The time has come when speaking is not enough, applauding is not enough. We have to act. I urge you, every time you have an opportunity, make your opinions known by physical presence. Do it!
—JACQUES COUSTEAU
THE DELTA INFLATABLE BOAT SPED ACROSS the large blue swells as I concentrated on trying to slow my racing heart and focus my wired nerves. Taking slow deep breaths and mentally preparing myself for confrontation, I kept reinvisioning myself scaling the rail onto the deck of the 1,025-ton (929.9-metric-ton) harpoon ship. If we managed to successfully board the ship, we would at least survive the action, though that could involve spending the next months or years in Japanese incarceration. If we failed, we could be crushed between the vessels or fall into the freezing Antarctic waters and be blended into a human smoothie by the massive propeller. Neither was an inviting prospect to someone who had really only just begun their foray into direct action.
But this was definitely not the time for doubt. I had decided a long time ago to dedicate my life to the defense of the Earth, and now that Captain Paul Watson had given me the opportunity, I was not about to back down. I had come aboard the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's flagship, the M/V Robert Hunter, in July 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. Later to be renamed the M/V Steve Irwin, the ship still bore a large rusting scar ripped into the plate steel after a collision with a Japanese spotting vessel during the 2006 campaign. I would often stand out on the dock at night while on security watch and imagine what it would be like to stand on that bow as two great hunks of speeding metal came together in the frigid waters of the Antarctic.
The great boxy outline of the ships superstructure in the inky night sky, like some medieval fortress, spoke silently of purpose and the battle to come. The “Stevesy” waited patiently, creaking against the dockside for the time when the lines would be slipped and the race to save one thousand great whales in the southern oceans begun. My only wish was that I would be standing on that deck as she sailed out through the heads of Port Phillip Bay and due south to meet the roaring seas, shimmering ice, and ruthless whalers. My wish had been granted, and now come hell or high water. I would board a kill ship and let these whalers know face to face that I would not let them continue to kill whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary without a fight.
The Japanese fleet's harpoon ships, of which there are three, are like Grim Reapers to the whales, menacing-looking vessels that taper into long, streamlined hulls and have raised bows where platforms for the harpoons are located. After a whale is hit in the guts with a grenade-tipped harpoon, it is then dragged into the ship to be peppered with rifle fire or electrocuted, then tied by their tail. With the whale inverted and drowning in its own blood, it is dragged back to the factory ship for butchering. These are ships designed to kill, but the design of the kill ship was also its weakness. Its low-lying deck, almost level with the waterline, opened itself up to a boarding from an inflatable boat.
The plan was to board one of these vessels and order the captain to cease his whaling operations, as it was in violation of the 1986 global moratorium on commercial whaling, Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, and CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) treaty, as well as numerous other laws. The idea was just radical enough to potentially halt whaling operations and bring the issue to the forefront of the world's attention. At the end of the day, that was what we were here to do. The diplomatic talks, banner waving, and petitions of the world's governments and mainstream environmental corporations had failed for twenty years to bring about an end to whaling by Japan, Norway, and Iceland. It was time for a change.
The great decimation of whale populations during much of the 19th and 20th centuries resulted in the formation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC ) in 1946 to regulate commercial whaling. But for decades, it had been deadlocked between nations who wished to transform it from a body that oversaw the continued exploitation of whales to one that would conserve and try to return whale populations from the brink of extinction. Since the 1986 moratorium, only scientific and cultural hunts were allowed, and Japan therefore claimed their annual hunt of nearly one thousand whales— including endangered whales in the Antarctic—as a matter of “science.” Japan was using the “science” loophole to continue its commercial exploitation despite the development of nonlethal research methods. This simple relabeling of the hunt as “research” and the power Japan wields in international trade relations has fundamentally crippled the IWC and the conservation of all whale species.
But on the day we boarded, January 15, 2008, the Australian Federal Court ruled that the Japanese company carrying out the whaling operations in the whale sanctuary were acting illegally under Australian law.
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AS WE APPROACHED, THE GRAY STERN OF the harpoon ship grew larger until one could make out the name Yushin Maru No. 2 printed in English and Japanese. Yushin means “brave new” and was meant to herald the resumption of Japan's commercial whaling industry with the construction of several ultramodern harpoon vessels. Yet in our action, we might take the industry back years in economic losses. In a stroke of luck, there was not one whaler in sight. The stink bombs, which the Delta crew had hurled all over the decks, had done their job in driving the whalers inside to escape the overwhelmingly acrid smell of rotten butter.
Dave, the boat operator, brought us in on the port side, but as we approached the gunnels, the harpoon boat increased speed and started to bank sharply from side to side—sending the lower deck, where we needed to board from the waterline, high into the air several meters above our heads and presenting us with a solid wall of slippery plate steel. The ensuing bow wave formed from the displacement of water from underneath the ship almost flipped our small boat upside down. Dave struggled to regain control and extract us from the precarious position.
As the ship leveled out, I found myself yelling into Dave's ear, “Go go go go go!!” I could see our chances slipping away and wanted to get onboard before the whalers came swarming out and onto the decks to repel us. The Delta increased power and pushed its starboard quarter into the slick gray side of the harpoon ship. My fellow boarder Giles Lane leapt from the bow over an access gate, while I struggled to move from the rear of the boat to gain a hold on the thick diameter railing used to secure the whales. My hands could barely hold the wet metal as the ship once again banked hard to port and the weight of my backpack combined with the downward motion of the railing almost sent me into the freezing water rushing below at a speed of twenty knots. Just get over the railing! was the only thought running through my head, and I threw a leg over and propelled myself headfirst onto the deck as Giles grabbed my backpack and helped haul me over.
In the time it took me to pull out a video camera, the crew responded, and one of the whalers ran down and grabbed me, pushing me up against the bulkhead, followed by several more, until both of us were pinned to the ship wall. Our Delta boat veered off, and we were alone with what was like a mob against us.
“Take us to the captain!” I yelled.
“We have a message for the captain,” Giles said.
I tried to quickly produce the letter I had inside my Mustang suit, but my hands were forced away by one of the crew and then zip-tied to the handrailing, so I was all but immobilized. Soon after he was tied up, Giles's circulation was being cut off by his wrenched-down plastic cuffs, and he screamed out for them to be loosened. The whalers suddenly disappeared and left us on the open deck as the ship turned hard to port, sending chilling sub-zero water flooding over the lower deck and immersing us up to our waists. A chill set in; I hadn't considered water boarding the deck.
Minutes later, the water cascaded below, and the whalers returned in helmets and life jackets and proceeded to cut me free. The captain of the vessel, in his dark sunglasses, was yelling furiously from the upper deck and motioning with his hands to get us off. Two of the bigger members of the crew grabbed me underneath the arms, and the harpooner, with gunner written on his helmet, proceeded to lift me off the ground and toward the railing. There was no way I was going into the water from a ship traveling at such high speeds and from a position so close to the massive blender of a prop circulating below. I struggled with all my might and managed to free my leg from the harpooner's grip and kick off the railing, sending all four of us sprawling on the deck.
After the failure of trying to throw us back to the sea, the whalers marched us up a stairway onto the upper deck behind the wheelhouse. Ropes were produced from everywhere, and as in some Looney Tunes cartoon where the victim is tied in masses of rope to the railway tracks, we were securely fastened to the satellite dish mast. Even with the captain screaming in Japanese in my face, I was able to produce the letter from my shirt front. “You're under arrest!” I yelled rather ironically. The captain refused to take the document, but a tall guy dressed in black came over and took the letter from my hands. Giles and I were left in this position while the crew went off to man the fire hoses, taking aim at the Delta boat and our helicopter flying overhead with cameras rolling.
After what seemed like an eternity since we boarded, we were hustled in to the bridge and below for interrogation. The man dressed in black turned out to be the second officer of the ship and could speak rudimentary English. I pulled out my “dirty” Japanese dictionary full of colorful insults and humorous slang words and tried to find something appropriate to say from the extremely small selection. “Excuse my shitty Japanese,” I pronounced terribly in Japanese.
This broke the ice a little, and the whalers all laughed. Then the second officer said, “Excuse my shitty English.” We then informed him that their whaling operations are illegal under Australian and international law, that they were targeting endangered species, and that they should cease and desist and leave these waters immediately. We stated that we were here to deliver this message, pointing to the letter, and return to our ship, pointing out the porthole toward the Delta boat, which was still under chase outside. They were not impressed.
As the harpoon ship sped out of Australian waters and into international waters, the helicopter and small boat were forced to return to the Irwin without us, as they were running low on fuel. Giles and I were escorted to a cabin where a guard was placed by the door. We demanded contact with our ship and respective governments but were denied both. The whalers invited us to dine with the captain, but we sensed a publicity-photo setup and, not wishing to eat with a criminal, we refused and ate a vegetarian meal in our cabins. Later, we found out that the head of the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR ), the hack science body in Japan, had said that we had eaten whale meat. It was becoming a media war, while we were out of site and unable to tell the world what was really going on.
Meanwhile, footage of the action was being transmitted around the world via the Steve Irwin, and in the ensuing media storm, we became the center of worldwide attention and political negotiations at the highest levels. The Japanese were offering only to release us on the condition that Sea Shepherd would refrain from harassing their whaling operations and, in doing so, had turned this into a hostage situation. Making demands in exchange for the release of captives is a tactic usually reserved for terrorist organizations.
All this was unbeknownst to us at the time as we attempted to find an escape from the cabin we were confined to. Our greatest fear was that the whalers would begin hunting again with us on board. Should this have happened, or if we were taken back to Japan, we did not plan to make it easy for our captors by causing as much trouble as possible. Each hour we would demand to speak to the second officer, requesting contact with our respective government via satellite phone. But the captain refused each time, as he was waiting to receive instructions from Tokyo.
The whalers requested a statement from us saying that we were okay and being treated well, so that they could quell the international public outrage that was developing. We knew this was our only leverage in the situation, so our reply was this:
Thank you for your offer of traditional Japanese hospitality. So far, our experience of it has been to be assaulted, tied up, and almost thrown overboard. But at least we were not harpooned and electrocuted first like the whales that you murder.
—Ben Potts & Giles Lane
The statement was taken and faxed to the factory ship for translation and then forwarded to Tokyo. Half an hour later, the second officer, who was obviously under a lot of pressure, returned sweating profusely. “You cannot say this; please, please make another statement,” he pleaded with us. We refused to make another statement until we had made contact with our governments. We knew this was our ticket to be transferred off the ship.
More time passed, and we counted the twenty-four-hour mark on our watches. We were beginning to think that we may be headed back to Japan. Giles paced back and forth across the tiny cabin like a caged animal, trying to think of an escape from this predicament. I was only too happy to rest on the top bunk. I figured to myself, there is an upside to all this. I had finally gotten out of the daily chores of cleaning toilets, scrubbing decks, and washing up the Steve Irwin —this was a well-earned break as far as I could determine. But as the hours ticked by, the claustrophobia of confinement began to creep into my consciousness.
I scanned out the porthole at the sun, which never sets at this latitude and this season, sitting low on the horizon. Its pale light reflected off the unusually calm ocean, and I tried to squash down the thoughts of incarceration in a foreign land and the possibility of having to endure the rest of the whaling season on this cetacean Death Star harpoon ship. Suddenly, the dark outline of a huge endangered fin whale broke the golden surface off the starboard side, and a great mist of breath was exhaled. The great leviathan sprouted again and, with its enormous black tail fluke raised high, waved us farewell as it descended to safety. At least one whale had been spared on this day because of our actions.
A young whaler no more than twenty years old who knew a little English had been stationed to guard our cabin door and gave us the opportunity to have a less serious dialogue than the ones we were having with the second officer. We asked him if this was a good job and whether he was earning good money. “No good job, no good money,” he replied, shaking his head. A little time later, he knocked on our cabin door and was holding a videocassette. “I recommend, I recommend!” he motioned, bowing his head, showing a sign of respect.
I took the cassette, and we watched it on the TV that we had found in a cupboard in our cabin. The video was a Japanese animation called Princess Mononoke, a story of civilization's encroachment on the spirits of the forest and man's war against the natural world. The fact that this young whaler understood why we were there and had communicated this knowledge through this videotape gave me great hope that our actions would break through to the youth of Japan, despite the establishment's propaganda. In fact, our one action had finally pushed the issue of whaling through to the Japanese media, crushing the silence that had been there for decades. While a debate began to simmer in Japanese politics, one Japanese minister questioned why an industry that makes Japan no money, but which so severely damages its reputation overseas, continues to exist.
After sixty hours of tense negotiations between the prime minister of Australia and foreign ministers of Japan, coupled with a marathon of media assault by Captain Paul Watson, I received a knock on our cabin door. I was taken to a communications room, a radio mic was shoved in my face, and on the receiving end of it was an Australian government official. “Are you and Giles Lane willing to cooperate with Australian Customs, in a transfer to the Oceanic Viking, and from there to the Steve Irwin?” I exclaimed, “Bloody oath! Come and get us.” No prison, I thought to myself. We live to fight another day. Several hours after the phone call, an enormous blue and yellow ship appeared outside of our porthole. With great relief, we were escorted out onto the deck, as a smaller fast boat approached with a mean-looking armed boarding party. Just as I was leaving the cabin, I handed the young whaler a small koala bear with a t-shirt saying I Love Australia. He smiled from ear to ear.
After a happy return to our crewmates on the Steve Irwin, big hugs, and congratulations, we learned the full extent of the publicity surrounding the incident. I was immediately placed to work, speaking to journalists from around the world to the point of exhaustion. Working sixteen, sometimes twenty hours straight. The story was front-page news from New York to Tokyo and made the world know that a commercial whale hunt was still continuing in the Southern Ocean off Antarctica, despite the laws. Most important, we had finally managed to breach the silence over the whaling debate within Japan itself. The action had also prevented the whaling fleet from whaling for more than a week during the chase—our boarding and subsequent release preventing the whalers from killing up to 10 whales a day. We took solace in the fact that our Sea Shepherd campaign in total had saved the lives of more than 500 whales—half of the Japanese target of 935 minke and 50 endangered fin whales—with a cost in the millions to the Japanese government and whaling industry.
Today, I am still serving with Sea Shepherd on board the M/V Bob Barker after having completed my third campaign to the Antarctic. The stakes have been raised. In 2010, one of our ships, the Ady Gill, was deliberately rammed and sunk, and its skipper, Pete Bethune, arrested and put on trial in Japan when he boarded another harpoon ship. Despite the costs and the risks, we have saved thousands of whales from a brutal death. It's a battle for the sanctity of life in our vulnerable oceans. It's a battle of which I am proud to be a part. And it's a battle that continues today.
PHOTO BY JO-ANNE MCARTHUR
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Benjamin Potts is a co-star on the hit TV series Whale Wars on Animal Planet, bringing the plight of whales into the homes of millions of Americans. He is currently working with the pirates of Sea Shepherd in preparation for the next Antarctic whale defense campaign. The battle for whales continues in the Southern Ocean and Sea Shepherd will not surrender until the Japanese whaling fleet ceases their illegal operations.
PHOTO BY SUBHASHNI RAJ
Twenty-five