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THE SNAKE IN PARADISE

PHUKET, MARCH 2015

On the evening of 4 March, the fishing vessel the Kunlun is transformed into the freighter the Taishan. The operation is done in the twinkling of an eye: using some well-worn cardboard stencils, one of the crew members paints the new name on the wheelhouse and the rust-corroded bow. Then Captain Alberto Zavaleta Salas sails his wanted ship in towards the port of the tourist paradise of Phuket. In the cold storage room there are 181 tons of first class toothfish worth almost 4 million dollars.

They have outmanoeuvred the Navy, been chased by Sea Shepherd and were boarded by the Australian authorities. Now all that remains is to offer the authorities of Thailand a credible story to enable them to get the illegal cargo through customs.

At the port in Phuket, the duty paid on the cargo is for the far less expensive species the seabass. The fishing captain José Regueiro Sevilla explains that it was transshipped from another fishing vessel and that it will now be dispatched by ship to Vietnam. After the port bureaucrats have provided their stamps of approval, six freezer containers are transported by lorry to the deep-sea harbour in Songkhla, 500 kilometres southeast of Phuket.

Then Alberto Zavaleta Salas drops the rusty hulk’s anchor off the coast of the luxury holiday destination Sri Panwa – a well-guarded playground for jet-setters and celebrities from the entertainment industry. There the ship remains, bobbing like a rotten branch in an infinity pool.

While the Taishan pitches in the clear, turquoise water off the coast of Phuket, one of the officers of the Marine Police in Phuket is made aware of the Interpol notices for the Kunlun. The authorities in Australia and New Zealand have not given up on the idea of ending the Kunlun’s pillaging missions once and for all.1 They ask the special investigators of the Thai customs service to inspect the Taishan and the cargo the crew brought ashore. When they break into the containers, the fish they find is not the type that was cleared through customs. It is the Kunlun’s “white gold”.

When a few hours later the maritime police board the ship to put it under arrest, they are met by an appalling sight: the vessel is filthy and the sanitary conditions atrocious. They also notice another detail. There is no fishing gear on board.

On the journey north, somewhere halfway between the Antarctic mainland and the southern tip of South Africa, the crew packed kilometres of gillnets into plastic bags and dumped them over board. In secret, Alberto Zavaleta Salas made a note of the coordinates: 52 06 04 S 40 48 70 E.

The atmosphere on the Kunlun is just as oppressive as the tropical night outside. The cargo has been confiscated, nobody is allowed to leave the ship, even the fishing captain has been charged with document forgery. Zavaleta Salas is at risk of being held responsible for having illegally changed the vessel’s name and flag – from Equatorial Guinea to Indonesia. The police have also discovered that he is not qualified to sail vessels weighing in excess of 300 tons. The Kunlun is more than twice that size. In newspapers all over the world he is identified by name as the pirate captain; some even claim that he is in jail. The only thing Alberto Zavaleta Salas can think about is how he is going to get home.

During the entire voyage he has shared a cabin with the first engineer, a robustly built 57-year-old from Ribeira in Spain. For the past few weeks the Spaniard has been reticent and silent; he keeps to himself, as if he is carrying some enormous sorrow. When he is asked to go into the engine room, sometimes he just shakes his head, crawls into his berth and lies down facing the bulkhead. He is constantly complaining to Alberto Zavaleta Salas about insomnia. One night he tells him that he has money problems at home in Galicia.

Just as Alberto Zavaleta Salas is about to fall asleep he registers that the light in the upper berth is switched on. Then he hears the engineer climbing down from the berth, followed by a dull thump. As he turns over to face the room, he sees the Spaniard collapsing onto the little writing desk and against the wardrobe.

Is he drunk? Zavaleta Salas wonders, but then he catches sight of the blood dripping down onto the floor. He throws himself out of bed and notices that the man is hanging forward, lifeless, his body shaking as if ravaged by shivering contractions. He slaps him on the cheek and shouts his name, but the man doesn’t respond.

Then he discovers the deep gashes in both the engineer’s wrists. Alberto Zavaleta Salas steps over him, opens the door leading out into the ship’s corridor and calls for help.

It takes hours for the water ambulance to arrive. The engineer is already bandaged up and conscious, he begs Zavaleta Salas to accompany him to the hospital in Phuket, and to call his family home in Ribeira.

He has slashed his wrists with a razor blade, but all he says is that he’s afraid.

When the police arrive, he refuses to be interrogated.

Sea Shepherd’s founder Paul Watson is the first to applaud the arrest and investigation of the Kunlun in Thailand. But information has also been leaked from the local investigation indicating that the Kunlun will be chased from Thailand without being penalized.

“That’s the problem with illegal fishing all over the world. A combination of bribes, corruption, inadequate legislation and a huge demand for fish enables the illegal fishing to continue. There is no excuse for Australia’s or New Zealand’s failure to seize the ship and cargo when they had the chance. There is no excuse for their not forcing the Kunlun into a port the way Sea Shepherd is now doing with the Thunder,” Paul Watson says.

On social media, Watson also uses the occasion to propose a final option for the captain of the Thunder:

The Captain of the Thunder and his officers must be feeling lonely, neglected and very insecure at the moment. No fuel, no provisions, no instructions, no assistance. But there is a way out for them. They need only surrender their vessel to the authorities where they can make a deal to finger their Spanish bosses in return for leniency and a place in a witness protection program. I believe the Thunder’s days are almost over.2

On one of the last days of March Zavaleta Salas receives permission to sign off from the arrested ship and travel home to Lima. The ship owners no longer have any use for him.

Late in the evening, as he is packing his suitcase, the Kunlun’s new shipmaster arrives, a middle-aged Asian-looking man who does not speak Spanish. Zavaleta Salas greets him curtly and watches as the rest of the Indonesian crew crowd around him to tell him of the countless adversities that have plagued the Kunlun.

After the engineer’s suicide attempt, he has barely eaten or slept and he has been arguing constantly with the fishing captain Sevilla. Even though he is leaving, he can feel panic and paranoia taking hold of him. He imagines that the Spanish ship owner has full control over the authorities and the police and that somebody could easily get rid of him if they were to perceive him as a threat and a snitch.

Before he leaves the Kunlun for the last time, Zavaleta Salas runs down to the fish factory and retrieves a fish slicing knife which he hides in the waistband of his trousers.

In the harbour, the agent’s car is waiting for Zavaleta Salas. First they drive to the office in Phuket to pick up the airplane tickets, subsequently they continue out towards the airport. He can feel the hard handle of the knife pressing against his abdomen when he is sitting in the back seat of the car; he fantasizes about what he will do if the car drives off onto a byroad. Should he jump out and run? Should he fight back?

Finally he sees the approach to Phuket’s international airport. He bids the agent’s driver a terse farewell. Once out of the car, he walks around the car park and finds a bin where he gets rid of the knife.

He doesn’t feel safe until he feels the landing gear fold up against the body of the plane. In the future it will be money that determines his loyalty. If the ship owner pays him what he owes him and simultaneously gives him a bonus for being loyal, he will not speak to anyone. Home in Chimbote he has something he believes can be extremely valuable. A number of notes he took in secret of positions, dates, times, almost illegible scribblings, filling the margins of tiny scraps of paper. Together they constitute his version of what happened to the Tiantai – the black-listed ship that disappeared without a trace and under mysterious circumstances in the Antarctic in March 2014.