk” the entities would violate our injunction. It is undisputed that these foreign entities…