OPERATION SPILLWAY

LYON, FRANCE, DECEMBER 2014

From the office on the bank of the Rhône River, Alistair McDonnell can see the morning mist suspended like gossamer above the flowing water. For almost all of December, a heavy blanket of clouds has hung over Lyon, and the city is now in the process of moving into a silent, chilly Christmas slumber. McDonnell, the leader of Project Scale, Interpol’s new division against fisheries crime, is just a few days away from a much longed for Christmas holiday at home in Hastings.1

At Interpol’s headquarters, the last year can be summed up as a success. The police organization played a part in breaking up a ring that was smuggling uranium from Moldova, and they rounded up the backers of a syndicate smuggling ivory from Tanzania. In Central America, close to 30 tons of narcotics have been confiscated.

For Operation Spillway there is not much to celebrate for the time being. The secret operation’s foremost target is the pirate ships the Thunder and the Viking. For eight months, Alistair McDonnell has been pondering over how he can stop them.

Then, around lunch time on 17 December, Interpol’s Command and Coordination Centre receives a call from the Southern Ocean.2 Over the poor satellite connection they are able to pick up more or less that the caller introduces himself as Peter Hammarstedt. He explains that he is the shipmaster on the Bob Barker and that he has just found the vessel wanted by Interpol, the Thunder.

When the news reaches McDonnell’s office, he punches his fist into the air. This is the opportunity the British investigator has been waiting for. He quickly transforms portions of the office landscape into a “Situation Room” and marks the Thunder’s position on the electronic maps. He subsequently cancels the Christmas holiday. Operation Spillway is the result of persistent, long-term lobbying activity on the part of bureaucrats and environmentalists. Fisheries crime had long been brushed aside as a joke and held outside police priority areas, even though it had the characteristics of organized crime. Ship documents and fishing protocols were forged; inspectors and port authorities bribed. The ship crews subsisted on slave contracts and the profits were laundered into impenetrable corporate structures. It was a swindle that generated more than USD 20 billion a year.

In 2012, Norway and the USA took the initiative to appoint a committee designated to combat the illegal conditions at sea – “illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing”.3 The same autumn, Interpol carried out its first covert operation against the poaching of fish. Each of the fisheries officers in the respective Interpol member nations held random pieces of a confusing puzzle. They registered shipping arrivals and catch declarations, pirate ships were observed from the air, in one harbour there was a crew list, in another a fine had been issued. Combined they perhaps had enough information that it could be converted into evidence in criminal cases against the ships’ officers and backers.

A group of vessels appeared that was a clear target for Interpol: the fleet of trawlers and longline fishing vessels that were plundering the toothfish stock of the Antarctic. It was probably the most profitable and long-term illegal fisheries offensive in history. It took place in a delimited geographic area, it targeted a single species and it had been documented by hundreds of reports, books, newspaper articles and legal documents. Each ship could earn up to 5 million dollars annually. They posed a threat to the fish stocks and destroyed the economic means of sustenance for ordinary fishermen.4

In contrast to cocaine smugglers, who actively hid their illegal wares, the pirate trawlers were easy to follow, they were like “elephants in the snow”, Alistair McDonnell thought.5 Now they could test whether Interpol’s databases and communication systems would be effective in the fight against the fishing pirates.

Although the Thunder and the Viking have left countless clues behind them on land, the vessels are difficult to stop. The crimes are committed in international waters, the profits hidden in tax havens, and it is virtually impossible to induce those who know the operation from the inside to talk. The police’s most important “intelligence agents” are usually neighbours who sound the alarm, but at sea most consider themselves to be members of a professional brotherhood and they don’t snitch on one another. The pirate ships also operate in an area equivalent to 70 per cent of the earth’s surface.

In Operation Spillway McDonnell and his colleagues have carved out a strategy they hope will work. The ships are to be harassed and inspected at every single port of call. Charges are to be brought up and prosecution pursued for every tiny law infraction. He has named the strategy “Death by a thousand cuts”.

Now Sea Shepherd has its eyes and cameras glued to the Thunder around the clock, but Interpol’s notices on Paul Watson make any dialogue difficult. Sea Shepherd is also notorious for its unpredictability and lack of patience with the authorities. When McDonnell receives an email from Sea Shepherd’s Asia Director about finding the Thunder, he nonetheless spots an opportunity.

“Thank you for the information, we will monitor the position updates and material you release identifying the vessel,” McDonnell answers curtly.

He hopes Sea Shepherd will take the hint: Keep us updated at all times. Even if we don’t respond, we are paying attention.