Iceland plans to deport five anti-whaling activists involved in the Bandero campaign after authorities boarded the vessel during a confrontation with an Icelandic whaling ship. The five activists may leave the country voluntarily but will also receive entry bans of varying lengths, according to information reported by Yle.
Police said the decisions apply to the Bandero crew members who were questioned and formally notified of their deportation. Until the vessel leaves Iceland, the group has been ordered to remain aboard.
Why Icelandic authorities boarded the Bandero
The deportations follow an incident on the evening of 30 July involving the Bandero, a vessel operated by the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, and the Icelandic whaling ship Hvalur 9.
According to the Icelandic Coast Guard, the crew of Hvalur 9 requested assistance after concluding that the protest vessel posed a threat to their safety. Authorities instructed the Bandero to leave Icelandic waters and later ordered it to stop its engines.
The crew did not comply with the instructions. Coast Guard personnel and members of the police special forces unit known as the Viking Squad (Víkingasveitin) subsequently boarded the vessel around midnight. The ship was taken to Reykjavík, where police assumed responsibility for the investigation.
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation said that 21 crew members were initially detained aboard the vessel and temporarily separated from their mobile phones. Paul Watson himself was not on board.
The deportation decisions currently concern five activists rather than the entire crew.
The Bandero campaign against Icelandic whaling
The Bandero arrived in Icelandic waters in late June as part of Operation 86, a campaign intended to disrupt the commercial whaling activities of Hvalur hf., Iceland’s only active fin-whaling company.
The operation’s name refers both to the International Whaling Commission’s commercial whaling moratorium, which entered into force in 1986, and to an action carried out in Reykjavík that same year. Members of Sea Shepherd sank the whaling vessels Hvalur 6 and Hvalur 7 while they were moored in the harbour. Nobody was injured.
One of the people leading the 2026 campaign, American activist Rodney Coronado, participated in the 1986 action. Before the Bandero entered Icelandic waters, he said the crew was prepared to risk arrest while trying to stop the whaling season.
The Icelandic Coast Guard began monitoring the vessel shortly after its arrival. It initially reported that the Bandero was not transmitting its position through the required identification system, although the ship later activated it and complied with monitoring requirements.
The Coast Guard vessel Þór followed the Bandero for several days and prevented it from approaching Hvalur 8 and Hvalur 9. The activist ship briefly left Icelandic waters in July because of a medical emergency before returning on 22 July.
Direct action has increased tensions at sea
The Captain Paul Watson Foundation describes its campaigns as direct action intended to protect marine wildlife. Its methods, however, have repeatedly led to accusations that its vessels endanger other crews.
Earlier in 2026, the Bandero collided with the Norwegian-owned krill-fishing vessel Antarctic Sea near the Antarctic Peninsula. The foundation described the manoeuvre as a limited intervention that caused no significant damage, while the vessel’s owner accused the activists of deliberately putting the ship and its crew at risk.
That incident added to concerns in Iceland about how the Bandero might act if it reached the country’s whaling vessels. The organisation had publicly pledged to prevent Hvalur hf. from completing its authorised quota and had also announced pressure against a fuel supplier serving the company.
Whaling remains contested in Iceland
Iceland is one of the few countries, alongside Norway and Japan, that continues to permit commercial whaling. The government issues quotas for fin and minke whales, although the practice has become increasingly disputed within Iceland.
The current season is the first since 2023. Most Icelandic whale meat is exported, particularly to Japan, while domestic consumption remains limited.
The deportations do not resolve the wider dispute over whaling. They instead mark a further escalation between Icelandic authorities and an international activist movement that argues direct intervention is justified, while the authorities maintain that protests at sea must not threaten navigation or the safety of other crews.
