Canadian environmentalist Paul Watson says he was shot in a confrontation with a Japanese whaling vessel in the Antarctic Ocean, the Australian has reported.

According to that story, Watson said he was throwing stink bombs at the Japanese whaling ship the Nisshin Maru, when Japanese coast-guard officers responded with flash grenades.

On being shot, Watson said, “I felt an impact on my chest at one point and didn’t think too much of it at the time and then when I opened up my survival suit—I had a bulletproof vest—and there was a bullet lodged in it.”

The Japanese government has dismissed Watson’s claims as false, although Japanese officials did admit to the Australian Embassy in Tokyo that “warning balls” had been fired, according to a separate Australian report.

The incidence marks an increase in violence between environmentalists and Japanese whalers, who have been locked in a confrontation in the oceans around Japan for decades.

A founding member of Greenpeace—though some dispute the claim—and once-upon-a-time writer for the Straight, Watson has dedicated much of his life to combating whaling and championing a variety of aquatic environmental causes.

In 1996, he ran for mayor of Vancouver as a Green Party candidate.