Eventually, as the Bob Barker nears the 60th parallel and the northern border of the Southern Ocean, he has the crew of 31 men and women do training drills. In “the Screaming Sixties” the clear blue surface of the ocean can rise up without warning and transform into deep green, ferocious walls of water and hurricanes are so common that they are never given names. The volunteer crew practises “man overboard” procedures, evacuation, confrontation tactics and the use of shields in the dinghies.
When Hammarstedt engaged in close combat with Japanese whaling ships, he met with aggressive resistance, but he knew that they would not undertake any actions leading to the loss of human lives. With a pirate fleet he can’t anticipate what lies in store. The illegal fishing activity taking place in the Antarctic constitutes one of the most lucrative fish poaching operations in the world and Hammarstedt has prepared the crew for the possibility that the pirates can resort to the use of weapons.
On the starboard side of the bridge he has posted a laminated sign in A4 format. The words “Wanted – Rogue toothfish poaching vessels – The Bandit 6” are printed on it in blood-red letters against a sandy-brown background. The culprits are the ships the Thunder, Viking, Kunlun, Yongding, Songhua and Perlon – a fleet of battered trawlers and longline fishing vessels that have been plundering the valuable Antarctic Patagonian toothfish stock for years.3 All the vessels have been blacklisted by CCAMLR, the organization that manages the living marine resources of the international maritime zone surrounding Antarctica.4
The 64-year old Perlon has been blacklisted by the authorities since 2003. The Yongding has been looting the Southern Ocean for at least ten years. The Kunlun is the smallest, but perhaps best known and is affiliated with a Spanish mafia network. Then there is the large Songhua, with the characteristic low deck afore, which has being fishing illegally in Antarctica since 2008.
At the very top of the poster are photos of the two ships Hammarstedt has been daydreaming about. The Viking – a rusty hulk that glides silently in and out of Asian ports with its illegal cargo – the first fishing vessel ever to be wanted by Interpol. And then the Norwegian-built trawler the Thunder, also wanted by Interpol.5 The owner is to have earned more than EUR 60 million on the plundering of the Antarctic. It is the Thunder he wants most to find.
Hammarstedt has put copies of the Interpol notices on a shelf on the bridge. If he finds one of the vessels, he will pose by the railing with the mafia ship in the background and the laminated Interpol notice in his hand. Then the ship’s photographer will take a picture of him.
After nine days at sea, at 61 degrees south, they spot the first icebergs: two towering ice cathedrals with dripping facades and ephemeral spires. Hammarstedt guides the Bob Barker around the icebergs so the crew can dwell upon the landscape, as a hint of what lies in store.
The first person to sail into the Antarctic Circle, James Cook, had a terrified and freezing crew on his hands, who later described the frozen wasteland as the forecourt of Hell. “The whole scene looked like the wrecks of a shattered world, or as the poets describe some regions of hell; an idea which struck us the more forcibly, as execrations, oaths, and curses re-echoed about us on all sides,” the scientist George Forster wrote, a crew member on Cook’s second journey.6
For the crew of the Bob Barker the Antarctic is an idea of the world as they wished it to be: pristine, peaceful and timeless. Beneath them lies a lost continent, the Kerguelen Plateau – an enormous land mass that was formed by a series of volcanic eruptions 110 million years ago. The continent was three times larger than Japan; tropical flora and fauna were presumably to be found here. And then, 20 million years ago, the continent slowly began sinking. Today it lies hidden more than one kilometre beneath the ocean’s surface. The only dry remains of the lost continent are Kerguelen, McDonald and Heard Islands with mountain peaks higher than any to be found on the Australian mainland and named after French explorers, Australian scientists and Norwegian whalers. Norwegian Bay. Mount Olsen. Mawson Peak.
In the depths between the continental shelf and the continental slopes lives the Patagonian toothfish, a petulant and repulsive giant that can grow to a weight of 120 kilos and live more than 50 years.7 It starts its life in the shallows close to land and it is not until the age of six to seven years that it sets out to swim down into the ice-cold darkness of 1,000 to 2,000-metre depths. After a specimen was caught and described at the end of the nineteenth century, it lived in oblivion until it was rediscovered by chance and served at restaurants in the USA in the 1980s. The fatty, pearly white and boneless meat created a gastronomic sensation. The flavour of the toothfish resembled a mixture of lobster and scallops, and some called it the best tasting fish in the world. A British restaurant critic offered his readers the following advice: “It is seriously endangered, so you’d better eat as much as you can while stocks last.”8
The hunt for “the white gold” generated hidden fortunes, cost
