Erstellt am: 17. 6. 2011 - 21:30 Uhr
Antarctic Activism: All's Whale That Ends Whale
It was really quite a coincidence. An elderly couple who I'd met on a plane en route from Singapore to Melbourne, had convinced me to come visit them at their home in Hobart, Tasmania. One of the two was an Austrian (born near Graz), but that coincidence is another story.
Approximately at the same time -literally, it must have been within a matter of hours- as my Tassie-bound flight arrived at the airport, two midnight-black activist ships settled into port, and their crews stepped out onto land for the first time in over three months.
Both of these ships belong to an organization called Sea Shepherd. The first one was called the Steve Irwin, and it won't appear very much in this story. The other, however, was The Bob Barker, a former Norwegian whaler and harpoon boat, now converted for use in a very different hunt.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Little did I know that I would soon board this vessel.
As an obsessive reader of international news sites, I had naturally heard of the Sea Shepherd, and I knew that they had made quite a splash (sorry) in the international media, for successfully disrupting the Japanese whaling fleets' efforts to hunt whales this year, enough so that they cut their losses and simply went home, months before they were legally obliged to.
Legally obliged to? If you asked the crew members of any Sea Shepherd ship, they would tell you that what the Japanese whalers are doing is already illegal, and hunting whales is in defiance of international law.
In fact, it is a bit of a grey area. Japan has a permit to kill up to 945 whales during the Antarctic summer period, because they have declared it to be for "scientific" purposes, which exempts them from the moratorium on whaling established by the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
For more general information about whaling, I recommend you go here.
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Aboard the Bob Barker
Back to my chance proximity to the Sea Shepherd ships. It was astonishingly easy to get on board and find potential interviewees. The Bob Barker was open to the public for guided tours, and the remaining crew very happy to answer questions. I got the impression that they were happy to get any and all media exposure, seemingly including bad press.
Bad press they have gotten in droves, and not only from pro-whaling governments and lobbies. Greenpeace (an organization which the founder of Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson, helped to establish once upon a time) labels their activism "eco-terrorism", making that one of the very few things that they would have in common with the Japanese whaling fleet.
Still, you can't deny it: their aggressive, boat-ramming, direct action approach gets results. For seven years, they have followed the Japanese whaling fleet into the Antarctic, and for seven years they have been a thorn in their collective side, saving the lives of thousands of whales and eventually resulting in the abandonment of this year's whale hunt.
There is a lot more I could say, but I'll let the crew speak instead.
Ship Manager: Andrea Gordon
Johnny Bliss, 2011
Originally a criminal defence lawyer in New York, she joined the Sea Shepherd after reading a magazine interview with Paul Watson, which impressed upon her that the best way to save marine wildlife was to actually go out there and do it.
So how long were you out on the sea?
"On the Bob Barker, we were out for three months, and we actually followed the whalers all the way over to Chile and back. So we pretty much circumnavigated half of Antarctica and back, like 20,000 miles..."
So what exactly did you do when you found the whalers?
"Our main objective was to catch up with the Nisshin Maru, and that's the whalers' factory ship. It's essentially a floating factory that processes any whales they kill, [which makes it] a floating slaughterhouse. When we catch up with the factory ship, we put our ship (500 tons of steel) in the way of their slipways, so they can't actually bring any whales on board."
Did you feel in any danger at any point?
She paused. "No, I didn't feel in any danger, because we do take a lot of precautions, and we take risks but they're calculated risks. However, last year, the whalers did actually sink one of our boats. [...] They almost killed the six people on board, but fortunately everybody was OK."
Sounds kinda dangerous to me.
"Yeah, I mean we're very much aware that these whalers do show disregard for human life, along with the lives of whales, and we do take all the steps that we need to, to mitigate those risks."
And last year was also three months, was it?
"It was about three months last year. That's one of the good things about the ship, the Bob Barker, is that we can be down there for quite a long time, so we're able to stay with the whaling fleet once we find them. That's actually one of the hardest things, is actually finding the whaling fleet, I mean the area that we have to search to locate them is just enormous."
When you find them... It's almost like sea battles, I imagine here.
She laughed. "It is, it is. It's a big game of cat and mouse down there, down in one of the farthest places in the world."
Bosun (Boatswain): Benjamin Potts
Johnny Bliss, 2011
One of the longest-standing members of the Sea Shepherd's "Operation No Compromise" in the Antarctic, Ben Potts, has graduated over the last four years from sleeping on the floor and in shared rooms, to finally having his very own cabin this year, which is considered a great luxury in these parts.
However, that said, it's still not much larger than a very big closet. This lent our interview a certain .. uhm.. intimacy.
How's it like being back on land?
"It's good, mate. It's nice to have some fresh vegetables and fruit and see different people, I guess… and just stop, and have some downtime."
Is it somewhat surreal?
"Yeah, it's really strange when you first get off a ship, and [you have] all this sensory overload almost, with colours and lights and strangers. We've been in each other's pockets for so long, that even people coming up to you and talking to you is a bit weird… and choice, you know. You come back and walk into a shop, and you don't know what you're trying to find!"
But back to Antarctica. Tell me about Antarctica.
"What we see on these trips is spectacular: massive tabletop icebergs of different colours and shapes and sizes, and lots of endangered species, endangered whale species, leopard seals, birds, big storms…"
Tell me about some of these storms.
"We sort of ended up in one the size of Australia once, the whole screen on the weather computer was just red. I mean, it's certainly not enjoyable, but it is rather exhilarating to get out on deck, and get swamped by waves. [But] you certainly come face-to-face with the dangers that you're exposed to down there. The other ship spent the last bit of our campaign searching for a Norwegian yacht that sunk in a massive storm down there."
Speaking of dangers, your confrontations with the whaling fleet are also nothing lightweight. I've heard that on a previous campaign, they actually managed to sink one of your ships, is that correct?
Johnny Bliss, 2011
"That's right. Last year's campaign, one of the Japanese whaling ships deliberately rammed and ran over one of our vessels, and virtually cut it in half. It was a carbon fibre boat, and they just took the whole nose off of it, and we tried to take it undertow, but it sank, and we were just lucky that no one was killed. All the guys were on top of the boat, and they got knocked out of the way. One guy got broken ribs, but I mean it was lucky. Because it went straight through their sleeping quarters, it's like we're sitting here, and a ship goes through the middle of this room."
Did you press charges?
"No one was willing to investigate the matter any further. The Australian maritime authority and New Zealand's maritime safety said that they weren't able to investigate it because the Japanese wouldn't provide them with any evidence. Yet we had five high definition video cameras filming the entire event and over forty witnesses, but just because the Japanese refused to cooperate, nothing came of it.
"We certainly don't have the law on our side, we don't have governments on our side, but we do have public opinion, and the world is watching us down there, and we make sure we bring the media along. [...] So there was a huge outrage over that incident. If anything, while it cost us a boat and risked the lives of our crew, that's what we're there to do, I mean it's a small price to pay if you can save a species from extinction."
Now what's the most difficult part of life on the ship?
"Even when you're resting, you're always on the ship. You can't just step off, and go down the street, and get away from it for the day. Even now we're in port, it's pretty hard to get off the ship. The problem with the state of the world's environment is you just can't rest. There's so many things that need doing, and there's just not enough people doing it."
Now, you're a man of words. Could you paint me a picture of some of the things you've seen in Antarctica?
"A few years ago, me and another fellow (Gilles) boarded one of the harpoon boats, and we were kept on board for a few days there, and while we were confined to our cabin, I was looking out the porthole, and a huge fin whale surfaced right outside, and it stayed with us for a little bit, and the last thing I saw was its tail flick, and I knew that was another one they weren't going to get... So you have these moments where [after] all of this hard work, somehow it feels like you are being thanked by the animals."
This Saturday's Reality Check Special
My interviews were quite a bit longer than this, but I figured I'd save a little for Saturday's Reality Check Special. Listen between 12-13 Uhr to hear about sea battles, massive storms, life on ship, and what motivates the Sea Shepherd crew members.