13

THE SHIPMASTER

CHIMBOTE, PERU, NOVEMBER 2014

As the Thunder sailed toward the Antarctic in November, a stocky 47-year-old with a broad, thickset face and a wild, mane of black hair boarded the bus that would carry him from his home city of Chimbote to Lima, the capital of Peru. There was nothing to disclose his identity as a ship’s officer on a vessel that for years had been fishing in secret in the Antarctic. In his breast pocket he had a plane ticket and a reference from the ship agent in Malaysia.

“It is hereby confirmed that Mr. Alberto Zavaleta Salas is employed by F.C.S. Trading & Fishery. He will travel to Hang Nadim, Batam to sign on with the vessel MV Kunlun.”

When the bus started moving and turned out onto the barren desert plains encircling the Pan American Highway, Alberto Zavaleta Salas left one catastrophe behind to travel into another.1

Chimbote was once a sleepy fishing village with an inviting harbour and a good selection of hotels for seaside holiday-makers. At dusk the fleet of brightly coloured fishing boats sailed out into one of the world’s most productive banks to fish the Peruvian anchovy. On one of these ships, Alberto Zavaleta Salas used to accompany his grandfather and later his father, both captains. He was born into the world’s largest fishery enterprise, the Peruvian “anchovy boom”, which would transform the slumbering Chimbote into Peru’s most powerful fishing port. When the fishing was industrialized and the news spread of the enormous fortunes that accompanied the catches, droves of restless men found their way to the city. They came from the slum districts of Lima and the impoverished villages at the foot of the Andes mountains in search of a wage and a new life in the protein bonanza.

The whores and fortune hunters followed and the slum districts grew on the mountainsides and the perimeters of the desert. In the city, which formerly was blessed with a single traffic light and only one paved street, lorries now thundered past loaded down with anchovies on the way to the more than 50 factories where the fish was boiled down into fishmeal. At its peak the anchovy was “the most heavily exploited fish in world history”.2

A penetrating stench of rotten fish hung over the city. It came seeping out along with the greyish-black smoke from the smokestacks of the fishmeal factories, and forced its way into every corner of Chimbote. It was said that even the steaks there smelled and tasted of fish.

Wastewater and fish blood were pumped straight into the ocean. Allergies and skin diseases spread through the neighbourhoods closest to the factories, protests were countered with imprisonments and some of the more prominent environmentalists were even accused of belonging to terrorist organizations.

One tragedy would follow on the heels the other. When El Niño came barrelling in across the coast of Peru, the current of warm, oligotrophic water led to the collapse of the already severely decimated anchovy stock. One after another the fishmeal factories shut down. In the end the destitution and unemployment was so extensive that assistance organizations had to distribute food to thousands of fishermen and port and factory workers in Chimbote.3 Alberto Zavaleta Salas continued sailing ships that fished close to his home city. There was fish to be found, but the largest ship owners were awarded the quotas and Zavaleta Salas would sometimes be out at sea for a week and then remain inactive on land for a month. Although he was a shipmaster, in the end it was not even possible to be hired as part of the ordinary crew.

It is difficult to say whether what happened next was a blessing or a curse for Alberto Zavaleta Salas. After having subsisted on random odd jobs, he was hired as a captain on the Kenyan-flagged fishing vessel the Sakoba, which operated off the coast of East Africa. When he was home on shore leave in Peru, the Sakoba was boarded by Somali pirates and sailed towards Harardhere, 300 kilometres northeast of Mogdadishu – the dusty fishing village that had been given the nickname “the piracy capital of the world”.

At a loss, out of work and with unending money disputes with his ex-wife, Zavaleta Salas once again found himself wandering around Chimbote. In the spring of 2012 he came across an advert from the Panama registered company Red Line Ventures, which needed crew for a fishing vessel. When he contacted the ship agent, he learned that the ship the Huang He 22 was going to the Antarctic. That was an opportunity he did not want to miss out on.

The Huang He 22 would later be known as the pirate ship Kunlun wanted by Interpol – one of “The Bandit 6”, a ship observed several times in the vicinity of the Thunder.

Alberto Zavaleta Salas is one of the few pirate captains ever who have dared to come forward with their story.

Late in the evening on one of the last days of November in 2014, Alberto Zavaleta Salas lands at the airport in Batam. A dinghy takes him out to the Kunlun’s anchoring site, a one-and-a-half-hour journey from the coast. As he climbs up the ladder, he notices that the name of the ship is no longer the Kunlun, but instead the Taishan.

Although on paper he is a shipmaster, he is assigned an ordinary cabin that he must share with a taciturn and melancholy chief engineer from Ribeira, Spain.

It is Zavaleta Sala’s fifth expedition to the Antarctic, and this time he notices that there is an uneasy atmosphere on the ship. They have problems procuring enough fuel, there is a mix-up in the order for provisions and just hours before they are about to set sail to the south, one of the other Peruvian officers decides to sign off.

“Either things have already gone to hell or they are going to hell. I would rather wait for four months on land than go along,” he says to Zavaleta Salas before disappearing in the dinghy.

Serafin Vidal, the shipping company employee with responsibility for crew recruitment, wants people who don’t ask too many questions, who are not plagued by problems from the past and who can collaborate and keep their mouths shut. The Spanish officers on the Kunlun are paid between 6,000 and 8,000 dollars a month plus a share of the catch. As a shipmaster, Alberto Zavaleta Salas’ salary is 2,700 dollars a month. He sends 2,000 of this home to his wife and spends the rest on cigarettes and telephone costs. On a cargo ship he could have earned far more and without risk. In addition to feeling irritated about the pay, he has constant confrontations with the fishing captain José Regueiro Sevilla, the ship owner family’s most trusted man on the Kunlun.

Alberto Zavaleta Salas fears that it is he who will be sacrificed should the ship be arrested, that it is he who will have to rot in jail in an unknown port, while the Spanish officers will go free. He therefore carries a mobile phone in the pocket of his trousers at all times. He secretly records fragments of conversations on the bridge. When he is instructed to tear up pieces of paper, he gathers them and hides them in his cabin. When he is asked to delete emails, he saves them. He secures pictures of the officers who do not want to be photographed and he films the Kunlun’s fish factory, the effective assembly line that sends millions of dollars straight into the pockets of the ship owner’s family. One day he may find use for the recordings.

On the voyage out of the Riau Archipelago the Kunlun maintains a good distance away from Singapore, where there may be coast guard vessels. Then they set their course for the Cocos Islands – the atoll located between Australia and Sri Lanka. Zavaleta Salas knows the sailing route well; it is the same every time.

In 28 days they will reach the ice edge by the Banzare Bank.

On the evening of 19 December, 300 nautical miles off the Cocos Islands, they change the name from the Taishan to the Kunlun. The ship is equipped with two sets of documents; one of these is hidden behind a trap door in the cabin of one of the Indonesian crew members. On board there are also stamped and signed ship’s documents that the officers can fill out themselves if they should need a new identity quickly. They have a miniature printing press in the form of a simple set of stamps and a cardboard box full of flags from countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania and Panama.

Sensitive information from computers on the bridge is stored on mobile hard drives that can be easily hidden or thrown into the ocean and everything in the way of receipts from the ship agent in Batam is shredded and thrown overboard. Should the information fall into the wrong hands, it could lead to disclosing the identity of the ship’s true owner.

In the course of the past ten years, the ship has been assigned at least ten names and been flagged in at least five countries. The Kunlun is a floating and inveterately persistent offender, a pioneer in what would become the world’s most lucrative poaching of fish. The ship was fined in South Africa for illegal shark cargo; it was blacklisted and denied access by ports all over the world. Finally, the Kunlun was so open and shameless in its devastating activities that the trawler was debated in the Australian parliament.4

The ship now also has the eyes of the Australian authorities on it. An Orion plane from Australia’s Air Force sees three ships pass the Cocos Islands on the way into the Antarctic.5 Along with the Kunlun the flight crew also sees the ship that was once painted white, the Songhua.

The true commander on the Songhua is the aging and legendary fishing captain “El Diablo” from Ribeira in Spain, a hardy veteran of the Antarctic. He has received the nickname for his ruthless treatment of his crew. But “The Devil” also has his more light-hearted qualities. He is the only one of the fishing captains who regularly invites his crew out on the town when they put in at port. The Songhua is also the youngest of the three vessels, and for the insurance agents on land who receive detailed reports on how much fish is hauled on board, the Songhua is the hardest worker.

The captain of the third ship, the Yongding, is the 40-something Juan Manuel Núñez Robles, a man with a fondness for whisky and the good life. He will later claim that the expedition destroyed both his life and his marriage.6

The Perlon is already at Banzare Bank, where the fishing captain has started what will be one of his better seasons.

The Viking, the first ship to be wanted by Interpol, is also out on a mission. Few know where the vessel is located, but on board a wild Christmas party is being planned at which cold beer, sparkling wine, barbecued meat and ice cream will be served and they will dance the jenka, a Finnish folk dance.7

Soon Alberto Zavaleta Salas will sail into the largest ship search in the history of the Antarctic, a handful of ships caught up in a game of cat and mouse at the bottom of the world.

The pursuit of the Thunder has already been underway for one week.