A per­son­al account from our very own British-activist-oil-mon­key:

South­ern Ocean, Feb­ru­ary 2010

While an alba­tross swoops close over me and I make my way up the stairs to the bridge deck, I can see Fre­man­tle appear on the hori­zon. It is a nice warm com­pared to the cold Antarc­ti­ca we have just returned from. After hav­ing been at sea for over a month we need to return to port to restock on food, refu­el the ship and do some essen­tial repairs on our heli­copter. The turnover will be a quick one, 48 hours and we’re out of here. Some of the crew leave, new ones await us on the dock. As the ship pulls into the har­bour I can see a large group of sup­port­ers eager­ly await­ing our arrival. The long lone­ly hours at sea can make you for­get our work is made pos­si­ble by the gen­er­ous work of thou­sands of sup­port­ers onshore. The cou­ple of days in port fly by and before Iknow it I’m back in the noisy engine room.

It is day 6 back at sea and we get word that our sec­ond ves­sel, the Bob Bark­er, has locat­ed the whal­ing fleet and is clos­ing in. One of the three har­poon ships, the Yushin Maru 2 tries to stop the Bob Bark­er from posi­tion­ing itself behind the fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru, bet­ter known as the ‘float­ing abat­toir’. Once stuck behind this mon­strous ship, the whal­ing oper­a­tion will be stopped as no whales can be trans­ferred from the har­poon ships across the slip­way onto the flens­ing deck for
‘pro­cess­ing’. Or should I say ‘research’? The Yushin Maru 2 col­lid­ed with the Bob Bark­er, caus­ing dam­age to the Bob’s hull. The har­poon ship then backed off.

Mean­while, on our ship the Steve Irwin, every­one is excit­ed to hear the news and prepa­ra­tions are being made for pos­si­ble action to take place with­in days. Hav­ing worked on the ship for months to get it ready for sea and then to try and find the whalers, this is the one bit of news every­body is wait­ing to hear. In this enor­mous ocean we have locat­ed the whal­ing fleet. Our oth­er ship is already block­ing the slip­way of the pro­cess­ing ship and we will be join­ing in soon. In 2002 when Sea Shep­herd set out for Antarc­ti­ca for the first time to oppose Japan­ese whal­ing oper­a­tions, no whal­ing ship was ever seen. In the South­ern Ocean, which is the largest bit of unbro­ken ocean in the world, try­ing to find a few ships is lit­er­al­ly like look­ing for nee­dles in a haystack. Sure, we have a bet­ter idea of where they oper­ate than 8 years ago and we some­times get infor­ma­tion from oth­er ves­sels if they see them, but this is a huge achieve­ment.

The next day the fleet changes course and starts mov­ing direct­ly towards us. At this rate we might meet them ear­ly in the morn­ing. I keep say­ing to myself I should bet­ter get some sleep as we could be look­ing at a very long day of action. Nev­er­the­less I can’t sleep. Every­one, myself
includ­ed is excit­ed about final­ly being with the fleet and the prospect of actions. Our cap­tain, Paul Wat­son, always says that 90% of suc­cess is show­ing up and the only way to stop whal­ing in Antarc­ti­ca is by being here where it hap­pens. And so far, Sea Shep­herd’s sto­ry in Antarc­ti­ca is one of suc­cess. This is Paul’s 6th Antarc­tic cam­paign and year after year the effects of the actions of him and his crew are get­ting more and more pro­found. If you want to shut down whalers you have to speak their lan­guage, in this case one of prof­it and loss. As long as we can ensure
that their prof­its are down and loss­es up, one day it will not be worth their while to come down. In the last two years Sea Shep­herd has halved the whal­ing quo­ta’s by dis­rupt­ing the hunt and they are feel­ing the finan­cial pres­sure back in Tokyo. A pub­lic spend­ing review com­mit­tee appoint­ed by the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment recent­ly pro­posed to slash fund­ing to the ICR, which runs the whal­ing pro­gramme and more Japan­ese pub­lic fig­ures have spo­ken out against whal­ing then ever before.

Once you start feel­ing a slight shud­der through the ship you know what lies out­side: ice. The ship is not ice-strength­ened so we have to con­tin­ue with the utmost cau­tion. Out­side on the deck I’m look­ing at ice on the star­board side, port side, for­ward of us and every­where else where there used to be open ocean. ‘Look, right there!’ Three wed­dell seals relax on the ice. Their bold bod­ies lie on the ice sheets in stark con­trast with the rest of the white land­scape. ‘Oh aren’t they cute!’
Cute indeed though not impressed with our pres­ence. One seal growls angri­ly at us. Espe­cial­ly work­ing in the engine room, which tends to be a pret­ty unin­spir­ing place, moments like these give new ener­gy to keep going and remind us all what we are here to pro­tect.

Next morn­ing I get wok­en up by peo­ple rush­ing through the com­pan­ion­ways. I stum­ble out of bed, open the port­hole and I look straight at the huge fac­to­ry ship, which is right next to us. This huge ship, with water can­nons blast­ing from all sides, this is the one. This is the mean killing machine, the largest whale abat­toir in the world, which we are look­ing to sab­o­tage. It is a beau­ti­ful sight to see our two black ships in for­ma­tion behind the Nis­shin Maru. We’ve got both sides of the slip­way cov­ered. Try com­ing in with a har­poon ship now!

We approach the 60 degree lat­i­tude bound­ary as we move in along the Nis­shin Maru’s port side. Announce­ments blast from our pow­er­ful PA sys­tem: ‘This is a whale sanc­tu­ary, your oper­a­tions here are ille­gal. We order you to leave the area imme­di­ate­ly’. We repeat the mes­sage in Japan­ese. Our water can­non gives their bridge win­dows a clean and we escort them out of the Antarc­tic Treaty Zone and more impor­tant­ly, out the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary. Two days lat­er the Nis­shin Maru changes course again, turns around and heads straight back for the sanc­tu­ary.

The fac­to­ry ship con­tin­ues to be fol­lowed by both our ships and three har­poon ships are behind us. Lat­er that after­noon I make my way out­side when we are near­ing the sanc­tu­ary bound­ary. We move along­side the fac­to­ry ship again and warn them to stay out. While I stand on the aft deck, the Nis­shin Maru comes clos­er. Water can­nons are blast­ing from both ships and the sky fills with a mist of water spray. All I can see of the oth­er ship is a dark mist and before I realise it, the Nis­shin Maru is about one meter from our deck rail­ings. ‘They are going to ram us! Get over here!’ I quick­ly turn around as a giant swell of water throws itself over the deck where we are stand­ing. I’m hold­ing onto a rail­ing and a fel­low crew mem­ber as we both get soak­ing wet. I turn to look and see the ships slow­ly pulling apart. Giant let­ters spelling RESEARCH are mov­ing in front of us, each one about the size of a small house.

The har­poon ships aren’t sit­ting by qui­et­ly and start to move. The Bob Bark­er moves in between us to pro­tect our heli­copter from their water can­nons. We deploy the small boats too. Short­ly after a huge cat and mouse game erupts between whal­ing ships, the Bob Bark­er, us and our small boats buzzing all over the place. The heli­copter keeps a close eye on it all from the air. From all sides you can see ships mak­ing tight and abrupt manoeu­vres. There are some near col­li­sions. Every­one is on the look­out in case we are to defend our heli­copter while land­ing or if we are to retrieve the small boat. A long thick rope is towed from our stern which will keep the har­poon ships at bay as there is a good chance of it get­ting entan­gled in their pro­pellers. The entire con­fronta­tion lasts for near­ly 7 hours. Back in the engine room dur­ing the night watch we reflect on a long and event­ful day.

Dur­ing the next few days we con­tin­ue to escort the fac­to­ry ship and stand watch at its slip­way. Under our super­vi­sion no whale will make it up there. In an press inter­view our cap­tain makes it clear that if they are to start whal­ing again and attempt to trans­fer a whale, col­li­sions will be inevitable. No whal­ing has tak­en place for well over a week.

After the night watch­es in the engine room I tend to go straight to bed and get as much sleep as pos­si­ble before the next watch starts 8 hours lat­er. How­ev­er, this morn­ing is dif­fer­ent. After the Ady Gil, our high-tech tri­maran, was rammed and sunk by a har­poon ship a month ear­li­er, its cap­tain Pete Bethune has moved in with us. It seems that diplo­ma­cy on its own is going to do lit­tle to get him and his crew the jus­tice they deserve. The delib­er­ate col­li­sion caused by the Japan­ese ship endan­gered the life of his crew as well as caus­ing the loss of the 3 mil­lion dol­lar ves­sel. Pete was a man with a plan and tonight he would set out for mis­sion impos­si­ble: go out into the freez­ing waters of the South­ern Ocean on a small jet ski, board a ship mov­ing at speed and make a cit­i­zens arrest on its cap­tain. The Shonan Maru 2 which had sunken the Ady Gil was still fol­low­ing us. Only a few miles behind us, Pete was deter­mined to get his jus­tice and put diplo­mat­ic pres­sure on the Japan­ese and New Zealand gov­er­ments to final­ly act against the ille­gal and dan­ger­ous actions of the whal­ing fleet.

Every­one fills the crew mess to say their good­byes to Pete and wish him all the best for the mis­sion. ‘Your courage and deter­mi­na­tion is admirable’ I say. ‘With­out you top­ping up the oil every­day we would­n’t be here’ he smiles. Since Pete joined the ship I’ve got­ten to know him as a jol­ly and ambi­tious char­ac­ter. If there is any­one cut out for this job, it is him. Some of the crew had their doubts on whether the risky plan would work, but this morn­ing Pete is so self-assured of suc­cess that he elim­i­nates any doubt any of us had. After the jet ski is low­ered in the water, we eager­ly await any news. It all goes remark­ably smooth.

He falls dur­ing the first board­ing attempt but was back on the jet ski again in min­utes. In the sec­ond attempt he cuts through the secu­ri­ty net­ting with a knife and climbs onboard. He then pro­ceeds to walk up to the very top deck where he waits (with­out being noticed) for the remain­der of night. At the break of day­light we launch the heli­copter. With the cam­eras rolling Pete makes his way to the bridge to make con­tact with the Shonan Maru crew. He knocks on the bridge door and waits. Some­one opens the door look­ing amaz­ing­ly bewil­dered. Check­ing over the side; no boat to be seen. How did this man get here? Pete con­tin­ues to hand over a let­ter order­ing the arrest of the cap­tain for sink­ing his ves­sel and for pay­ment of $3 mil­lion in dam­ages. The Japan­ese crew mem­ber tries to shoo Pete away and then goes back inside, leav­ing Pete to make his own in. This is the last we see of him. The media has since report­ed that Pete will be tak­en back to Japan for ques­tion­ing and pos­si­ble pros­e­cu­tion for ‘acts of pira­cy’.

We are stuck in ice again, lots of ice. This time it is not just us but the Nis­shin Maru too. It takes hours of slow manoeu­vring and avoid­ing the larg­er of the ice chunks, before we are in open water again. Dur­ing the day I work out­side, pump­ing lubri­ca­tion oil into a tank from our spare bar­rels. An alba­tross lands on deck and walks towards me. It walks over my feet as if I’m not there and set­tles for a nice spot in between my legs by cud­dling up against one of my boots. I stand there frozen, not sure what to do. When­ev­er I move, it moves with me. This beau­ti­ful bird, which trav­els thou­sands of miles along its migra­tion routes has pos­si­bly nev­er seen a human being before. It struck me that although we as humans push numer­ous species of ani­mals and plants to extinc­tion in our ever greater need to devel­op, grow and keep the prof­its up, it is me that is the alien species here, invad­ing this bird’s habi­tat.

That evening, run­ning low on fuel, we are forced to head back to land. With whal­ing stopped for over 3 weeks, this is the longest and most suc­cess­ful anti-whal­ing cam­paign in the South­ern Ocean to date. For the last few weeks we were right where we want­ed to be most. The one place
where we can be sure that all ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions in the South­ern Ocean have stopped. It is here, right behind the Nis­shin Maru that our months of prepa­ra­tion and hard work pay off. One by one the whal­ing ships that sur­round­ed us before have dropped off our radar screen. Three har­poon ships sailed off over the hori­zon not be seen again and after Pete Bethune board­ed the Shonan Maru, this one too is out of action. I stood out­side on deck last night and looked at the fac­to­ry ship in front of us for one last time before we turned and head­ed back to port. I felt a great sense of pride, to know that in the 21st cen­tu­ry it is still a com­mit­ted, ded­i­cat­ed and hard work­ing group of ordi­nary peo­ple that can bring about the change need­ed to keep this plan­et healthy and sane. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.

——

South­ern Ocean, 2nd Feb­ru­ary 2010

It has been an event­ful cou­ple of months at sea and most of us are eager to get back to the whal­ing grounds as soon as pos­si­ble. Two days ago we depart­ed from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia, for the third voy­age down to the Antarc­tic waters, where the whalers con­tin­ue their whal­ing sea­son under the guise of ‘sci­en­tif­ic research’. We have been at sea for well over 2 months now and returned to port twice for refu­elling. When we ini­tial­ly left for the cam­paign in ear­ly Decem­ber, we were tailed by the Shonan Maru II, a Japan­ese har­poon ship turned spy ves­sel, as soon as we left Aus­tralian waters. The ship stayed with us wher­ev­er we went. We tried to loose it by head­ing into ice or heavy weath­er, but could not shake them.

I step out­side on the aft deck to see the spy ship, Shonan Maru II, bear­ing down upon us fast. Our heli­copter had been launched ear­li­er to ver­i­fy what ship it actu­al­ly is, as we had­n’t come with­in clear visu­al range before. Upon arrival, the heli­copter had a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) point­ed at it. This is a device that sends out a high­ly direc­tion­al noise, aimed at dis­ori­en­tat­ing or even inca­pac­i­tat­ing a per­son. Using it on our heli­copter while it is mid-air is, to say the least, total­ly irre­spon­si­ble. With the heli­copter now safe­ly back on the Steve Irwin, it seems that the Japan­ese ship is com­ing in for the attack. With its water can­nons blast­ing at full pow­er, it is try­ing to come along­side us, pre­sum­ably to give the heli­copter a wash down, in an effort to dam­age it. As it chas­es us, loud­speak­ers blast: “This is the Shonan Maru cap­tain! You are too close to me! You are too close to me!” Mean­while we have a prop-fouler ready, which is a long rope we trail from the end of our ship to keep them at bay. If they were to come too close and run over the line, it could get entan­gled in their pro­peller and cause seri­ous dam­age. They know this and are unable to come as close as they’d like. They keep try­ing but by now we are enter­ing an ice field full of mid-size growlers and after a few sharp manoeu­vres the Japan­ese ship backs off. They fall back but stay behind us with­in radar range.

A cou­ple of days lat­er we are anchored up in Com­mon­wealth Bay, over­look­ing the Antarc­tic con­ti­nent on one side and the open sea on the oth­er. Our spy ship can still be seen lurk­ing about on the hori­zon. We haven’t been able to get rid of her, so we take shel­ter in these waters, which are French ter­ri­to­ry. Per­haps the French can help.

We switch off the engines and while one of the offi­cers gets in the heli­copter to vis­it the French base Dumont D’urville, some of the crew strip down for the tra­di­tion­al dive in the freez­ing Antarc­tic waters. As nego­ti­a­tions with the French con­tin­ue into the after­noon, some of us head out in the small boat towards Cape Deni­son, home to a colony of 30.000 Adelie pen­guins and the spot where the Aus­tralian sci­en­tist Maw­son land­ed in 1911. I step foot on land and realise how few peo­ple must have been for­tu­nate enough to see this place. Snow cov­ers the land as far as the eye can see and the smell of the fresh and sharp air takes some get­ting used to. Look­ing out at sea, the coast­line is cov­ered with rocks and home to thou­sands of Adelie pen­guins.

Fol­low­ing a bunch of pen­guins walk­ing towards a huge icy ridge, it strikes me that this is prob­a­bly one of the very few places of true wilder­ness left. Untouched by human hands, growth, devel­op­ment, exploita­tion. So far Antarc­ti­ca has enjoyed fair­ly good pro­tec­tion. The Antarc­tic Treaty pro­hibits com­mer­cial and/or mil­i­tary activ­i­ty on and around the con­ti­nent and states that the num­ber of cruise ships is to be kept to a min­i­mum. How­ev­er, there are vast resources, such as oil and there are the­o­ries that when the treaty is re-nego­ti­at­ed in a few years, some coun­tries includ­ing Japan will try to loosen these con­di­tions in order to gain access. Some peo­ple argue that the only rea­son Japan con­tin­ues its whal­ing oper­a­tions in the South­ern Ocean is so that it will have some ‘his­tor­i­cal claim’ over the resources in the area, if it would ever be opened up for exploita­tion. What­ev­er the rea­sons, right now the Japan­ese fleet oper­ates ille­gal­ly in the area, threat­en­ing this habi­tat and the crea­tures that depend on its pro­tec­tion for their sur­vival, which is all that mat­ters to us.

See­ing our ship in the far dis­tance, anchored up in the bay, makes me feel proud to know that we are here for these ani­mals and to pro­tect this unique and untouched wilder­ness from the destruc­tive hands of cor­po­rate pow­er. I head back down towards the water, in the small boat and back to the ship. The com­man­der of the French base has writ­ten a let­ter of sup­port, but with­out some kind of navy pres­ence in the area, they are unable to do much more than that. We pull up anchor and head back out into what now has become quite a rough sea. Not get­ting much sleep as we are thrown about by the 15 foot swells.

Sea Shep­herd has always enjoyed sup­port from the ranks of Hol­ly­wood with, among many, Mar­tin Sheen, Pierce Bros­nan and Dar­ryl Han­nah donat­ing their time and resources for the cause. The lat­est to join the list is Ady Gil, a busi­ness­man from Los Ange­les, who has donat­ed a large sum of mon­ey to help us pur­chase a sec­ond ves­sel. The ship, pre­vi­ous­ly known as Earth­race, is a super fast tri­maran power­boat which broke the world cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion record in 2008, is bio-diesel pow­ered and looks like some­thing to have sailed straight out of the lat­est bat­man movie. Its skip­per and cre­ator Pete Bethune is eager to join the Sea Shep­herd cam­paign and with the finan­cial back­ing, the ship is refit­ted and renamed Ady Gil. We are on our way to meet up with the Ady Gil, which left Hobart two weeks ear­li­er, to trans­fer food and oth­er sup­plies. As we steam north, our spy ship keeps a steady two nau­ti­cal miles behind us.

We are get­ting clos­er to the Ady Gil and I go up to the bridge to see what is going on. Noth­ing shows on the radar. The boat is so small that it can go about its busi­ness vir­tu­al­ly unde­tect­ed. In addi­tion, we take advan­tage of the short bit of dark­ness to covert­ly meet up. I step out on deck. ‘Over there, can you see?’ I can just about make out a tiny black spot in the vast dark­ness. We launch a small boat and pick up two of the crew. After a short meet­ing they head off into the dark­ness again. We set course for Hobart and the Ady Gil heads towards the spy ship in an attempt to take it out of action. Prop-foulers come out, stink bombs are thrown onto the deck and a laser gun aimed at dis­tract­ing those on the bridge is put to use. It is all part of our essen­tial arse­nal of non-vio­lent tac­tics to shut down the whalers. In 30 years of oper­a­tions Sea Shep­herd has nev­er caused a sin­gle injury as a result of any of its actions. We are non-vio­lent yet hon­est about the fact that we take aggres­sive action. Exact­ly the type of action that is nec­es­sary to stop these crim­i­nal whale poach­ers. A few hours lat­er we notice that the spy ship has caught up with us again. As we sail into Aus­tralian waters the Japan­ese ship stays put at the Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone (EEZ) bound­ary, unwill­ing to esca­late the ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al stand-off over whal­ing.

New years eve. After the refu­el and resup­ply we are back at sea, enjoy­ing cake, drinks and a super veg­an buf­fet. The sea is rough and out­side it is pitch black. As we clear the EEZ bound­ary the spy ship is nowhere to be seen. Last we heard it was wait­ing for us just south of Hobart. Our plan of sneak­ing out under the cov­er of dark­ness and in bad weath­er seems to work. When we left in Decem­ber the whalers had hired sur­veil­lance planes under false pre­tences so they could track our move­ments. This worked for a while, until the hire com­pa­ny found out what the real deal was. Even if they were able to find some­one to hire them a plane, the weath­er might be too bad for them to come out. A group call­ing them­selves ‘Taz Patrol’ lat­er announced on Twit­ter that the spy ship was still wait­ing for us at the EEZ bound­ary when we had already sneaked out and were way out of their reach. Hur­ray!

We sail straight south towards the Com­mon­wealth Bay area, where we were not more than a fort­night ago and where we now know the whal­ing fleet is. An Antarc­tic cruise ship spot­ted them and some of the pas­sen­gers informed us. Word has it that the pas­sen­gers vot­ed with an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty to stay with the whal­ing fleet until we man­aged to catch up, but a few unhap­py vot­ers made them move on. The Ady Gil is rough­ly in the same area as the whalers. Low on fresh water and fuel they are wait­ing on us to be resup­plied. As we are head­ing down, anoth­er ves­sel is com­ing in from the west. Kept secret until now, this is our third ves­sel, the ice-classed Bob Bark­er, named after the Amer­i­can TV pre­sen­ter and ani­mal rights cam­paign­er who pur­chased it for us. The ship was bought in West Africa a few months ago and refit­ted in Mau­ri­tius. It has been at sea for over a month now, try­ing to reach the whal­ing grounds to join in on the action. With the Ady Gil south east of the fleet, the Bob Bark­er com­ing in from the west and us bear­ing down on them from the north, there is lit­er­al­ly nowhere for them to run.

We have quite a way to go yet, about two and a half days sail­ing. We start up our sec­ond engine to increase speed and the Ady Gil sets course for a ren­dezvous point fur­ther north, so it is now only about 24 hours away. While on its way, the Ady Gil runs into the whal­ing fleet’s re-sup­ply ves­sel, pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Ori­en­tal Blue­bird but recent­ly re-flagged and re-named. It leaves this mon­strous bunker ship be and press­es ahead. Mean­while, the Bob Bark­er is clos­ing in too and briefly meets with the Ady Gil. This is when things get ugly.

The Bob Bark­er has locat­ed the whal­ing fleet and sets course for the fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru. This ship, where the whales are hauled onto and processed once they have been caught, is at the hearth of the whal­ing fleet. You shut it down and the rest of the ships are unable to oper­ate. The Nissin Maru starts run­ning at full speed. Mean­while, the oth­er whal­ing ships scat­ter in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. It seems the chase is on.

We are on watch in the engine room. The phone rings, it is the bridge. ‘Hey guys, have you heard the news?’ I lis­ten intent­ly as the sto­ry unfolds. The Ady Gil is drift­ing close by the Bob Bark­er, waiv­ing and cheer­ing before leav­ing to meet up with us. The ves­sel is dead in the water and the some of the crew sit on the aft deck. In the dis­tance the spy ship Shonan Maru No2 is approach­ing at full speed. It is get­ting clos­er and clos­er and at a dis­tance of about a hun­dred meters it starts to turn sharply towards the Ady Gil. When the crew realise what is going on, they fire up the engines and start to pull back, hop­ing to avoid a col­li­sion, but to no avail. The more than 800 tonnes heavy har­poon ship throws itself into the much small­er tri­maran. It crash­es into the ves­sel, tear­ing open its hull and cut­ting off 4 metres of the bow.

The Ady Gil starts sink­ing. A MAYDAY dis­tress sig­nal is sent out and the Bob Bark­er changes course and rush­es to its aid. It gets there just in time to res­cue the 6 crew mem­bers from the ves­sel. The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet ignores the emer­gency dis­tress sig­nals and steams away, hop­ing to loose us and con­tin­ue their ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tion else­where. The Shon­un Maru No2 ignores the dis­tress sig­nal at first but lat­er agrees to stay near­by after the Bob Bark­er makes numer­ous radio calls to them, relay­ing the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion. The rest of the whal­ing fleet runs far west.

The next day, every­one on the ship is catch­ing up with the impact that the ram­ming and sink­ing of the Ady Gill is hav­ing. On the inter­na­tion­al stage, media wise and in turn how it effects peo­ple all over the world who hear about what is going on and are start­ing to ask ques­tions. From the emails we are receiv­ing and the reports we are read­ing, it seems that the world media is all over this. It has def­i­nite­ly put whal­ing back on the map, though I doubt that gov­ern­ments will final­ly live up to their oblig­a­tion to uphold the laws they under­signed to pro­tect these whales. In a sense it feels like gov­ern­ments aren’t even part of this whole sit­u­a­tion any­more. It is down to us, the only force in the South­ern Ocean to pro­tect these gen­tle giants of the sea from the dead­ly har­poons that are after them. Look­ing to shoot, pull, haul up and process, what in busi­ness terms will be anoth­er few box­es of whale meat on the inven­to­ry. Anoth­er prod­uct in the freez­er stor­age ready to be dis­trib­uted once the fleet arrives back in Japan. Anoth­er sta­tis­tic on the books for the whal­ing com­pa­ny. That is what it is for the whalers, for those with no regard for the sacred­ness of life, with no under­stand­ing of the impor­tance that a healthy ocean and there­fore healthy plan­et has to all of us.

After the sink­ing of the Ady Gil we turn west at full speed in pur­suit of the whal­ing fleet. After 10 days they are still run­ning from us. When they are near­ing the bound­ary of the area they have allo­cat­ed them­selves to con­duct their ‘research’ in, an announce­ment is made that the area is to sud­den­ly be expand­ed by anoth­er 1000 nau­ti­cal miles west. Very con­ve­nient. We are forced to change course to meet the Bob Bark­er as they are run­ning low on sup­plies.

‘Atten­tion all crew, whales breach­ing off the bow, whales breach­ing off the bow’. The announce­ment makes every­one jump into action straight away. ‘Whales! Quick quick!’ We all rush up the stairs and onto the deck. There, about 50 meters from the ship, two hump­back whales jump out of the water, throw­ing their huge bod­ies up in the air, and crash­ing back down, caus­ing huge erup­tions on the sur­face. We all stand there in awe. So far, we had­n’t seen many whales at all. Quite a dis­cour­ag­ing obser­va­tion when you con­sid­er a vast indus­tri­al whal­ing fleet is loom­ing about. But they’re def­i­nite­ly here and hap­py to show off their tricks. Under the sound of cheer­ing and clap­ping from the ever grow­ing spec­ta­tor crowd on deck, they con­tin­ue to breach, flip and dive back down. When you see these ani­mals in the free, open ocean, their wilder­ness, their world, it gives you strength to car­ry on. Inspi­ra­tion to pur­sue our goals in shut­ting down these pirate whalers.

——

South­ern Ocean, 4th Jan­u­ary 2010

ON THE LOOSE

As soon as we head­ed down South a month ago and exit­ed the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone (EEZ) we were trailed by a Japan­ese har­poon ship. The ship would stick around 8 miles behind us, just with­in radar range, with the inten­tion of keep­ing a close eye on us at all times. With such a ship on our back that can relay our loca­tion to the whal­ing fleet at all times, we are at a huge dis­ad­van­tage. Also, this ship is much faster than ours, has a more capa­ble radar and is able to hold much more fuel. The odds are stacked up against us.

On few occa­sions, the spy ship gets close. We keep it at safe dis­tance by tow­ing a prop fouler behind us, in a bid for them to back off or choose to have their pro­peller dam­aged. We run through dense ice fields, maneu­ver­ing through the maze of incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous growlers, which could eas­i­ly punc­ture our thin non-ice class hull and send us all div­ing. We move into French Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters and even though the French offer us their offi­cial sup­port, not much they can do unless a navy fre­gate or destroy­er is ready to chase out the har­poon ship.

Just before christ­mas we anchor at Com­mon­wealth Bay for 2 days, right at the Antarc­tic con­ti­nent. Some of us dive into the freez­ing Antarc­tic waters to swim with pen­guins one morn­ing and by mid after­noon I step onto the con­ti­nent at Cape Deni­son, where the Aus­tralian sci­en­tist and explor­er Maw­son first set foot in 1911. The hut is still there and the bay is home to a 30.000 strong colony of Adelie Pen­guins. We hang out with the pen­guins for over 5 hours and vis­it a team of sci­en­tists who work on the preser­va­tion of Maw­son’s hut for about 6 weeks every year (when it’s is not too cold). The land­scape is breath­tak­ing, with ice and snow cov­er­ing the rocky land­scape for as long as the eye can see. Pen­guins hud­dle togeth­er, walk around and sledge down the steep slopes on the west­ern side of the bay. Seals lie around aim­less­ly, enjoy­ing the sun­shine which occa­sion­al­ly pierces through the grey clouds above. I won­der if I have ever expe­ri­enced such true wilder­ness.

After a brief 3 weeks at sea and with the spy ship still hang­ing on behind us, we decide to head back to port to refu­el the ship. When we leave again, the spy ship is still wait­ing for us, just out­side the Aus­tralian EEZ. Although they are eager­ly await­ing our arrival at the EEZ bound­ary to inter­cept and escort us again, we have man­aged to get out unno­ticed. We slipped through the net and dis­ap­peared into the vast ocean. Right now we are loose, some­where and ready to strike at a moment of our choos­ing. The whal­ing fleet is out there, the whales are out there and so are we. The crew is in good spir­its. We are all look­ing for­ward to a good few weeks. Every­one wants to make this work, every­one wants this mad­ness to end.

PHOTOS

Friend and ship’s pho­tog­ra­ph­er Michael Williams nor­mal­ly seeks out wildlife to shoot. His work focus­es on cap­tur­ing Aus­tralian’s diverse wildlife: birds, frogs, rep­tiles, mam­mals and in par­tic­u­lar doc­u­ment­ing endan­gered species in a bid to fur­ther their chance of sur­vival. Besides his amaz­ing work, he has also pub­lished some pic­tures from the first part of our cam­paign on his web­site:

http://www.itsawildlife.com.au
(click on ‘Spe­cial Col­lec­tions’ and then ‘Sea Shep­herd Oper­a­tion Waltz­ing Matil­da’)

CREW BLOG

The blog fea­tures posts from var­i­ous crew mem­bers and is updat­ed through­out the cam­paign. Check it out: http://www.seashepherd.org/matilda/crew-blog/

For all oth­er news: http://www.seashepherd.org