“Either things have already gone to hell or they are going to hell. I would rather wait for four months on land than go along,” he says to Zavaleta Salas before disappearing in the dinghy.
Serafin Vidal, the shipping company employee with responsibility for crew recruitment, wants people who don’t ask too many questions, who are not plagued by problems from the past and who can collaborate and keep their mouths shut. The Spanish officers on the Kunlun are paid between 6,000 and 8,000 dollars a month plus a share of the catch. As a shipmaster, Alberto Zavaleta Salas’ salary is 2,700 dollars a month. He sends 2,000 of this home to his wife and spends the rest on cigarettes and telephone costs. On a cargo ship he could have earned far more and without risk. In addition to feeling irritated about the pay, he has constant confrontations with the fishing captain José Regueiro Sevilla, the ship owner family’s most trusted man on the Kunlun.
Alberto Zavaleta Salas fears that it is he who will be sacrificed should the ship be arrested, that it is he who will have to rot in jail in an unknown port, while the Spanish officers will go free. He therefore carries a mobile phone in the pocket of his trousers at all times. He secretly records fragments of conversations on the bridge. When he is instructed to tear up pieces of paper, he gathers them and hides them in his cabin. When he is asked to delete emails, he saves them. He secures pictures of the officers who do not want to be photographed and he films the Kunlun’s fish factory, the effective assembly line that sends millions of dollars straight into the pockets of the ship owner’s family. One day he may find use for the recordings.
On the voyage out of the Riau Archipelago the Kunlun maintains a good distance away from Singapore, where there may be coast guard vessels. Then they set their course for the Cocos Islands – the atoll located between Australia and Sri Lanka. Zavaleta Salas knows the sailing route well; it is the same every time.
In 28 days they will reach the ice edge by the Banzare Bank.
On the evening of 19 December, 300 nautical miles off the Cocos Islands, they change the name from the Taishan to the Kunlun. The ship is equipped with two sets of documents; one of these is hidden behind a trap door in the cabin of one of the Indonesian crew members. On board there are also stamped and signed ship’s documents that the officers can fill out themselves if they should need a new identity quickly. They have a miniature printing press in the form of a simple set of stamps and a cardboard box full of flags from countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania and Panama.
Sensitive information from computers on the bridge is stored on mobile hard drives that can be easily hidden or thrown into the ocean and everything in the way of receipts from the ship agent in Batam is shredded and thrown overboard. Should the information fall into the wrong hands, it could lead to disclosing the identity of the ship’s true owner.
In the course of the past ten years, the ship has been assigned at least ten names and been flagged in at least five countries. The Kunlun is a floating and inveterately persistent offender, a pioneer in what would become the world’s most lucrative poaching of fish. The ship was fined in South Africa for illegal shark cargo; it was blacklisted and denied access by ports all over the world. Finally, the Kunlun was so open and shameless in its devastating activities that the trawler was debated in the Australian parliament.4
The ship now also has the eyes of the Australian authorities on it. An Orion plane from Australia’s Air Force sees three ships pass the Cocos Islands on the way into the Antarctic.5 Along with the Kunlun the flight crew also sees the ship that was once painted white, the Songhua.
The true commander on the Songhua is the aging and legendary fishing captain “El Diablo” from Ribeira in Spain, a hardy veteran of the Antarctic. He has received the nickname for his ruthless treatment of his crew. But “The Devil” also has his more light-hearted qualities. He is the only one of the fishing captains who regularly invites his crew out on the town when they put in at port. The Songhua is also the youngest of the three vessels, and for the insurance agents on land who receive detailed reports on how much fish is hauled on board, the Songhua is the hardest worker.
The captain of the third ship, the Yongding, is the 40-something Juan Manuel Núñez Robles, a man with a fondness for whisky and the good life. He will later claim that the expedition destroyed both his life and his marriage.6
The Perlon is already at Banzare Bank, where the fishing captain has started what will be one of his better seasons.
The Viking, the first ship to be wanted by Interpol, is also out on a mission. Few know where the vessel is located, but on board a wild Christmas party is being planned at which cold beer, sparkling wine, barbecued meat and ice cream will be served and they will dance the jenka, a Finnish folk dance.7
Soon Alberto Zavaleta Salas will sail into the largest ship search in the history of the Antarctic, a handful of ships caught up in a game of cat and mouse at the bottom of the world.
The pursuit of the Thunder has already been underway for one week.
14
DESOLATION ISLAND
KERGUELEN ISLANDS, FRENCH SOUTHERN TERRITORIES, DECEMBER 2014
During the week between Christmas and New Year the Thunder sets its course to the north and sails down the middle of the strait running through the French controlled outposts of the Crozet and Kerguelen Islands. The
