That Sinking Feeling

At 2 a.m. a pair of shadowy figures slipped into a whaling station north of Reykjavik, Iceland, and set about systematically destroying its computers with sledgehammers and dousing factory records with acid. Before dawn, in Reykjavik harbor, the saboteurs opened the sea cocks of two of the nation's four whaling ships. Little more than half an hour later, the vessels sank.

Although no one was hurt, last week's raid was one of the most dramatic attacks on the whaling industry in years. In one sweep it devastated Icelandic whalers and focused attention on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a militant international environmental group headed by Renegade Paul Watson, a Canadian. Sea Shepherd, which quickly took responsibility for the action, , claims that Iceland is illegally killing whales for commercial use. Indeed, the International Whaling Commission has issued a ban on commercial whaling through 1990, but it permits the killing of whales for scientific purposes. The Iceland government insists that taking 120 whales this year for research is vital to its fishing industry. Most environmentalists, though critical of Iceland's stand, distanced themselves from Sea Shepherd's violent tactics.