Because the mother–baby bond does not end at the shoreline.

Captain Paul Watson, ICCMD spokesperson for the calves and cows of the ocean, has just headed south with his crew, where they will intercept industrial krill trawlers in the Southern Ocean. With his departure, Operation Krill Wars has moved from the planning phase to an active campaign.

What are krill and why do they need to be defended? Tiny, shrimp-like creatures, these humble, non-charismatic micro-fauna form the very base of Antarctica’s food web. As such, their survival is essential to the survival of almost every other marine species, including seals, penguins, and the great whales. This year, however, the krill industry is set to harvest 1.2 million metric tons of krill from the Southern Ocean, an amount equivalent to that consumed by all the penguin populations of Antarctica. And for what? In order to produce a cheap protein paste for salmon farming—itself an environmentally ruinous economic activity. Left unchallenged, the krill trawlers will devastate entire marine ecosystems, all for short-term corporate profits.

The current annual quota set by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is 620,000 tonnes, said to represent only 1% of total krill biomass; however, krill fishing is not evenly distributed. It is concentrated in certain areas, including Area 48 near the Antarctic Peninsula, South Orkney Islands, and South Georgia, where thousands of whales gather to feed. Still recovering from near extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries, these whale populations require increasing amounts of krill to survive and nourish their young; however, they are now competing with 13 massive super-trawlers from Norway, China, Chile, Namibia, and South Korea.

And krill do more than feed whales. They help stabilize our climate, acting as a significant carbon sink and contributing to the storage of billions of tonnes of carbon each year. Remove krill and you not only reduce biodiversity; you impair the climate’s ability to regulate.

As Captain Paul Watson has warned: “If the ocean dies, we die.”

Which is why the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, in alliance with Sea Shepherd France, has launched Operation Krill Wars, intervening at a moment of planetary consequence to uphold international conservation law and defend biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions.

The story of animal exploitation on land is thus echoed in the ocean. Just as dairy calves are deprived of their mother’s milk, whale calves are starved of the milk that can only be produced by a well-fed mother. From the dairy barns to the watery nurseries of the Southern Ocean, therefore, our goal must be the same:

To protect the mothers.
To protect the babies.
To reserve for them the nourishment that sustains life.

Please join us at the upcoming Climate Healers Convergence on April 25-26 as we prepare for International Calf and Cow Mother’s Day 2026. Help us launch this inaugural event whose goal is widening the circle of compassion to include the mothers (and children) of all species.

With reverence and resolve,

Tami Hay,

for the Million Vegan Grandmothers
Happy International Calf and Cow Mother’s Day
May this be the first of many!