20

A BLOODY NIGHTMARE

THE STOREGG BANK, FEBRUARY 2015

596 metres. 445 metres. 262 metres. On the echo sounder, the Sea Shepherd Captain Sid Chakravarty can see the Storegg Bank rising up steeply beneath him. The Sam Simon is located less than 50 nautical miles from the mainland of Antarctica, the cloud cover is light and the visibility unusually clear. The remote Storegg Bank is the ideal location for fishing vessels seeking to avoid detection, Chakravarty thinks.

The stinking evidence from the Thunder lies on deck. Six weeks earlier, the Sam Simon came sailing into the Banzare Bank to haul up the gillnets from which the Thunder had fled. After the first 30 consecutive hours of work on rough seas and amidst dense snowfall, Chakravarty had to divide the bone-tired crew up into four-hour shifts to ensure that nobody collapsed. It was a bloody nightmare. There was no end to the nets. After three weeks of toil, more than 70 kilometres of nets lay in huge coils on the deck of the Sam Simon. Along with skates, jellyfish and crabs, they pulled out 1,400 toothfish in different stages of decomposition. It was a catch that would have brought in millions of dollars in profits for the Thunder’s owner. Operation Spillway wanted the nets as evidence against officers and ship owners.1 After all the hard work, the Sam Simon continued west in search of the five members of “The Bandit 6” who were still on the run.

Now Chakravarty is hoping to search the Storegg Bank before the wind shifts to the north bringing with it new snow squalls and fog.2 The sunrise is glimmering an almost gaudy bright red.3 Chakravarty is standing with his cup of morning coffee in his hand and his eyes on the radar when he sees what he is looking for: A signal that can be two unknown ships.

Then he grabs the telephone, calls Peter Hammarstedt and tells him that he will reach the targets in the course of 15 minutes. He then gives the order that all the portholes are to be sealed in case of a collision. Slowly it comes into view, the rusty bow that had once been white. It is the Yongding.

“Ask everybody to stand by if these guys don’t move. We’re not going to be scared by these guys for sure,” Chakravarty orders, before calling up the Yongding and asking the ship to leave the area.

The pirate vessel does not respond, but suddenly veers, pointing its bow straight at the Sam Simon. It looks as if it is going to attack. If the Yongding wants to put the Sam Simon out of commission, the mate will have to ram it amidships – by the engine room.

But the Yongding speeds past the Sam Simon on its port side, clearing it by a scant 10 metres.

“He steered away, that fucking chicken,” Sid Chakravarty bursts out, before he sees the Yongding disappear to the east and out of the Storegg Bank. Instead of starting a chase he decides to find and confront the Kunlun, which is also located in the area.

When Shipmaster Alberto Zavaleta Salas catches sight of the pirate flag on the bow of the Sam Simon and hears the call on the radio, he does not respond. In the past few days, the Kunlun has only put out short chains of nets in case they have to flee the area. Now they draw the curtains in the wheelhouse shut to prevent being photographed and sail straight into the pack ice.

After having been chased for six days, the Kunlun changes its course for the northwest. For the Sam Simon, the change in course is the worst imaginable. It brings her away from land in a situation in which the ship already has too little fuel. After consulting with the crew, Captain Chakravarty decides to terminate the pursuit of the Kunlun. He sets their new course for a point located 750 nautical miles southeast of South Africa.

There the Thunder and the Bob Barker are adrift on the whims of the wind and the weather.

Every day at noon, Chief Engineer Ervin Vermeulen comes up onto the bridge of the Bob Barker with an overview of how much fuel is left in the tanks. On some days, Peter Hammarstedt does a detailed calculation to determine for how long they can continue the chase. The answer depends upon their speed, the weather and the wind. But as long as the two ships are operating without using the engines, it is only the generators that are consuming fuel. If it continues like this, they can be at sea for two years, is what he figures out.

The result of the calculation causes Hammarstedt to leave the bridge; he clambers through the galley and into the dry storage room, where the buckets of rice and beans are stacked up against the bulkheads.

“Do we have enough food to last for two years?” he asks.

“We have enough rice and beans to survive for two years,” the Chief Cook Priya Cooper replies.

The answer is clear enough. He leaves the galley, continues through the narrow, oblong messroom and into the lounge. There he gathers the crew for a meeting. The proposition he now wants to make can have consequences he would prefer to avoid.

“Worst case scenario we will be at sea for two years. The food is going to decline and we really don’t know how this is going to end,” he says.

Then he gives the crew a choice. They can stay on, continuing the chase and be stuck at sea for several months, in the worst case, for years.

“The Sam Simon will be here in two weeks. Those who want, can sail with her to Mauritius and travel home from there,” he says.

When he leaves the lounge, Hammarstedt prays a silent prayer that the chief engineer will not abandon the ship. Erwin Vermeulen is his most trusted man and probably the only ship’s engineer in the world who is a vegan. He is also a dedicated and loyal activist who spent 64 days in custody in a Japanese remand prison for an altercation with a dolphin trainer.

Peter Hammarstedt gives the crew 24 hours to decide whether they want to continue on the chase or leave the Bob Barker.