“Give me somebody who is going to put some boxing gloves on and bring it to us. That’s a personal message to the Spanish family who is running this organization. Give us some captains with attitude!” Ager says to a chuckling group of men and women on the bridge.
It’s almost as if the captain of the Thunder can hear him.
After a few days’ listless sailing to the east, the Thunder suddenly turns its bow north. They are on the underwater plateau called the Melville Bank, as the crow flies, directly south of Madagascar. On the bridge of the Bob Barker they are now wondering whether the captain of the Thunder is planning to sail there or perhaps to Mauritius?
But the Thunder begins sailing in circles around the Melville Bank, where the ocean is no more than a mere hundred metres deep.1 Are they using the sonar to find a suitable place to put out the nets? Or is this just another move in a psychological game?
“They could just be bored and playing with the fish finder. Maybe they are just taking advantage of being in the area to survey it. Hard to say,” Meyerson says.
Just before midnight, a searchlight is lit on the stern of the Thunder. Then two more lights are switched on, a red one above a white, the light signal communicating that the crew on the Thunder is planning to start fishing.
“They have not had a light on the stern before. They could go for squid, get them to come to the light. Maybe they want to change their diet,” Meyerson suggests.
Captain Hammarstedt is called up to the bridge. He goes to the radio and tries to make contact with the Thunder.
Nobody responds, but the hatch on the stern opens. The Thunder was built as a trawler, but was later converted into a longline fishing vessel. When the crew fishes with nets, the system is deployed from the back and hauled in from the front through the trawl door. In the darkness, Hammarstedt can see shadows moving about on the quarterdeck and that something flies out resembling a marker line. Then Hammarstedt sees net floats and marker lights in the water. He immediately asks Meyerson to steer clear of the Thunder’s stern and back wash, so as to prevent the nets and ropes from getting tangled up in the propeller.
There is no doubt. The crew of the Thunder have decided to fish, but the Melville Bank is located too far north for there to be toothfish.
“Maybe they are fishing for tuna,” Chief Engineer Erwin Vermeulen suggests.
“Get closer on their quarter, just don’t cross the stern,” Hammarstedt says to Meyerson.
He has promised the crew that they will try to stop the Thunder if they are fishing, but it is difficult without putting the crew and the ship in danger: it is pitch dark, and the wind is whipping the waves up to heights of three metres.
“They could be fishing for supplies. We can’t do anything while it is dark and they know that. Fifty days and it had to be in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl,” Hammarstedt says.
All day long the crew has been looking forward to watching the recording of the Super Bowl final between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks which was played a few days earlier in Arizona, but now they are preparing to spring into action. The crew manning the dinghies finally see an opportunity to release some of the tension in their bodies, but Hammarstedt holds them back. He fears that this is exactly what the captain of the Thunder wants. In this weather there is a lot that can go wrong when the time comes to hoist a dinghy on board again, and the Thunder can then exploit the situation to take off.
“We have to choose our battles here. It will not be tonight,” he says.
He stands in the darkness on the bridge and sees that the stern hatch of the Thunder is shut before the ship slowly moves away from the net.
“It is a very short net they have put out. About half a mile. They haven’t done it to get a big catch. I think it is a test,” he says.
It is raining and windy. The bad weather is supposed to last for at least another 12 hours, but Hammarstedt knows he cannot permit the Thunder to do any fishing. The crew expects him to do something.
“The most important thing is to stay with the Thunder, but we have to make a statement,” he says to his colleagues on the bridge.
The next morning the officers meet on the Bob Barker to devise a plan. They do not have the equipment required to haul up the net, but can’t they pretend that they do? Both the ships are now located more than 10 kilometres from the net floats. If the Thunder follows when the Bob Barker sets its course for the buoys, it means that they want the fish now caught in the net. If the Thunder puts about, it means that they deployed the net in an attempt to outmanoeuvre Sea Shepherd so they can take off.
“We could go there as fast as we can. They won’t be able to get there before we cut the buoys,” Meyerson suggests.
“We could put the small boats in the water and let Bob Barker stay with the Thunder,” Vermeulen says.
“It is too rough to launch the small boats and if they are going to hit us it is better that they do it in calm seas,” says Hammarstedt, who has long been prepared for the possibility that the chase could end with a collision between the two ships.
The fishing captain on the Thunder could also deploy another net if the Bob Barker sets its course for the net floats. Then Hammarstedt will have two nets to deal with.
Throughout the entire day the two ships act out a drama on the turbulent seas. They turn towards each other and
