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Toronto: Canadian authorities have boarded a ship that was protesting against the annual seal hunt and arrested its captain and first officer, the government said on Sunday.
Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said that the vessel, the Farley Mowat, had been boarded to "help ensure the safe and orderly conduct of the seal hunt".
But the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which owns the ship, said the vessel had been outside Canada's territorial limit.
"This is an act of war," Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd said. "The Canadian government has sent an armed boarding party onto a Dutch registered yacht in international waters and has seized the ship."
The annual seal hunt off Canada's Atlantic coast has long been the target of protest groups who each year broadcast pictures and videos in efforts to force Canada to stop shooting or clubbing seals to death. The government, which this year set a quota of 275,000 animals from an estimated 5.5 million, says the cull of young harp seals safeguards fishing stocks and guarantees a livelihood for people in the area.
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