One of Sea Shepherd’s ships docked in Antwerp a couple of weeks ago. The Sam Simon anchored near Antwerp’s city museum MAS and during that couple of days crew offered guided tours on the ship.
Sea Shepherd is international marine wildlife conservation organization. They use direct action tactics to protect marine life, for example disturbing whale vessels and seizure and destruction of drift nets. I visited the ship with a Dutch friend. It was fascinating!

Some information that was shared during the tour:

• there are a lot of signposts with Japanese language on board the ship, that’s because the ship was originally a Japanese vessel
• new volunteers start out as sailors, cleaning, doing the simple on board tasks and can later on take on more responsibilities
• life on board is taken very seriously, no fooling around, and no alcohol on board. If you fool around you leave at the next harbour!
• The Sam Simon has participated in several operations (see the stickers)
• The Sam Simon is named after American television producer and writer Sam Simon (co creator of the Simpsons), who donated the money to purchase the vessel.
• Life on board is supported by donations (of food, but also electronics, equipment, …)
• after docking in Antwerp, the Sam Simon set out to Cannes, south of France
• food on board is all vegan, although not al crew are necessarily vegan themselves

Here are more photos from that visit:

On that visit in Antwerp, I gave a donation to Sea Shepherd, and as such entered the lottery to win a dinner for two on Saturday evening on board the ship, with the crew and Tom Waes. As it is with lotteries, one never expects to win … But this time, I did! I got a call on Saturday afternoon and of course I gladly accepted the dinner invitation for two. So soon afterwards, I headed back to Antwerp and had dinner on board the ship. You can read all about that in this previous blogpost.

Je kan deze post ook HIER in het Nederlands lezen op mijn andere blog

LINKS

Sea Shepherd Global: http://www.seashepherdglobal.org/

Sea Shepherd Belgium: http://www.seashepherd.be/nl/

The Sam Simon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MY_Sam_Simon

The Cove: http://www.thecovemovie.com/

 

Merchandise, Sea Shepherd

the Sam Simon, Sea Shepherd, in Antwerp