Above photo:Photo courtesy: Chiara chained to arctic challenger. All photos by Reese Semanko
BELLINGHAM, Wash. – Two people have chained themselves to a support ship that is part of Royal Dutch Shell’s exploratory oil drilling plans and currently moored in Washington state.
Eric Ross of the Backbone Campaign said on Saturday morning that Matt Fuller joined student activist Chiara D’Angelo in suspending themselves from the anchor chain of the Arctic Challenger, which is in Bellingham Bay.
D’Angelo suspended herself from the ship with a climbing harness on Friday night.
“We’re doing really good, yeah. Our spirits are really high. We’ve got enough food. We’ve got enough to keep warm. Yeah, we feel really good about things right now,” Fuller said in a telephone interview on Saturday afternoon.
“I’m up here… I’ll speak for myself… because I’m frustrated that something like this would be happening in the Pacific Northwest where we consider ourselves to be green and eco-friendly,” Fuller added.
The Coast Guard cutter Osprey spent the night monitoring D’Angelo but took no action, Petty Officer 3rd Class Katelyn Shearer said Saturday morning.
“Our main priority is the two individuals’ safety, anyone else who comes out of the water… their safety, and really responding to boaters in the San Juan Islands or the Puget Sound… their safety during Memorial Day weekend,” said U.S. Coast Guard Spokesman Lt. Dana Warr.
Ross said both D’Angelo and Fuller are fine and are not being harassed by the Coast Guard. But he expressed concern for D’Angelo’s health and said she must be getting dehydrated and tired after her night above the water.
Authorities spoke with the woman and asked her to remove herself. “There’s no plans right now to do anything further,” Shearer said.
The ship isn’t scheduled to leave the port for several days. A Coast Guard spokesman said the Arctic Challenger has to go through an inspection process. It won’t be able to leave the port until that process is complete, he said.
Rob Lewis, a spokesman for the Bellingham activists, said they are protesting Shell’s plan for Arctic drilling. He described the Arctic Challenger as a savior vessel that is used in the case of an oil leak, but said activists doubt its effectiveness at preventing environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
He confirmed that the Coast Guard was not interfering with D’Angelo, but they had impounded the activists’ support vessels.
Protesters in Seattle have been demonstrating against another part of the Shell drilling fleet. Dutch Shell is using Seattle’s seaport terminal to house a massive floating drill rig, the Polar Pioneer.
Last weekend, hundreds of activists in kayaks swarmed Elliott Bay to protest Shell’s plans to drill for oil in the Arctic. The protest was dubbed the “Paddle in Seattle.”
Those activists have also expressed concern about the risk of an oil spill in the remote Arctic waters and the effect of Shell’s operations on global warming.