The Barracuda, our second vessel in development, is designed to further enhance our capabilities at sea. With a length of 60.68 meters and a breadth of 20.80 meters, this ship is equipped with powerful engines and advanced propulsion systems, capable of speeds in excess of 45 knots in just under two minutes! Her propulsion system being the most unique of all our vessels in development, featuring both waterjet and fixed-pitch propellers to maintain high-speed, long-range, and redundant propulsion in the event the whalers try to disable the ship with prop-fouling, however, we don’t forsee that as an issue due to the vessels incredible speeds, and ability to accelerate and decelerate in just two ship lengths.

The Barracuda also features a comprehensive array of support craft, including custom interceptors, drones, helicopters, lasers, jet skis, and a submarine for diverse operational needs. It is equipped with high-powered water cannons, up to four (4), producing more than 60,000 gallons of water per minute. With a range of over 13,000 nautical miles, it ensures sustained presence in any theater of operations and can remain deployed for more than 60 days at a time.

The vessel includes a large helicopter hangar for day and night operations, and a stern launch ramp for rapid deployment of rhibs, jet-skis, and other support craft. On deck, the vessel can also store two (2) lightly armored protective vehicles for land use when required to send our crew on shore in areas where there may be hostile actions towards our crew.

There will also be two Long Range Acoustic Devices, known as (LRAD’s), or other acoustic deterrent systems, such as hyperspike systems and other technologies to defend the ship, including electrified anti-boarding measures up to 15,000 volts, like the Anti Poaching Vessel (APV). These measures ensure the safety of whales, our team, the effectiveness of our mission and the ability to deter and degrade whaling operations.

The hybrid craft is being engineered to deliver small swarms of unmanned, propulsion-disabling craft, modified from UUV’s and other unmanned undersea systems. These UUV’s are designed to drop prop-foulers covertly, reducing the whaler’s evidence collection capacity for legal reasons, and destroying their legal approaches step-by-step by engineering our approaches to also work from undersea, making their intelligence collection and legal approaches disrupted, destroyed, or degraded completely.

If the whalers can’t document a prop-foul action, and their ship comes to a dead stop, they will have to gather incredible proof to try to prove it was WDA, and that it wasn’t some type of floating marine debris that struck, impacted, damaged, or entangled in their propulsion system. After years of witnessing how the whalers targeted Sea Shepherd, and how engagements were conducted, we conducted extensive research that allowed us to adopt this advanced approach, which is needed to defeat whaling.

We have conducted a lot of groundbreaking research over the past decade before the Whale Defense Agency launched. This is how we have a backlog of extensive tools and approaches to pull from and make use of. We ensure that our actions develop and grow at a rate that leaves it difficult for the whalers to understand the full scale of planned operations or how to defeat it. We innovate so rapidly that by the time the whalers develop a counter-approach, we will have already developed 3 different tools or approaches, that will once again, place them in a weakened position.