Dramatic footage of the poaching vessel, Thunder, sinking while Sea Shepherd ships Bob Barker and Sam Simon rescue the crewmembers. Courtesy: Sea Shepherd Australia Ltd

ENVIRONMENTAL activist group Sea Shepherd has rescued the very ship it has accused of poaching threatened fish stocks and campaigning against over the past few months.

The Bob Barker received a distress call from Patagonian toothfish poaching vessel Thunder this afternoon.

Captain Peter Hammarstedt said 35 crew members had been rescued late tonight from the sinking ship, and were being held in life rafts until Sea Shepherd received further advice from marine authorities on where to take them.

He said the circumstances of the sinking, in the southern ocean off the coast of Africa, were suspicious.

“This isn’t your usual rescue situation,” he said.

“We’ve been following them for the past 110 days and we are currently 90 nautical miles from port. They are running low on fuel and we suspect the captain has deliberately sunk his ship to destroy evidence of illegally poached fish.

“Thunder has been engaging in gross criminal activity and this is just the latest act of that activity. They haven’t been able to go to port because we’ve been following them daily and reporting their location to the authorities so they know as soon as they go to port they were going to be detained.”

Captain Hammarstedt said three of his crew boarded the poaching ship after all crew were safely on board life rafts.

He said the fish hold was a quarter full of suspected Patagonian toothfish and a sample of the fish was handed over to police.

“Normally when a vessel is genuinely sinking, all the hatches and doors would be closed to slow down the process but in this case our crew were able to see that all hatches were left open to most likely to speed up the process,” he said.

Last month, Captain Hammarstedt branded the vessel a slave ship and called for a government to intervene.

Thunder was deregistered by its flag state, Nigeria, for violations of its registry conditions.