Meyerson and Ager make a discovery that means they have lost one of the elements of surprise they have been discussing.
“The Thunder knows that we can’t haul nets. Our specs are on our website,” Ager says.
On board the Bob Barker there are containers of expanding foam insulation. What if they were to open four or five of the containers and throw them towards the trawl door? Then hauling in the nets from on board the Thunder will be hell for the crew.
Had the Sam Simon been accompanying them now, they would have had more options. Then they could have launched the dinghies.
“We have never gone up against this kind of an adversary before. They feel backed into a corner and could potentially be quite dangerous,” Hammarstedt says to Erwin Vermeulen.
“They could be going another month at this speed. It’s not going to change anything for them. We can speculate but we have been doing that for 50 days, we might be doing it for another 50 days,” Vermeulen says.
He is convinced that the Thunder’s fishing captain is an experienced and skilled fisherman, so there must be a reason why they are at the Melville Bank. But he is unable to understand what he is thinking.
“It doesn’t make sense. The gillnets need to go on flat land and this is like a volcano,” he says.
Just before dusk begins falling, the Thunder glides past the Bob Barker. One of Sea Shepherd’s officers sees the silhouette of a man on the bridge who is raising a clenched fist at the Bob Barker.
“Something will kick off tonight. Our nights of peaceful sleep are over,” Adam Meyerson predicts.
The captain of the Thunder calls up the Bob Barker again and again, but this time it is Hammarstedt who neglects to answer.
“They have ignored our calls before. I think now we can ignore them,” he says.
The Thunder draws closer. Hammarstedt presses the alarm that is a signal to the crew that everyone who is not busy doing something is to meet in the messroom. All the bulkheads are now to be secured. He wants to know where each and every member of the crew is to be found, in the event of a collision and if the Thunder breaks open a hole in the Bob Barker’s hull, they must ensure that the water cannot spread throughout the ship. He sees that the bow of the Thunder is headed for the helicopter deck astern on the Bob Barker. Then the captain of the Thunder calls him up again on the radio. It’s a sign of weakness, Hammarstedt thinks.
“They don’t seem that confident in close quarters,” he says.
Hammarstedt has been in many close-range battles at sea and is certain that he has more experience in manoeuvring in such duels than the Thunder’s captain.
“We can do this little rodeo thing,” he says to Meyerson, who has come up onto the bridge again.
“The Thunder has tried to back into us, turn into us and run us down. I hope they have learned not to be aggressive towards us. Do the right thing. Go into port and face the music,” Meyerson says.
The Thunder is now perilously close to the quarterdeck of the Bob Barker, but all of a sudden, the trawler changes course and avoids a collision. Then the Thunder stops moving. It is almost as if the captain has decided that the vessel needs to rest. All night long the two ships pitch beside one another, like an old married couple that have argued themselves to sleep.
The next morning, the Thunder begins moving slowly in the direction of the net. The Norwegian fisheries officer Tor Glistrup has asked Hammarstedt to try to get hold of one of the net floats. If it is from the same brand and the same series as the floats the Sam Simon picked up where Hammarstedt found the Thunder, it is evidence that it was the Thunder that left behind the illegal gillnet at the Banzare Bank. Hammarstedt gathers the crew in the messroom. If the weather is good enough, he wants to try to navigate the Bob Barker between the Thunder and the net floats.
“We will do what we can to make it difficult for them, but there are different factors that may make it too dangerous for us to intervene. If we have a collision situation, we lose them. If we have a crane going bad, we lose them. I just don’t want you to see it as a failure if they manage to get the gillnet up,” he says to the crew.
They approach the net floats and the two vessels move into close quarters once again. Hammarstedt positions the Bob Barker between the fish net and the Thunder, but now the captain of the Thunder is navigating more aggressively. The trawler cuts in towards the starboard side of the Bob Barker, and it appears as if the captain has planned to pass right in front of the bow of the Sea Shepherd ship. It is a fatally dangerous manoeuvre. He calls up Hammarstedt again and again, says that he isn’t afraid and that “Peter” is a terrible captain. For a few short minutes he is suddenly on a first name basis with Hammarstedt, who responds with a long blast of the ship’s horn. Then Hammarstedt presses the ship’s alarm again, so the crew of the Bob Barker runs to the messroom.
The ships are so close together that Hammarstedt can make out the faces of the deck crew on the Thunder who are now standing lined up along the railing. It is clear that
