In its early history Greenpeace ran a successful campaign to protect harp seals like the one pictured in the foreground. The sealing ship in the background would later be acquired by Greenpeace and renamed the M/V Arctic Sunrise.

Onboard the M/V Arctic Sunrise

Day Seventy-four - 21 January 2000

"The History of the M/V Arctic Sunrise"

In November 1998 the radio operator on the M/V Arctic Sunrise received a distress call. A nearby ship was on fire. The Sunrise changed course and headed to the ship to offer assistance. Our offer to help was declined, however, because the ship happened to be the Nisshin-maru - mothership of the Japanese whaling fleet. The Arctic Sunrise would meet up with the Nisshin-maru again under different circumstances, but the story illustrates the checkered and ironic history of this Greenpeace vessel.

It's the morning of October 22, 1984. The French government has chartered a ship known as the Polarbjørn to deliver heavy equipment to an Antarctic base. They are trying to build an airstrip through a penguin habitat. Greenpeace is determined to stop them as part of its campaign to protect the entire continent of Antarctica from oil and mineral exploitation.

Greenpeace activists descend on the ship, chaining themselves to the stern and mast. The protest continues for more than three days as more activists rush on board to chain themselves to the loading crane. The ship would later be known as the Arctic Sunrise.

She was built in 1975 for a commercial seal hunting operation. The photo's here, taken during the Greenpeace campaign to end commercial sealing, show a sealing ship that looks exactly like the Sunrise.

Thanks to that Greenpeace campaign, demand for the pelts was rapidly dropping at the time the ship entered service and laws were soon passed restricting their sale internationally. So we're not sure how much seal hunting the ship was actually involved in.

We're not positive but we believe the ship weaving this bloody path through the Arctic ice would eventually become the M/V Arctic Sunrise.

Later the French government acquired the ship and used it as a supply vessel for their Antarctic bases. The French, along with a number of other countries, wanted to open up this last pristine continent for oil and mineral exploitation.

This provoked numerous protests from Greenpeace. In December of 1986, the ship was in Hobart, Australia, (our own port of departure) when a Greenpeace activist scaled the mast, unfurled the Greenpeace flag and locked himself in the crow's nest.

Eventually the entire continent of Antarctica was declared a world park, and a 50-year ban on oil and mineral exploitation was put into place. The French government no longer had a use for the Arctic Sunrise. But Greenpeace did.

There was no chance her Norwegian owners, the only country currently whaling except Japan, would sell her to Greenpeace. So, in 1995, a company was set up in England called Arctic Sunrise Ventures Ltd. Greenpeace used this company to buy the ship, then sent a crew over to take the now renamed Arctic Sunrise to Hamburg for refitting.

Among those sent to pick up the ship were current crewmembers Lena, David and Frank. Lena remembers that, "When I first came on the ship all the picks and things for killing seals were still on board."

Over the years, the Arctic Sunrise, and her ever-changing crew, have confronted whalers, oil companies, toxic polluters and nuclear fuel shipments. If the Sunrise were a person, you would swear she was trying to make up for her past misdeeds.

June 1996 — Investigation of pollution from oil rigs in the North Sea.

July - December 1996 — Worked in the Mediterranean, mostly on toxic waste issues.

April 1997 — Campaign to save the over fished Southern Bluefin Tuna near New Zealand.

June 1997 — Temperate Rainforest Campaign in northern British Columbia, Canada.

July-September 1997 — Campaigned against offshore oil drilling and documented climate change in Alaska.

May - July 1998 — Documented the impacts of climate change in Alaska, USA.

July - August 1999 — Documented the impacts of climate change in Alaska, USA.

September 1999 — Confronts delivery of weapons usable nuclear fuel from UK and France to Japan.

November 1999 — Left Hobart, Australia, on way to interfere with Japan’s illegal whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary.

You can find a more detailed ship history by visiting our ship and crew section.

[Back to Story Page]