Via Captain Paul Watson The Bob Barker Keeps Hammering the Thunder. The Longest Pursuit of a Poacher in History Continues – Day 40. For forty days and forty nights Captain Peter Hammarstedt and his crew onboard the Sea Shepherd ship “Bob Barker” have stuck like glue to the stern of the Nigerian flagged toothfish poaching ship “Thunder.” The previous record was set in 2003 by the Australian government ship “Southern Supporter“ and the pursuit of the Uruguayan toothfish poacher “Virasa”. The chase began on December 16th on the Banzare Bank off the coast of Antarctica due south of India. Today both vessels are at 36 Degrees 45 minutes South and 37 Degrees and 30 minutes East. It is not exactly a high-speed chase. The current speed of the “Thunder” is 2.4 knots, never more than three knots and occasionally it just drifts. All attempts to lose the “Bob Barker” have failed including pursuit through heavy ice and violent storms. After 3000 nautical miles the crew of the “Thunder” still have the spectre of the “Bob Barker” on their stern. The problem for the “Thunder” is that they have nowhere to go with Sea Shepherd tailing them and reporting their every move. A previous attempt by the “Thunder” to head to Mozambique was stymied when Sea Shepherd reported the course of the poachers to the authorities in Mozambique. An arrest order was quickly issued and the “Thunder” turned away from their objective to the port of Maputo. Now the “Thunder” is a ship without a destination, going in circles in an area hundreds of miles southeast of South Africa. In anticipation of just such a scenario Captain Hammarstedt stocked his ship with enough vegan provisions to withstand a siege and in many ways this is indeed a siege as the “Thunder” desperately tries to outlast the “Bob Barker” on the high seas. We believe there are 39 crew onboard the “Thunder”. That is the number of crew onboard the vessel when it was released with their catch last year by Malaysia. They were released with a catch worth millions, after paying a $90,000 U.S. fine. At that time the captain was Russian and the crew were Indonesian. It appears that the Captain onboard now, is Spanish and he speaks with a Latin American accent. The officers appear to be Spanish and the crew from Southeast Asia. None of the “Thunder’s” crew venture onto the deck or the bridge wing during the day. They have been having large open fires on the back deck at night and as Captain Hammarstedt reports, “The F/V Thunder” crew have a big incinerator on the aft deck. Some nights, they burn and the scene is like something out of Conrads Heart of Darkness. All you see is flames like a big bonfire with dark silhouettes dancing around it. A few nights ago, the flames were so big that we thought they might engulf the ship.” The question is – just how much fuel does the “Thunder” have onboard? Captain Hammarstedt is confident that he has fuel and provisions for many months. The “Thunder” crew may be able to survive on the fish they have caught but they will not be able to outlast the “Bob Barker” on fuel and it is a fair assumption to say that morale onboard the poacher is not very high. The crew will not be paid, the company will not profit and the prospect of arrest and confiscation is very high. What Sea Shepherd is doing is so simple yet it appears that nobody has ever thought of doing it before, and that is to find an illegal fishing ship and to stay with them reporting on their every move. There is no precedent for that. The morale onboard “Bob Barker” is great. The crew are thrilled with their success in shutting down this notorious poaching operation. Meanwhile having confiscated over sixty kilometres of gill nets abandoned by the “Thunder” the “Sam Simon” is intent upon hunting down the three poaching vessels that the New Zealand Navy allowed to escape two weeks ago. New Zealand has not been very helpful. They have refused to provide the coordinates of the poachers to Sea Shepherd with the Commanding officer of the “HMNZS Wellington” saying they will not cooperate with the “likes” of Sea Shepherd. For the “Bob Barker” the pursuit continues. For the “Sam Simon” the hunt is underway. Back in New Zealand, the sailors from the Wellington must be frustrated, especially after the government described the release of the poachers as a “resounding success.” Both Sea Shepherd ships and their crews intend to demonstrate to the New Zealand government just what a “resounding success” actually looks like.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:17:34 +0000
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