Chasing Poachers to Catalyzing Systems Change: The Evolution of Sea Shepard

Explore how Sea Shepherd evolved from a 110-day, three-ocean pursuit of the Thunder to collaborative conservation. From Chasing Poachers to Catalyzing Systems Change: The Evolution of Sea Shepherd’s Approach to Antarctic Conservation In 2015, marine conservation organization Sea Shepherd concluded the longest maritime pursuit in history when a ship captained by Peter Hammarstedt, now Sea Shepherd Global’s Chief Campaigns Officer, chased the notorious Antarctic poaching vessel Thunder for 110 days across three oceans before it sank off West Africa. The pursuit drew in INTERPOL and government authorities across multiple continents, helping inspire a more collaborative approach within an organization whose reputation had been forged through direct confrontation, including clashes with whaling ships at sea. Over the decade that followed, Sea Shepherd developed a broader model of conservation while continuing to pursue poachers. Its ships became platforms for government-led fisheries enforcement, frontline documentation and independent science, reflecting a recognition that the greatest conservation challenges cannot be solved through any single strategy. That evolution has now brought Sea Shepherd back to Antarctica. Dr. Matthew Savoca of Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station leads a team of independent scientists aboard a Sea Shepherd ship studying whale recovery and its overlap with the industrial fishery for Antarctic krill, the small crustaceans that sustain whales and much of the Southern Ocean food web. At the same time, Sea Shepherd has taken the campaign from the Southern Ocean to supermarket and pharmacy shelves, where major retailers have begun removing krill products from sale. Drawing on more than two decades at sea, Hammarstedt will share stories from the high seas while tracing Sea Shepherd’s evolution from chasing the Thunder to confronting what it considers the greatest emerging threat to whales in Antarctica. Through tales of pursuit, confrontation and unlikely collaboration, he will explore how independent science, frontline documentation, market interventions and advocacy can work together, and why meeting the conservation challenges of the future will require a diversity of strategies, institutions and people willing to collaborate across traditional boundaries.