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RAID ON THE HIGH SEAS

THE INDIAN OCEAN, FEBRUARY 2015

The operation was planned in detail and cleared all the way up to the minister level. For the first time the Australian authorities would board one of “The Bandit 6” vessels in international waters.

On the morning of 27 February, the group of silent, armed agents dressed in black climb on board the Kunlun.

The Peruvian captain Alberto Zavaleta Salas is asleep while the plans are being made. When he is awakened and learns what is about to happen, he trots up to the bridge. There, right beside the Kunlun, he sees a strange and awkward military-grey ship with three hulls and the word “CUSTOMS” painted in clear letters on the side.

A feeling of invincibility had spread on board the Kunlun after they had outmanoeuvred the battleship from New Zealand. During the last weeks of January they filled the cold storage room with 181 tons of toothfish worth in excess of 3 million dollars, but then Sea Shepherd showed up and chased them away from the fish bank. Now their course was set for Sri Lanka.

On the bridge the fishing captain Sevilla is working frenetically to ward off the pending catastrophe. Over the radio he tells the captain of the Australian patrol ship ACV Triton that they are in international waters and that the agents are not authorized to board. But his words fall on deaf ears.

It is the first time the Kunlun is boarded on the high seas. On the bridge there are documents lying about the authorities must not see.

The first thing the agents ask for is the captain. Sevilla indicates the shipmaster Zavaleta Salas, who points back at the fishing captain Sevilla. But the Spanish fishing captain speaks English and he has the crew list, which states that Zavaleta Salas is the Kunlun’s captain – and on paper, responsible for the ship. When the agents ask Zavaleta Salas for his name, address and telephone number, he reluctantly obeys. What he has feared throughout the entire voyage is now in the process of happening. Everything is rigged to make him the scapegoat, the one to be sacrificed so the fishing captain Sevilla and the others will be spared taking responsibility for the ship’s catalogue of sins.

On the mere suspicion of pirate activity, slave traffic, illegal broadcasting, statelessness or that the ship is from their own country, the Australian agents could force their way on board.1 Now they finally had a pretext. The authorities of Equatorial Guinea have confirmed that the Kunlun is not flagged in the country. The Kunlun is probably sailing under a false flag. In order to check whether or not the ship is stateless, they must inspect all the papers and find the owner.

Arresting the ship and forcing it to land in Australia is not an option, since the Kunlun has not been fishing in Australian waters and there are no Australian citizens on the ship.

The customs agents have been instructed to document the cargo, acquire the ship’s documents and search for emails, telephone numbers and scraps of paper with names and addresses. On the bridge they find the telephone numbers of several members of the Vidal syndicate in Galicia, emails containing messages from the ship owner, receipts, illegal gillnets and data documenting the catch and where it was from.

They also make another surprising find. The Kunlun has been monitoring the movements of Australia’s large research ship, the Aurora Australis. The only thing they can’t find is the documents proving that the ship has two identities.

After the raid the Kunlun is permitted to sail on. For the bird of ill omen, Alberto Zavaleta Salas, the adversity feels endless. When he receives the order to set his course for Phuket in Thailand, he has the feeling that he is headed for his own downfall.

For almost 20 years the Australian authorities have been trying to stop the pirate fleet, but that it was the pirates’ arrogance that would prove to be their greatest vulnerability was something Glen Salmon, the man in charge of the work, had not anticipated. Formerly the pirate fleet sailed under real flags and with genuine documents. Now they evidently used their imagination and forged documents to pretend they had all the formalities in order. They believed they were untouchable, Salmon thinks.

When Salmon starts going through the materials confiscated on board, he is able to piece together large segments of the mission the Kunlun has been on, as well as who has been giving the ship its orders.

He burns the evidence onto 17 DVDs and sends them to the authorities in Spain and to “Operation Spillway”.

On the Bob Barker Peter Hammarstedt starts the day by describing the drama that took place west of the Cocos Islands.

“No word yet as to whether there will be an arrest. The Kunlun must have headed home after the Sam Simon left them. Must have been a very bad season for them,” he says to applause from the crew.

When he comes up onto the bridge and studies the Thunder through his binoculars, he becomes convinced that the news about the boarding has reached the ship. All the fishing gear has been removed from the deck.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they are destroying evidence and that it is an indication of their being ready to head home,” he says on the bridge.

The jubilation of the morning meeting evaporates when the crew hears that the Kunlun has been allowed to continue sailing. First mate Adam Meyerson leans over the map table and shakes his head in despair over the Australian authorities.

“Wow! Those guys are pretty weak.”2