by Eskil Engdal
“I got your message, could you give me your name and talk about the person that attempted to take his life?” Hammarstedt asks.
For a moment everything is silent, and then Hammarstedt once again hears Cataldo’s voice.
“No, we can’t do that. That stays here. It is this ship’s business. That’s something personal about the ship. I don’t go asking you about your ship’s stuff. We talked to the person, he calmed down. It was nerves when he saw three ships that wanted a collision, any person would be nervous with that. Over.”
“If he said he can speak to his family, can you give us a contact to their family so we can check with them to make sure this is correct?” Hammarstedt asks.
That is a question that causes Cataldo to lose whatever vestiges of compliance and patience he had at the beginning of the conversation.
“You are nothing, no authority, you are nothing. Why would we have to give personal information to you? He’s got his family, his son, his things at home, and you want to bother them! The only one working here is him, no one else, his family is happy where he is working. And he already told you to please don’t bother anymore, and that the letters that you are writing are pure lies. Over,” Cataldo shouts.
“The police are investigating you for human trafficking and if you can at least give us the name of the crewing agency they used, we can clear everything up with the police,” Hammarstedt says.
“Everything that you are saying is false. You never saw us fishing, you never saw us fishing, only sailing. Now, about the Indonesian matter, they’re happy here, their families are happy, their welfare is good with us. There is no problem. They are all content here. And the person that talked to you represented the Indonesian crew. What you are doing is taking away their job, you are ‘cutting their hands’ so that they can’t work and maintain their families. Over,” Cataldo says.
“On any normal fishing boat we can talk with the crew, we can laugh with the crew, but with your boat, we are not allowed to speak to them, why is that?” Hammarstedt asks.
“You heard the Indonesian mariner say it, they don’t want to have any communication with you because you say a lot of lies. You are causing problems for them and their families. And I won’t communicate with the captain of the Bob Barker by telephone either because everything that I say can be heard by radio, I have nothing to hide. Over.”
“We will take what the Indonesian crew said into consideration, is there anything else?” Hammarstedt replies through his interpreter.
“Yes,” Cataldo answers. “He wants to say the last words, he wants to say one last thing so that you stay assured and stop bothering the Indonesians, since you won’t get anything from us, any information, and that’s what he wants to make clear now. He’s going to talk to you now, over,” Cataldo says before once again handing the microphone to the Indonesian engineer on the Thunder.
“Please, no bother anymore because here all mariner Indonesian happy. Everything fine. Captain very, very good, agency also very, very good. Lots of food, lots of medicines, and much fuel, for 10 months more.”
“We understand that you are annoyed with us following you, but if you have nothing to hide, why don’t we go together to port right now, we can sort this out, and then we won’t have to see each other again.”
Cataldo is back on the radio.
“I would gladly do that, but I obey orders, you receive orders from your boss Paul Watson, and I receive orders from my contracting agency. I am not the owner of the ship. I have a contract and I have to follow it and accomplish it. I have always accomplished my contracts. I don’t see why I wouldn’t now. Over.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange that the owner would rather have you stay here in the open sea and not go to port?”
“Look I have a contract, and I earn money for every day, every month and every year. If I am here, we are all winning. We are all winning. And if the contracting agency wants to keep paying me, and feeding me, and keeping me here, we are all very happy here then. Over.”
“We have our orders, too, so we will continue to enjoy spending time with one another for a long, long time,” Hammarstedt answers before the Thunder’s captain vows to give him a long and exhausting fight.
“As I told you, we have a lot of fuel, a lot of supplies. We don’t have any need for another ship to come and resupply us. We are ready physically and mentally to be here for a long, long time. Over,” Cataldo says.
“OK. We will enjoy spending the foreseeable future with you,” Hammarstedt replies and glances toward the Thunder before turning to face Adam Meyerson. “They’re throwing a lot of big numbers out there today,” Hammarstedt says.
In the evening, the Thunder turns around and sets its course for the southeast.
It is probably just temporary. Just mind games, Hammarstedt thinks.
One hundred days. The chase has travelled across three oceans. It is the longest ship chase in history, it is the longest campaign in Sea Shepherd’s history, and it is one of the longest days in Peter Hammarstedt’s life. He says it to himself, he says it to Adam Meyerson, he says it to the majority of those who come onto the bridge:
“I wish a Navy ship would come.”
But for the time being, nothing appears on the horizon, other than thin shafts of light breaking through the clouds. Nobody offers them assistance or a new supply of provisions.
The morning arrived with some good news. The Viking has been arrested in Malaysia and the captain thrown in jail. Hammarstedt believes that the Thunder and the Viking have the same owner, and hopes the arrest will have an impact: that the owner will take some action with the Thunder other than simply allowing the ship to drift for month after month. The Kunlun was stopped in Thailand.
“The Thai customs authorities said that the boat will be held until the investigations were concluded and that could take a very long time … Huge,” Hammarstedt explains on the bridge.
“It’s like half the ships that we’re looking for are out of the game now. Fantastic!” Adam Meyerson answers.
“Yeah! Half of them down,” Hammarstedt replies.
On social media, Sea Shepherd now calls the Thunder a “floating prison”.1 They hire Dr Glenn Simmons, a researcher and specialist in human trafficking, to describe what he thinks is taking place on the Thunder. For several years Simmons has been researching the working conditions of Asian fishermen and he maintains that the alleged suicide attempt on the Thunder was a desperate act on the part of a man being held on the ship against his will.
“We have reasonable cause to believe that the crew are indeed being held captive and against their will. The worst thing you can do is leave the scene as crew would lose hope,” Simmons writes in his statement to Sea Shepherd, which Hammarstedt forwards to Interpol.
That is the story Sea Shepherd wants – and which they quickly distribute to the media.
The news of the duel at sea also reaches the bridge of the Thunder. From her exclusive apartment in the luxurious Viña del Mar in Chile, the Thunder’s captain’s wife sends him regular updates on the chase by telefax. Luis Alfonso Rubio Cataldo therefore knows everything about his opponent Peter Hammarstedt and Sea Shepherd. He also knows that Hammarstedt has not succeeded in establishing the identities of the officers on the Thunder and has ordered them to wear ski masks to hide their faces when they are moving around on deck.
In an attempt to refute the accusations that he is sailing a slave ship, Cataldo now orders the entire crew on deck. As the Bob Barker’s dinghies approach the side of the Thunder, everyone on board is told to pull on their ski masks and bring with them pieces of metal pipe to bang against the railing. In this way Cataldo will demonstrate that everyone on the Thunder is united against Sea Shepherd.
“It’s strange that the Indonesian crew are now hiding their identities,” Hammarstedt says as he sees the procession of balaclava-clad fishermen on
the deck of the Thunder.
Through the binoculars, Hammarstedt can see the crew members hammering on the railing with the iron pipes as the dinghies pass by. It resembles a bizarre theatrical performance.
In the evening the Thunder’s captain changes the ship’s course, this time to the northeast. To the other officers on the Thunder, Cataldo seems tired and depressed. The story of the suicide attempt on the Thunder was a bluff – a morbid attempt to induce Peter Hammarstedt to give up the chase.
Those who know that the Thunder has just lost its Nigerian flag also find Cataldo’s next move to be strange. All the fishing buoys are to be removed from the quarterdeck. The Thunder is to be prepared to put in at port.
At Port Harcourt in Nigeria.
33
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.
34
THE ARMPIT OF AFRICA
GULF OF GUINEA, APRIL 2015
4 April. Operation Icefish is taking place somewhere nobody could have anticipated.
The heat wears down the crew’s concentration, energy and desire to work. A faint breeze is blowing from the southeast. A pod of Risso’s dolphins break through the surface of the water between the two ships.
A few minutes past half-four in the afternoon, the Thunder suddenly makes a 70-degree turn to the east and sails into Equatorial Guinea’s economic zone.
“All right, we are going somewhere,” Peter Hammarstedt says while keeping an eye on the electronic maps on the bridge.
Never before has the Thunder been so close to land. For the first time, the hunter and the hunted are less than 200 nautical miles from the mainland. If they stay the same course and continue at the same speed, they will be able to see the coast of the African continent within three days.