Catching Thunder

by Eskil Engdal

  Right after we leave the bar, an elderly gentleman gets to his feet. He has greying hair and a prominent jaw. He settles his bill, leaves the bar and departs in a car. It is “Tucho” – Antonio Vidal Suárez, the patriarch who, according to the authorities and environmentalists, has built up one of the world’s most profitable illegal fishing operations. The pensioner has left responsibility for a good portion of the operations in the hands of his sons Manuel Antonio and Angel, but always has the final word when the family meets to make important decisions. And he is now under suspicion of being the owner of the Thunder, the Kunlun and several of the other ships that have come to be known as “The Bandit 6”.

  It is starting to get dark. We are on our way from Ribeira. Above the gently sloping mountain pass between Galicia and Castilla y León, there are light snow flurries in the air. Then a peep can be heard from the mobile phone. It is an email from Captain Peter Hammarstedt on the Bob Barker.

  “Dear Kjetil & Eskil. Please find attached a composite of photographs of the FV Thunder crew. Perhaps they can aid you in the search for the owner?”

  There are four photographs. Four men who can be seen scowling on the Thunder. A rough and blurry photograph of a giant dressed in coveralls. Another cautiously slouches his way forward from the bridge and looks toward the photographer in the same way one looks into a dark and unfamiliar room for the first time. The chap wearing the full-face sunglasses and with Latin American features must be the captain. The clearest photograph shows a partially bald man in his early 60s. He wears eyeglasses with steel frames. A determined and unwavering, almost obstinate gaze can be seen behind his glasses.

  We turn the car around and drive back to Ribeira. To show people the photographs.

  22

  GOD’S FINGERPRINT

  RIBEIRA, FEBRUARY 2015

  He is thirsty, tipsy and the stories are probably exaggerated.

  In Ribeira, a retired fisherman is willing to speak about the illegal toothfish expeditions in which he had personally participated. He tells us about 16-hour shifts on old, rusty hulks, crew members who are washed overboard, illness and injuries that are never treated by a physician, fleeing from coast guard ships and flag changes at sea to conceal the ship’s identity. For a five-month-long expedition he was paid around 60,000 euros.

  When we show him the recent Sea Shepherd photographs of the officers on the Thunder, he recognizes several of them, among them the fishing captain Juan Manuel Patiño Lampon. But he doesn’t know who his employer is.

  The women of Ribeira are also silent. The spouse of one of the Thunder officers refuses to open her door; on the phone she says that she does not have permission to speak. Another confirms that her husband is on the Thunder, that there are problems on board and that it is the last time he will travel with the ship. She tells us that she doesn’t know what problems he is referring to, but that her husband calls home every Saturday.

  The home of Lampon the fishing captain is a presentable villa, situated on a site secluded from the coast road and a few kilometres away from the fish market in the centre of Ribeira. According to the Spanish register of companies, up until 2010 he ran the company Ivopesca together with another ship owner from the region. The company sold fish products and owned the vessel the Banzare, which fished toothfish from Uruguay. The environmental organization Oceana accused the company’s primary owner José Nogueira García of extensive poaching of fish and for being a member of la mafia gallega. But it was not just the environmentalists who were following the activities of Lampon’s partner. In 2008 Nogueira García was arrested for smuggling more than two tons of cocaine from Uruguay to Spain. The cocaine, at a market value of EUR 70 million, was hidden in containers of frozen fish. The case proved what the police commissioners in Madrid had long suspected: the fish and shellfish industry was being used both as a distribution channel for narcotics and to launder the profits.

  Nogueira Garcia was sentenced to nine years in prison and lost all his holdings. Lampon was never a part of the case.

  “He’s at sea,” the fishing captain’s wife says when we call her in Ribeira.

  “Is he on the Thunder?”

  “I don’t know the name of the vessel. I don’t know how long he has been at sea nor when he is coming back,” she says.

  Then she hangs up.

  We drive once again out of Ribeira, over the silently flowing Ría de Arousa, one of the river mouths teeming with shellfish in Galicia, full of bateas, square floating piers of eucalyptus wood that have made the fish farmers Spain’s largest producers of mussels, scallops and oysters. According to the legend, the five river mouths in the Spanish province are God’s fingerprint. On the seventh day God had to rest and then he put his hand down upon Galicia. But if it is true that God blessed Galicia with abundant shellfish harvests, he must have simultaneously have forgotten the numerous and often devoutly pious deep sea fishermen in the province. They have little in the way of fishing quotas. That is why the fishermen from Galicia have for decades sought out increasingly dangerous waters in search of a livelihood. And along the way they have made many enemies.

  There is a strange and invisible connecting line running between Ría de Arousa, the search for the Thunder and Norway – a line of connection that perhaps more than anything else was the beginning of the end for the Thunder and “The Bandit 6”.

  In the 1990s, an armada of fishing vessels popped up in the Barents Sea bearing flags from nations such as Belize, the Dominican Republic, Togo and Cambodia. During the worst years they fished 150,000 tons illegally. The Norwegian authorities and the environmental activists declared war on the fleet. They began recording the ships’ movements, owners and harbours where the illegal fish were unloaded. For a period of time, every single fishing vessel that travelled from the Barents Sea with fish to harbours in Germany and the Netherlands was monitored and dozens of cases were tried in courts in Russia and Norway.

  One of the ships, fisheries control agencies in Europe noticed, was the reefer ship the Sunny Jane, which accepted on board illegal fish from a group of blacklisted trawlers known as “The Rostock Five”. “The Rostock Five” were controlled from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and had their winter base in the north German harbour town from which they had received their nickname.

  “The fish you receive are not to be landed in Norway, the oil you use is not to come from Norwegian vessels and our harbours are closed,” the Norwegian Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs Helga Pedersen warned them.

  After having been turned away from a number of harbours in Europe and Africa, the Sunny Jane finally set its course for Galicia. One summer day the ship laid anchor in the Ría de Arousa carrying 600 tons of frozen tuna fish, an abandoned Russian crew, empty fuel tanks and a freezer that was threatening to break down. The Sunny Jane had run out of safe harbours to turn to, the crew had not been paid in months, and now 13 men were sitting at the mouth of Ría de Arousa, clinging tightly to their catch, the only thing of value on board that could be traded in for plane tickets home to Russia.

  The Sunny Jane became the symbol for a successful fight to shut fish poachers out of harbours in Europe. But the majority of the ships sailed on to new harbours and fish banks, often in West Africa, where there were fewer coast guard vessels, surveillance planes and inspectors.

  After they had chased the pirate fleet out of the Barents Sea, the Norwegian fishery authorities and environmentalists had amassed an extensive card file of pirate crafts, shady ship owners and dubious flag states. They had also recognized something new. Fish poaching was controlled by organized crime and could only be countered through international cooperation. In Norway a special criminal investigation group was appointed which was named the Norwegian National Advisory Group against Organized IUU-fishing, in common vernacular called “the fish crime investigation squad”.

  Norwegian bureaucrats travelled around the world spreading thei
r message of how fisheries crime was just as serious, cynical and cunning as human trafficking, narcotics and arms smuggling. The backers forged ships’ documents and catch protocols, laundered money, bribed port authorities and hired crews on slave contracts.

  It was this recognition that induced the Norwegian authorities to finance Interpol’s intelligence operation targeting illegal fishing.

  The Norwegian environmentalist Gunnar Album was probably the person who worked the most systematically. For many years he had been charting the activities of fishing vessels, shipping companies, flag states, call signals, owners, tonnage and port calls all over the world. Every single suspicious fishing vessel was given its own profile in his card file, a unique database Album shared with the authorities of many countries and which would turn out to be a goldmine in the search for the pirates. Two of the ships in Album’s file stood out as being the most active: the Thunder and the Viking. The first two fishing vessels in history to be wanted by Interpol.

  In an ironic twist of fate, the evidence against the Thunder’s officers and backers led to the small town in Galicia where the Sunny Jane ended its days.

  Before it was sold for parts, the unhappy ship with the jolly name lay for three years in the harbour in Ribeira.

  23

  BUENAS TARDES, BOB BARKER

  THE MELVILLE BANK, FEBRUARY 2015

  After sailing for a short while towards the Cape of Good Hope, the Thunder does a complete about-face and continues east at half throttle. The Bob Barker’s first mate Adam Meyerson hopes the pirate vessel is on its way to Malaysia, the country where the trawler has gone into hiding previously.

  “We could be there at the end of February eating insects on a stick and drinking Singapore Slings.”

  “Is it vegan to eat insects?” he wonders.

  For the crew of the Bob Barker, one day blurs into the next. They are north of “the Roaring Forties”, where the cold winds from the west never relent, but although the weather and temperature are agreeable, the horizon is still just as never-ending. Only five of the crew decided to sign off when Captain Hammarstedt gave them the option.

  The crew manning the Bob Barker’s dinghies the Gemini and the Hunter are longing to feel the adrenaline that will be triggered when they are skimming across the waves in the quick, light vessels. Jeremy Tonkin, the man who was in the crow’s nest when they found the Thunder, draws lines above his berth to keep track of the days he has been at sea, like a prison inmate. He started doing this when he was lying there wracked by seasickness. He now has 60 lines. The ship photographer Simon Ager is extremely satisfied with the cabin which was renovated before departure – under the linoleum flooring they discovered a beautiful wood floor that his cabin mate polished and restored. All the same, he is now far more concerned about there being a proper showdown with the captain of the Thunder.

  “Give me somebody who is going to put some boxing gloves on and bring it to us. That’s a personal message to the Spanish family who is running this organization. Give us some captains with attitude!” Ager says to a chuckling group of men and women on the bridge.

  It’s almost as if the captain of the Thunder can hear him.

  After a few days’ listless sailing to the east, the Thunder suddenly turns its bow north. They are on the underwater plateau called the Melville Bank, as the crow flies, directly south of Madagascar. On the bridge of the Bob Barker they are now wondering whether the captain of the Thunder is planning to sail there or perhaps to Mauritius?

  But the Thunder begins sailing in circles around the Melville Bank, where the ocean is no more than a mere hundred metres deep.1 Are they using the sonar to find a suitable place to put out the nets? Or is this just another move in a psychological game?

  “They could just be bored and playing with the fish finder. Maybe they are just taking advantage of being in the area to survey it. Hard to say,” Meyerson says.

  Just before midnight, a searchlight is lit on the stern of the Thunder. Then two more lights are switched on, a red one above a white, the light signal communicating that the crew on the Thunder is planning to start fishing.

  “They have not had a light on the stern before. They could go for squid, get them to come to the light. Maybe they want to change their diet,” Meyerson suggests.

  Captain Hammarstedt is called up to the bridge. He goes to the radio and tries to make contact with the Thunder.

  Nobody responds, but the hatch on the stern opens. The Thunder was built as a trawler, but was later converted into a longline fishing vessel. When the crew fishes with nets, the system is deployed from the back and hauled in from the front through the trawl door. In the darkness, Hammarstedt can see shadows moving about on the quarterdeck and that something flies out resembling a marker line. Then Hammarstedt sees net floats and marker lights in the water. He immediately asks Meyerson to steer clear of the Thunder’s stern and back wash, so as to prevent the nets and ropes from getting tangled up in the propeller.

  There is no doubt. The crew of the Thunder have decided to fish, but the Melville Bank is located too far north for there to be toothfish.

  “Maybe they are fishing for tuna,” Chief Engineer Erwin Vermeulen suggests.

  “Get closer on their quarter, just don’t cross the stern,” Hammarstedt says to Meyerson.

  He has promised the crew that they will try to stop the Thunder if they are fishing, but it is difficult without putting the crew and the ship in danger: it is pitch dark, and the wind is whipping the waves up to heights of three metres.

  “They could be fishing for supplies. We can’t do anything while it is dark and they know that. Fifty days and it had to be in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl,” Hammarstedt says.

  All day long the crew has been looking forward to watching the recording of the Super Bowl final between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks which was played a few days earlier in Arizona, but now they are preparing to spring into action. The crew manning the dinghies finally see an opportunity to release some of the tension in their bodies, but Hammarstedt holds them back. He fears that this is exactly what the captain of the Thunder wants. In this weather there is a lot that can go wrong when the time comes to hoist a dinghy on board again, and the Thunder can then exploit the situation to take off.

  “We have to choose our battles here. It will not be tonight,” he says.

  He stands in the darkness on the bridge and sees that the stern hatch of the Thunder is shut before the ship slowly moves away from the net.

  “It is a very short net they have put out. About half a mile. They haven’t done it to get a big catch. I think it is a test,” he says.

  It is raining and windy. The bad weather is supposed to last for at least another 12 hours, but Hammarstedt knows he cannot permit the Thunder to do any fishing. The crew expects him to do something.

  “The most important thing is to stay with the Thunder, but we have to make a statement,” he says to his colleagues on the bridge.

  The next morning the officers meet on the Bob Barker to devise a plan. They do not have the equipment required to haul up the net, but can’t they pretend that they do? Both the ships are now located more than 10 kilometres from the net floats. If the Thunder follows when the Bob Barker sets its course for the buoys, it means that they want the fish now caught in the net. If the Thunder puts about, it means that they deployed the net in an attempt to outmanoeuvre Sea Shepherd so they can take off.

  “We could go there as fast as we can. They won’t be able to get there before we cut the buoys,” Meyerson suggests.

  “We could put the small boats in the water and let Bob Barker stay with the Thunder,” Vermeulen says.

  “It is too rough to launch the small boats and if they are going to hit us it is better that they do it in calm seas,” says Hammarstedt, who has long been prepared for the possibility that the chase could end with a
collision between the two ships.

  The fishing captain on the Thunder could also deploy another net if the Bob Barker sets its course for the net floats. Then Hammarstedt will have two nets to deal with.

  Throughout the entire day the two ships act out a drama on the turbulent seas. They turn towards each other and turn around again. Accelerate their speed and then slow down. All is quiet on the radio, but they have not been this close to one another since they were in the ice a month and a half ago. Hammarstedt has given an order that the distance is not to be more than two cable lengths – 370 metres – but nobody takes the initiative to put an end to the charade.

  Meyerson and Ager make a discovery that means they have lost one of the elements of surprise they have been discussing.

  “The Thunder knows that we can’t haul nets. Our specs are on our website,” Ager says.

  On board the Bob Barker there are containers of expanding foam insulation. What if they were to open four or five of the containers and throw them towards the trawl door? Then hauling in the nets from on board the Thunder will be hell for the crew.

  Had the Sam Simon been accompanying them now, they would have had more options. Then they could have launched the dinghies.

  “We have never gone up against this kind of an adversary before. They feel backed into a corner and could potentially be quite dangerous,” Hammarstedt says to Erwin Vermeulen.

  “They could be going another month at this speed. It’s not going to change anything for them. We can speculate but we have been doing that for 50 days, we might be doing it for another 50 days,” Vermeulen says.

  He is convinced that the Thunder’s fishing captain is an experienced and skilled fisherman, so there must be a reason why they are at the Melville Bank. But he is unable to understand what he is thinking.

  “It doesn’t make sense. The gillnets need to go on flat land and this is like a volcano,” he says.