Catching Thunder

by Eskil Engdal

  He hurls the chain towards the dinghy with all his might. The Sea Shepherd photographer Simon Ager sees it coming through the camera’s viewfinder. As he ducks to the right, it grazes against his helmet. Then a short metal pipe flies through the air and hits the photographer on the inside of his thigh.

  “Are you all right, Simon … What was it?” asks the boatswain Giacomo Giorgi, also in the dinghy.

  “A bolt … It was a good shot,” Ager answers.

  Simon Ager is uninjured and Peter Hammarstedt has a good story to sell. The episode reinforces the image of the Thunder as a bandit ship on which officers wearing balaclava helmets refuse to allow the crew to communicate with the surrounding world, something which strengthens Hammarstedt’s theory about their being held on board the ship against their will.

  “The metal implements were thrown with the intent to cause injury or death. The deck officer wore a balaclava to conceal his identity. One RHIB crewman was struck but sustained no serious injuries,” Peter Hammarstedt writes in the report he sends to Interpol.

  The police and authorities following the ship’s progress from land are gravely concerned that the chase will end with a loss of human lives.

  25

  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

  26

  OPERATION SPARROW

  RIBEIRA, MARCH 2015

  They react with the speed of lightning. First they lock the door. Then they turn off the light. Subsequently they start up the paper shredder.

  Three fisheries officers are standing beneath the colonnade by Vidal Armadore’s offices in Ribeira. They have in their hands a search warrant, but nonetheless announce their arrival by ringing the doorbell. The moment that environmentalists and the authorities of several countries have for years been waiting for is about to culminate in a clumsy anti-climax. Operation Sparrow, named after Johnny Depp’s unpredictable character in Pirates of the Caribbean, was supposed to be a unique operation in a European context. For the first time, the secret owners of “The Bandit 6” were to be flushed out into the light of day.

  Now the officers are standing and staring irresolutely at a closed door. Then they call the local police station and request assistance. Fifteen minutes after ringing the bell, they are finally inside the room where the paper shredder is in the process of cutting to ribbons the evidence of 20 years of illegal fishing in Antarctica. The first thing the fisheries officers do is to turn off the shredder. Amongst the strips of paper, they see the remains of documents from 2012. In a tiny storeroom deep inside the premises, they find several boxes of documents that somebody has obviously attempted to hide.

&n
bsp; One of the three individuals frantically at work inside the shipping company premises is Serafin Vidal, the man who hired Alberto Zavaleta Salas as captain of the Kunlun and who is responsible for recruiting crew members for the fleet that has been plundering toothfish stocks in the Southern Ocean. Soon Manuel Antonio “Toño” Vidal Pego also come rushing in. “Toño”, the family’s business mind, who has a predilection for luxury apartments, expensive restaurants and fast cars, sits down and writes 50 pages of comments on the documents that are confiscated. But it is too late.

  For decades the Spanish authorities have been accused of protecting the fishing mafia. Now there is another tone. The new law that gives the authorities the right to fine any Spaniard who has demonstrably had dealings with a vessel that is fishing illegally is brought to “Toño’s” attention.

  When the officers leave Vidal Armadores’ head office on the afternoon of 11 March 2015, they are carrying more than 3,000 documents. The contents of the cardboard boxes will prove disastrous for the Vidal family.

  At his spacious office in Madrid, Assistant Director Héctor Villa González is anxiously waiting in the inspection department of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment for the results of the raid in Ribeira.

  He has already learned one thing: the next time they are going to raid a shipping company under suspicion for poaching fish, they will be accompanied by policemen who can break down the door. But the take is nonetheless formidable. Based on the confiscated documents, the 17 DVDs of data the Australian authorities confiscated on the Kunlun and information from Interpol, New Zealand and Belize, they can reconstruct a number of the missions of the Vidal ships in the Antarctic. The documents also provide unique insight on how the ship owners have organized their business.1

  The toothfish expeditions to the Antarctic have been led from the office in Ribeira. From there the shipping company has planned the expeditions, recruited crew, bought equipment and supplies and paid for fuel and insurance. To cover up the tracks of the illegal fishing activities, the family has constructed a conglomerate of companies in Europe and Latin America. The owners of the four ships that can be connected to the Vidal family’s Antarctic expeditions, the Kunlun, Songhua, Yongding and Tiantai, have been companies in the tax havens of Panama and Belize. It is also through these companies that the Vidal family has hired crew for the missions. But what has happened to all the money?

  Only the name of one company could be seen on the facade of the Vidal office in Ribeira: Proyectos y Desarrollos Renovables – renewable projects and development.

  In recent years the Vidal family has invested heavily in the local community – and they have invested for the future. In the neighbouring municipality, Manual Antonio Vidal Pego opened a windmill park in 2013. Leaders of the province and local mayors attended the formal inauguration ceremony. In another neighbouring municipality, the family has established a large fish oil factory that has received EUR 6.6 million in subsidies from the EU, the Spanish government and local authorities in Galicia. After having ruined the city’s reputation, the Vidal family would rise again as environmentally conscious and innovative investors in the local community. They would create jobs and be applauded by the authorities.

  In Madrid Villa González studies the confusing company chart the officers have drawn. Towards the bottom of the pyramid he finds something strange – a company in the tax haven of Switzerland. Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, his brother Angel “Naño” Vidal Pego and an experienced Swiss investment manager have seats on the board. The company from the mountainous country without a coastline is listed as being a specialty wholesaler of fish, crawfish and molluscs. Has the Vidal family brought money back to Spain via Switzerland, for subsequent investment in renewable energy and the fish oil industry? Villa González wonders. It can appear so.

  Villa González sits down at the desk and takes out a calculator. Based on the appraisals, they know too little about the total sales volume of the Vidal family’s Antarctic fleet over the course of 20 years, but estimate that the family in a two-year period has sold illegally caught toothfish for at least EUR 17 million.

  As he is trying to figure out a suitable punishment, Villa González has already started planning the next raid. Against the ship owner he suspects of owning the Thunder.

  27

  EXERCISE GOOD HOPE

  OSLO/LAGOS/CAPE TOWN, MARCH 2015

  “I think they’re going to round the Cape,” an elated Peter Hammarstedt says on the bridge of the Bob Barker.

  The two ships are 400 nautical miles south of the African continent. After having drifted for weeks, suddenly the Thunder picks up speed heading west. Is this the end game? Hammarstedt wonders.

  “Should we get our hopes up this early, Peter?” the third mate Anteo Broadfield asks.

  “What’s the point in having hopes if you’re not going to get them up once in a while,” Hammarstedt replies.

  He feels certain the Thunder does not have enough fuel to make it back to a harbour in Southeast Asia. It is likely that the chase will end somewhere or other along the west coast of Africa, perhaps in Namibia or Angola. Spanish ship owners have virtually taken over the city and the harbour in Walvis Bay in Namibia. There are processing factories there and a good motorway running down to Cape Town, where poached Patagonian toothfish have been shipped out in containers previously, often facilitated by bribes and creative customs declarations.

  And then there is Angola, the dictatorship with many small harbours and few customs inspectors. It is difficult to predict what awaits them if the chase ends there. The worst part is perhaps the constantly gnawing uneasiness that the Thunder will receive help from another vessel at sea, and when they see a ship appear on the radar with its course set in their direction, the speculations start up again.

  “It is not on Marine Traffic,” the communications officer Stefan Ehmann says, who is monitoring the enormous database providing an overview of the locations of more than a half-million vessels.

  “Very strange to see traffic this far south and because they’re coming so close to us that gives us cause for alarm,” Hammarstedt says, who can now see the lights from the ship through his binoculars.

  Should he call them up on the radio or should he wait to see whether the Thunder adjusts its course or speed to meet the mysterious ship? What if the vessel is something else entirely, something he hasn’t considered before?

  “Could it be a navy ship?”

  In an old villa beside a frozen apple orchard in a small town outside Oslo, the Norwegian lawyer Eve de Coning is sitting and pondering. She is a member of the intelligence group that is trying to stop the Thunder; night and day for more than two months she has been thinking about the chase that is now taking place in the Indian Ocean. No sooner has she changed out of her pyjamas than the two vessels have again forced their way into her consciousness.1 Now she has a plan. Off the coast of Cape Town, a mere day’s sail from the two ships is a fleet of German and South African battleships that can stop the Thunder.

  The boarding and arrest of pirate trawlers has been done on the high seas previously and has in many cases ended with the crew and ship owners going free. International waters are a wet Wild West where nobody actually has any authority. If the Thunder enters the economic zone of a coastal state, it is simpler, but the Thunder’s captain has consistently stayed in international waters. He knows what is at stake, de Coning thinks. If they are going to succeed with an operation at sea, Nigeria and South Africa must collaborate. Nigeria is a flag state and South Africa has modern vessels and experience with boarding on the open ocean.

  There are countless opportunities for things to go wrong, but they have a concrete plan. De Coning believes they can succeed.

  On Monday 9 March, a powerful armada sets out from the naval base in Simon’s Town on the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula. The first vessel out is the South African submarine the SAS
Manthatisi. Following it are the three frigates the SAS Spioenkop, FSG Hessen and FSG Karlsruhe. Once they have sailed out of the lively waters of False Bay, the huge, cauldron-shaped bay that received its name from seamen who believed they were on their way in to Cape Town, a large Super Lynx helicopter lands on the deck of one of the frigates. For the many observers watching the battleships from land, it is a dramatic sight.2

  At the same time, the worst forest fire in living memory is raging on the craggy mountainsides surrounding the bay. Smoke and flames are whisked up along the rocks by the intractable wind that will soon create difficulties for the military operation “Exercise Good Hope”.

  Every other year the South African and German Navies train together in the maritime regions off the coast of the southern part of the African continent, a series of windblown cliffs that for seamen mark the end of one ocean and the beginning of another. Along this strip of coastline the warm Agulhas stream, which flows south-westward at speeds of up to six knots, meets strong and unpredictable winds from Antarctica and the South Atlantic. The collision can produce monstrous waves more than 20 metres high. As many as 3,000 ships may have gone down along South Africa’s savage coastline.

  The modern German and South African battleships have no difficulties manoeuvring their way out of False Bay and past the Cape of Good Hope. On board are soldiers trained in boarding ships on turbulent seas. In Nigeria, Captain Warredi Enisuoh has asked the country’s Interpol office to send in a request to South Africa for assistance in arresting the Thunder. All that is missing is for the authorities in Nigeria to send a formal legal request to South Africa for help. Then they can stop the Thunder and simultaneously demonstrate to Sea Shepherd that the authorities are not helpless. This is the best opportunity the Interpol group will receive, Eve de Coning thinks.