To prevent the meeting, she threatens them.
“You will all be punished in accordance with international maritime law. I would therefore ask everyone who is in contact with these men from Norway not to speak with them,” she writes on Facebook.
“Please cancel the appointment,” Thenu virtually orders.
“Mr Glenn”, the man who was referred to in the email, is Dr Glenn Simmons, a scientist and specialist in human trafficking at the University of Auckland. He was the one who claimed that the Indonesian crew was very likely held on board the Thunder against their will, a story Sea Shepherd spread all over the world to draw attention to the chase. The Interpol agents found no evidence supporting this claim when they interviewed the crew in São Tomé. A few months after the 30 Indonesians returned to Indonesia, Simmons and Thenu interviewed several of them. The interviews are part of a research project and the crew clearly made some admissions.
“You stated that you knew it was an illegal ship and that nonetheless you chose to work there to earn money. That’s not legal,” Thenu writes in the message where she warns them against us.
Now everything will get better, she promises.
“We [Mr Glenn and I] want to help you find a better life.”
It is a perfect lie for frightening the Indonesian crew into silence. Several of them have now been hired by fishing vessels off the coast of West Africa.
Back home in Chimbote, Peru the Kunlun’s Captain Alberto Zavaleta Salas received several emails from the Vidal system in which he is urged to delete all correspondence with the shipping company. And he is asked to keep his mouth shut if anyone should call. After our meeting in Lima, Zavaleta Salas decided to collaborate with the Spanish police. Until he finds work on a ship, he subsists on odd jobs as a painter. A number of the other captains of “The Bandit 6” vessels explain that they are struggling to find work in the aftermath of all the media attention surrounding the pirate vessels.
In September 2016 in Indonesia, Captain Juan Domingo Nelson Venegas González and the chief engineer of the Viking are charged a fine of 2 billion Indonesian rupiahs. They are unable to pay it and must serve a four month jail sentence.
After the wreck of the Thunder Captain Warredi Enisuoh of the Nigerian coastal administration, NIMASA, went on holiday in Norway. At the turn of the year 2015–2016, he and a number of chief executives were implicated and later charged in a corruption case at NIMASA. Tens of millions of dollars are to have vanished from the coastal administration’s office. Warredi Enisuoh has pleaded not guilty in this case on which at the moment of this writing there has not yet been a final ruling.
In Ribeira Antonio “Tucho” Vidal Suárez is seated as usual at his favourite bar, the “Doble SS”, playing cards. In the premises there is as always an oppressive silence and suspicion when strangers enter. For years the Vidal shipping company has been able to loot the Antarctic without any intervention on the part of the authorities. They have been protected by regional policy, an antiquated body of laws and political horse trading in Brussels, Madrid and the capital of the province Santiago de Compostela to save the Galician fisheries industry. Now the game is presumably up for “Tucho”. The shipping company has been fined EUR 17.8 million for illegal fishing. When the authors meet “Tucho” in Ribeira in October 2016, a criminal case is pending. There the Guardia Civil has delivered its first blow. The court of justice has ruled that the Spanish authorities have so-called jurisdiction in the case. That means that the shipping company’s owners and employees can be penalized in Spain, even though the criminal acts they are charged with having committed have taken place in international waters. The Vidal family has appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.
“I have nothing to say,” “Tucho” says from his seat on the outdoor patio of the Doble SS.
A few kilometres away, in a garden, the Thunder’s fishing captain Juan Manuel Patiño Lampon is preparing a fishing line. It is a magnificent villa with chandeliers and heavy furniture, situated in seclusion on a quiet street. According to the rumours, Lampon has started working for himself as an inshore fisherman. He does not look up from the line bins; he repeats only a monotone “never, never, never” when we ask to speak with him. Several of the other officers of the Thunder from Ribeira have been hired by other vessels. “Don’t bother my head with this,” or “I’m never going to talk” are the brief messages they give over the phone.
The Bob Barker’s first mate Adam Meyerson has been made captain of the Sea Shepherd’s campaign ship, the newbuilding the Ocean Warrior. The ship, with a price tag of USD 12 million and a maximum speed of all of 30 knots, is the environmental movement’s first specially built vessel and will be used in the fight against the Japanese whaling fleet, which has begun new missions in the Antarctic.
Captain Siddharth Chakravarty of the Sam Simon is taking a break from Sea Shepherd indefinitely and has started his own project, Enforceable Oceans.
When he left Hobart in search of the Thunder, Peter Hammarstedt hoped that Operation Icefish would be a turning point for Sea Shepherd. The Swedish captain wants a closer form of collaboration with the authorities, but Sea Shepherd’s violent past makes that extremely difficult.
“It’s better to cooperate with Interpol than to be hunted by them,” he told us during one of our many conversations.
Hammarstedt’s dream project has been to lend out Sea Shepherd’s ships to poor coastal nations that don’t have
