Blood and Guts Read online

  Published by Black Inc.,

  an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

  37–39 Langridge Street

  Collingwood Vic 3066 Australia

  email: [email protected]

  www.blackincbooks.com

  Copyright © Sam Vincent 2014

  Sam Vincent asserts his right to be known as the author of this work

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  The National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Vincent, Sam, author.

  Blood & guts : dispatches from the whale wars / Sam Vincent.

  9781863956826 (paperback)

  9781922231659 (ebook)

  Sea Shepherd (Ship)—Anecdotes. Animal rights activists—Anecdotes. Whaling—Law and legislation. Whaling—Economic aspects. Whaling—Political aspects. Whaling—Japan.

  338.372950952

  Cover design by Peter Long

  Cover photograph by Michael Nichols, National Geographic

  I.M.

  Bob Balderstone

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  WHALE HUGGERS

  WHALE HUNTERS

  BIGGER FISH

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Japan’s scientific whaling establishment is made up of several instruments. To avoid confusion, I explain them briefly here. The Fisheries Agency is the government department that finances the hunting of whales under research pretensions. Kyodo Senpaku is the company it employs to catch these whales and to sell the ‘by-product’ as meat. The Institute of Cetacean Research is the body that purports to analyse the catch scientifically.

  The ICR’s JARPA, which stands for the Japanese Whale Research Program under Special Permit in the Antarctic, ran from 1987/88 to 2004/05; the second phase of the program (JARPA II) began in 2005/06 and ended in 2013/14. Its domestic equivalent is JARPN, or the Japanese Whale Research Program under Special Permit in the North Pacific, which ran from 1994 to 1999; JARPN II began in 2000 and is ongoing.

  Except where stated, money amounts in this book are given in Australian dollars. Finally, the names of certain people have been changed for privacy reasons.

  PROLOGUE

  Sniffing my armpits, I realise I stink. I’m FOB – Fresh Off the Boat – but my leaky junk arrived from the south, not the north. Last night I saw my first house in three months, glinting on a headland like a castaway with a mirror; this morning I woke among skyscrapers and cranes, with ten lanes of traffic slowly bridging the mouth of the Yarra.

  Into port and onto land, and I’m noticing everything for the first time again: the way strangers look down when you smile at them; the tram riders, plugged in and zoned out; a ground that stays still underfoot; the rush to your head of sun on bare skin; and rules, rules, everywhere rules. It’s rare to be an observer of the world to which you belong, and it’s important, I think, to appreciate such moments.

  The long-awaited hiss and rat-a-tat-tat of an espresso machine make me grin like a stoner. If my editor wishes I’d showered more than five times this summer, he doesn’t show it, plying me with coffees as I excitedly recount the voyage. It’s only when I wipe my moustache from a second flat white that he cuts to the chase.

  ‘So what’s this conflict actually about?’

  I carefully place my cup well away from the table’s edge, a habit I won’t lose for weeks. And then I’m speechless. I’m nervous, sure: this is the first time I’ve met my editor, the man whose laconic email and parcel of paperwork prompted a frenzy of flight-booking, job-quitting, subletting and bag-packing so I could drop everything and hitch a ride to Antarctica with the closest thing the environmental movement has to pop stars. But that’s not why I can’t answer his question.

  What’s this conflict actually about? Would the builder I once worked with who sported a Sea Shepherd sticker on his ute – and told me climate change was bullshit – be able to answer that? Or the two Japanese cops I met last year in the whaling town? They wanted to know if I was an eco-terrorist when they saw the crest on my passport. How about the crowd waiting on the dock today at Williamstown with their pirate merchandise and totes of donations? Perhaps my editor should ask them.

  But the truth is I don’t think any of them would fare any better. I mumble something about the oceans that we both know isn’t right. Perhaps if he reframed the question I could begin to give him an answer. What this conflict’s about is much harder to explain than what it’s not about. Because it sure as hell isn’t about whales.

  WHALE HUGGERS

  NEPTUNE’S NAVY

  The Salvation Army band is playing ‘Jingle Bells’ when the Brigitte Bardot, looking like a floating fighter jet, opens its hatch. Auckland is unusual in that its harbour is located downtown; eco-pirates are more interesting than the Salvos, so the Bardot soon attracts a small crowd of onlookers.

  Named for the French actress turned animal rights activist, the Bardot is a high-speed trimaran belonging to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a vigilante marine-protection group whose members are considered eco-terrorists by the Japanese government. Captained by the Canadian Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd’s vegan fleet, Neptune’s Navy, espouses nonviolent direct action in a bid to stop whalers, sealers and illegal tuna and shark-fin fishermen. After clashing with a Norwegian Coast Guard vessel during an anti-whaling campaign off that country’s north coast in 1994, Watson was labelled a pirate by the local press; ever since, Neptune’s Navy has proudly sailed under a modified Jolly Roger, with a skull resting not on crossbones but on a trident crossed with a shepherd’s crook.

  The Bardot displays two such flags: one rippling above its stern, the other painted in a mural on its bow, clasped by a young Bardot herself, arms outstretched like Superwoman as she flies across the water’s surface. In her spare hand Bardot holds a trident; two daggers are stuffed down her knickers.

  I pick up my duffel bag and push through the throng of kids with scooters and their intrigued parents. The Bardot is in Auckland to ferry newly recruited volunteers to a secret location in international waters, where Watson, in hiding since he fled house arrest in Germany four months earlier, has recently emerged to take the helm of Sea Shepherd’s flagship, the Steve Irwin.

  I’ve arranged to live with the crew of the Steve for three months, as they embark on what has become an annual game of cat and mouse with Japan’s government-run Antarctic whaling fleet. For the past seven summers Sea Shepherd has brought its unique brand of coercive conservation to Antarctica, ramming Japanese whaling vessels with its own, deploying ‘prop foulers’ to entangle and disable these ships’ propellers, and responding to drenchings from the whalers’ water cannons with volleys of paint bombs and verbal abuse (and even, at one time, canisters of butyric acid: stink bombs likened to rancid butter). Sea Shepherd claims the whalers are poachers of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, a 50-million-square-kilometre protected area; the Japanese government doesn’t recognise the sanctuary and claims to be legally whaling for scientific research under the auspices of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), the global body that regulates the killing of whales.

  For Australians, media coverage of the ‘whale wars’ evokes summer as much as leftover turkey sandwiches and Christmas cake. It’s a familiar story of the struggle between good and evil: NGO ‘eco-warriors’ pitted against the might of the Japanese state; ‘majestic giants of the deep’ pursued by industrial weaponry; the pristine Southern Ocean running red with blood.

  But beyond this simplistic version of events, I want to know who these self-mythologising pirates are, and what motivates them to pursue what is, environmentally, a relatively low-impact hunt in some of the most perilous waters on Earth; why Japan’s government doggedly continues to bankroll a highly unprofitable program; and how Australia became the most vocal anti-whaling nation of all. In a theatre rarely seen by objective eyewitnesses, I want to know exactly what happens when the two fleets engage in their much-hyped naval jousts. Most of all, I want to know why whales have become a flashpoint for diplomatic, cultural, economic and environmental tension.

  With four ships, five inflatable boats, one helicopter, two drones and 120 crew – representing twenty-four nationalities – Operation Zero Tolerance is to be the biggest campaign of Sea Shepherd’s thirty-five-year history. ‘The campaign’s objective,’ an email informed me before I left Australia, ‘will be to intercept and intervene against the intent of the Japanese whaling fleet to murder 1035 whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.’

  Fellow newcomers to the campaign embarking in Auckland are Tod, a nerdy Asian-American computer programmer from New York; Olav, a German father of three who wears a whale-fluke pendant around his neck; Bruce, the Steve’s Seniors Card–carrying third mate; Gav, an acne-scarred animal rights activist from Phillip Island; and Giacomo, a Berlin-based Italian photographer on assignment for a Manhattan PR agency (whose brief is to ‘make Paul Watson appear like a superhero’).

  With his short-back-and-sides haircut and grey nomad uniform of jeans, polo shirt and gleaming white sneakers, Bruce doesn’t fit my vegan vigilante stereotype for Sea Shepherd converts. While the crew of the Bardot takes on food supplies, I ask him why he signed up.

  ‘I’ve always been interested in conser
vation, so given my skill set [10,000 nautical miles of racing yacht navigation], this was a natural progression,’ he says. ‘Paul needed a new third mate; I’m retired and the kids have left home, so I thought: Bugger it, why not?’ When I mention I’m not a volunteer but a writer, Bruce’s wrinkles scrunch into a smile. ‘Aha, so you’re here to win us the war!’

  Sea Shepherd has been criticised for feeding the media misinformation and for dramatising accounts of clashes on the high seas to further its cause. Watson is infamous for embellishment; he once wrote: ‘Surviving in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives. The issue of whaling is purely academic unless high drama is introduced to make it newsworthy.’

  I’m to be the only journalist embedded for the entire campaign, and Neptune’s Navy has obviously been briefed on this. Bruce leans close to me and conceals his words with the palm of his hand, as if Paul Watson himself has his ear cupped to the ceiling of the hold below us. ‘Before coming here, I agreed not to talk Sea Shepherd strategy or tactics with the media, so I’m going to be careful what I say to you.’

  I ask Bruce whether he thinks media manipulation is justified if it results in fewer whales being killed. ‘Absolutely. This is a war we’re fighting, and you’ve got to think of it in those terms. Any military operations HQ wouldn’t want loose-lipped soldiers leaking secrets.’

  We leave Auckland behind, its footpaths stained scarlet with pohutukawa stamens, and press out into the calm waters of the Hauraki Gulf. The gentrified island of Waiheke slips by, where marijuana plantations were replaced by vineyards when the yuppies usurped the hippies in the 1990s. Beside it sits Rangitoto Island with its candy-cane lighthouse, and beyond, the nature reserve island of Tiritiri Matangi.

  It’s a nine-hour journey to our rendezvous point with the Steve, so I descend into the hold to look around. The Bardot is Sea Shepherd’s smallest and fastest ship, mainly used as a scout. Skippered by the French adventurer and yacht racer Jean-Yves Terlain, the Bardot’s eight crewmembers are rumoured to be the most eccentric of Neptune’s Navy, products of long Antarctic campaigns spent in close quarters.

  ‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ giggles ‘Chili’, a wisp of a woman kneading a blob of dough while watching a Disney cartoon on a laptop balanced atop a microwave. The kitchen around her is neat and compact, all hanging pots and bespoke plate enclosures. On the fridge a sticker declares: ‘The Revolution Starts in Your Kitchen’; the adjoining photo depicts a bandanna-clad man doing his best to look like a revolutionary while julienning a carrot.

  The floor of the Bardot’s tiny mess is packed with suitcases and boxes of fresh produce. One wall is covered with framed and signed black-and-white photos of the vessel’s patron saint. In one, Brigitte pouts on a Harley-Davidson. In black texta, she’s written: ‘Pour mes pirates avec tout mon cœur.’

  A voice interrupts my perving. It’s Heino, a barefoot German deckhand, brandishing a baking tray of biscuits. His pot belly, faded truckie’s tatts and long grey hair evoke an aging rocker – or an aging rocker’s roadie. ‘Hey, Mr Writer, you want a cookie? I can’t promise they’re vegan, though. Some ants were crawling around the kitchen when I was cooking.’

  I oblige, then follow Heino and his ant-tainted cookies to the bridge. Outside, Auckland’s silhouetted skyline has disappeared, and with it, the clouds. The sun’s appearance transforms the Pacific from dirty snow to Polynesian aquamarine; terns and gannets jink in the thermals to port side.

  On the bow I run into Tod, who is basking in the sun and grinning widely. ‘It’s good to be home,’ he tells me. For many, Operation Zero Tolerance will be just one in a long series of Sea Shepherd campaigns that has come to consume – and define – their lives. This is only Tod’s second campaign to the Antarctic, but he has also been involved in several Sea Shepherd campaigns to combat illegal shark-fin fishing in the Galápagos, and he would happily volunteer for the organisation full-time if life commitments back home didn’t get in the way.

  Tod was seven years old when he first saw a whale harpooned. A PBS TV broadcast had him captivated: ‘I’d never seen a whale – so big, so beautiful, and they sang!’ This was before the moratorium on commercial whaling came into force; it wasn’t a nature documentary but a news piece. ‘I thought, As soon as I am old enough, I will protect you. As an intelligent creature with the capability and desire to protect an innocent creature, I would do it.

  ‘So, how about you?’ Tod asks me. ‘When did you have that moment?’ I blush and clutch at words. I say something wet about being a storyteller, not an activist, that I’m here not to protect the whales but to chronicle their protectors. I’m worried I’ve said the wrong thing, but Tod is forgiving. ‘Hey, well, that’s important too. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to tell our story.’

  A half-moon’s reflection is bobbing on the water when we finally reach the Steve. An inflatable boat is dispatched, and passengers, luggage and supplies are transferred via a rope ladder and a crane.

  Once aboard, I’m led down the prow past an overwhelming array of new faces; names are given and forgotten immediately. The ship seems infinite: a Minotaur’s labyrinth of dead ends and companionways, garlanded with whale-saving paraphernalia. It’s past midnight when I fall asleep in my man-cot aboard my new home for the next few months, the Steve’s engine humming like a washing machine on spin cycle.

  THE RUNAWAY CAPTAIN

  ‘What the hell am I gonna do with a diamond-encrusted trident?’ demands Captain Paul Watson. I feel like one of the three wise men visiting a fat, loud baby Jesus as I take my place in Watson’s office behind two other gift-bearers. Once the trident donor is dismissed from His Holiness’s court, Giacomo hands over a bag of goodies from Sea Shepherd volunteers in Berlin: herbal tea, Christmas biscuits, a teach-yourself book of German verbs. Watson raises his eyebrows as he inspects the book.

  When I present my own gift – a bottle of Jamaican spiced rum – Watson adds it to a liquor cabinet groaning with bottles of Patrón tequila. ‘John Paul DeJoria is a huge fan of Sea Shepherd,’ he says by way of explanation. Watson, I will learn, is better than Phillip Adams at name-dropping.

  *

  If you were casting the role of a net-slipping international fugitive, Paul Franklin Watson wouldn’t even get an audition. For starters, he’s not very mobile: at sixty-two, he is an overweight, pear-shaped man. When he shuffles across the room in his black tracksuit pants and tatty espadrilles to meet me, I think of a male emperor penguin trying not to dislodge an egg that it’s precariously incubating atop its feet. Far from the threatening outlaw I’d read about, Watson looks tired – pathetic, even – with puffy eyes, a double chin and an unkempt beard that’s been white since his forties.

  Then there’s the poetry. Watson seems to spend more time bashing out verse on his laptop than eco-terrorising, with day-to-day management of the Steve deferred to first mate Sid Chakravarty. The poems – mainly about whales – end up as gifts or even books. Watson tells me he has no literary influences (he’s reading Game of Thrones for fun), though he does recite poems by heart during mealtimes in the mess (those of Dante, Robert W. Service or his own – especially his own). He loves working a crowd.

  Prolific in his output, Watson has authored several books on conservation; during Operation Zero Tolerance he’ll be simultaneously working on three others that illustrate his passion for history: one on the Confederate naval raiders who attacked Yankee merchant shipping – and whaling – during the American Civil War, and another two on Christianity: ‘Initially, it was one book, but my chapter about all the bad shit the popes have done grew into a book in itself. I’m gonna call it All the Dope on the Popes.’ Stiff, sluggish, bookish: this is not an activist who evades the cops by jumping razor-wire fences and legging it. But evade them he has.

  Sea Shepherd has long enjoyed the tacit approval of the governments of the United States (where the organisation is based), Australia (where most of its crew is from) and New Zealand (whose ports are crucial to its Antarctic campaigns), despite those governments officially denouncing Sea Shepherd’s actions as reckless and irresponsible. Moreover, Paul Watson is not naive: he harasses the Japanese whaling fleet only in the international waters of the Southern Ocean – opaque not only in water colour but also in legal status, where responsibility for law enforcement is ambiguous, and prosecution difficult to pursue.