Running an Icy Gauntlet for the Whales - Sea Shepherd

[Annces]

December 22nd, 2008. Off the coast of Antarctica.

By Captain Paul Watson

It has been a very busy and dramatic 48 hours since we first encountered the Japanese whaling fleet on Saturday morning (December 20th).

We had seen and filmed the Nisshin Maru from the air two days previous. They were in the area of Commonwealth Bay off the coast of Terre Adelie. The observation was taken from our helicopter at 3000 feet from thirty miles so we knew the whalers had not seen us.

Then on Saturday morning we spotted a moving target on the radar. The entire area was shrouded in thick fog and dense ice as we moved towards the ship. It could only be a whaler in this area and we could only assume that they thought we were part of the fleet. They did not alter course not did they attempt to speed up.

Suddenly out of the fog, the Yusshin Maru 2 appeared on our port side of the Steve Irwin less than a quarter of a mile off. We watched as crewmembers on the whaler, wearing yellow hard hats scurried across the deck towards a long hanging object hanging from a derrick.

As they began to untie the bindings we saw right away that it was a large net rigged to draw across the entire side of the vessel on a high wire between the fore and aft mast. It was a net designed to keep us from boarding.



At first I thought it was a prop fouling device and responded by turning quickly to port and towards the whaler to cut close across their stern to avoid any attempt to drop a line. I could not afford to have him cross our bow.

I then decided to launch the Delta inflatable with a crew to hit the Yusshin Maru 2 with a rotten butter bomb attack.

Despite the choppy water, the boat was expertly deployed and sent off but was quickly lost from sight in the rising swells. The Yusshin Maru 2 was now two miles in front of us going a top speed.

Unfortunately the GPS on the Delta was malfunctioning and the winds were rising with blizzard conditions. Out of concern for their safety, I called them back and brought the boat back onboard.

We had found them, but now we had another battle on our hands as rising winds and plummeting temperatures began to work mischief with the ice floes. We quickly found our way blocked on all sides as the floes moved and pushed closer together.

Spotting a very large iceberg, we moved towards it to find some security in the lee of that floating tabletop mountain of ice.

And it worked, as a large area of open water was kept ice free from behind the berg. For twelve hours we circled in that lee as the ice moved in closer and closer every hour.

By the next morning the weather reports warned of another 12 hours of bad weather and heavy winds. We had no choice but to find a way to break free. The ice charts indicated that we had a chance of finding open water some twelve miles to the South.

We pointed the bow south and put the nose into the pack and began to push our thousand ton hull into and through the thick ice.

I've got a great deal of experience with ice navigation but 90% of the crew had never been in ice before and it was a harrowing experience for most of them with the thick ice grinding against the hull and large cobalt blue ice tougher than stone banging against the relatively thin steel hull.

The plate in the forward rope locker began to buckle in from the pressure of the ice. It was to much for one cameraman who scrambled out of the hold absolutely certain that the hull would be breached. I went down with Charles Hutchings the Chief Engineer and we determined that it was not as serious as it appeared. Bosun Dan Bebawi had his deck crew erect shoring beams of timbers to brace the hull and that helped considerably.

Slowly we made our way towards where we believed there would be open seas as King and Adelie penguins stood on ice floes and watched us curiously as we passed them by.

Finally after seven hours we had muscled our way through 12 miles of ice until we could see open water in the distance.

As we approached the blue water, our relief was short lived. Huge swells coming from the South were surging into the ice pack presenting us with an ordeal of truly frightening proportions.

To gain the security of the open water we would have to thread our way through swells salted with hundreds of large growlers, chucks of hard ice the size of houses that were being tossed about on the heaving swells like beach balls. I had never seen again quite like it and it was intimidating. If just one of those hellish ice balls connected with the ship it would split us open like a ripe tomato.

Avoiding a rolling growler to the port put us dangerously close to another monster ice ball on the starboard. The ship rolled and twisted and I gave it bursts of speed to slide past one threat only to cut the engines to avoid the next threat.

I would have rather re-lived the 7 long hours grinding through the ice than to have weathered the twenty minutes of that nightmarish gauntlet.

But we burst through, out of the ice and into just heavy swells and I don't think I have ever seen a crew more relieved to see just heavy stormy seas instead of those same stormy seas filled with rolling, tumbling, jagged chunks of heavy polar ice.

We were still surrounded by massive icebergs but they are easily avoided.

We did have one very beautiful experience when we passed between two gigantic tabletop icebergs. As we cruised between two perpendicular walls of ice a hundred meters in height, we were joined by a pod of Orcas in hot pursuit of some penguins.

By Monday morning, the winds had died down. The helicopter could fly again, both to find us a faster path through the drift ice to the North and to re-locate the Japanese whaling fleet.

The whalers were now some fifty miles from us and we began to close the gap. They were not whaling and appeared to be trying to avoid by moving away from where they thought we thought they were going.

But with a visual on them, we will have them again very soon.

We have found them five days before Christmas, the earliest we have ever found the fleet and hopefully we can translate that extra time into a greater financial loss for the whalers and more lives saved for the whales.


(printed in full with permission of Sea Shepherd)

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=165320542&blogID=458483160

Video footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqBZJcgfm8A

[billyoc]

1. "Spotting a very large iceberg, we moved towards it to find some security..."

Now, THAT'S a sailor! :patriot:

If you've never sailed in iceberg choked waters, it's hard to describe how terrifying it is the first time. Pretty much like every other time. :)

[The Traveler]

2. I subscribed to the SSCS site yesterday

Today they wrote that they had lost contact with the fleet and were still navigating through treacherous iceberg and growler patches. I take comfort in noting the Japanese whaling fleet is probably dealing with similar conditions.

One may have concerns about Watson's methods ... sometimes, I think he pushes it too far. But one cannot doubt the man's courage or skill. It's a sound ship with a good crew ... with any kind of luck, they will cost the Samurai whale butchers another few tens of millions of dollars. But make no mistake ... at last report, they were still in a rather dicey situation. Ships and crews have been lost in less adverse conditions ...

Trav