Zac Goldsmith has urged residents to help a marine conservation society raise enough funds to free its flagship after a court injunction ordered it to stay off the water.

Sea Shepherd, which has its UK base in Dee Road, Richmond, said it was preparing to embark from Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, as part of its campaign against the illegal slaughter of pilot whales when two officials served the group with a detainment notice.

A Maltese fishing company has filed a civil suit alleging that Sea Shepherd damaged its property when activists freed 800 bluefin tuna from their nets in June last year, the conservation society said.

The group said it urgently needs to raise $1.4m to free its boat so it can continue its important work.

Mr Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park, said: “Sea Shepherd is a brave and brilliant organisation, and I sincerely hope people will rally to the cause and support them. We are ravaging the oceans, and in the absence of any real global leadership, we need organisations like Sea Shepherd.”

Activist Mark Sanders-Barwick, of Langham Road, Teddington, was a crew member on Sea Shepherd’s flagship the Steve Irwin when it set sail for the Mediterranean in June last year.

He was one of 41 campaigners who were attempting to protect bluefin tuna, which is being hunted to extinction.

They were entering Libyan waters at night when a fishing boat rammed the Steve Irwin in a bid to defend the stock, but divers managed to cut the nets of a floating cage before jumping back aboard and speeding off.

Mr Sanders-Barwick, a marine mammal medic, said: “The protection of the endangered blue fin is vitally important to our oceans, and to humanity, because if the oceans die, we die.

“If the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society does not quickly raise the bond, it fears the vessel could be held indefinitely, or sold.”

The group claimed stocks have fallen by more than 85 per cent since the industrial fishing era began, because more are killed than the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas quota allows.

However, due to depleting numbers bluefin tuna is one of the most lucrative fish in the ocean, with one selling in a Japanese market for a staggering £118,000.

For more information, visit www.seashepherd.org.

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