In October Hammarstedt was invited to a conference on fisheries crime in Indonesia. In attendance were the officers and police who took part in the hunt for “The Bandit 6”. Sea Shepherd had been invited in from the cold.
A few weeks later, CCAMLR decided that an area of 1.55 million square kilometres by the Ross Sea in Antarctica was to be protected for the next 35 years. It is the world’s largest protected marine region.
At Christmas in 2016 the newspaper La Voz de Galicia reported that the Vidal family had won its Supreme Court appeal so the Guardia Civil will most likely have to drop the criminal case against the family. The reason for this is that the illegal fishing has taken place in international waters and the Vidal family can therefore not be punished by the Spanish courts. The open sea is still a wet Wild West and the toothfish is, in practical terms, up for grabs.
“Tucho” Vidal will be spared having to spend the years of his retirement in prison, but the fine of EUR 17.8 million for illegal fishing was still in effect when this book went to print.
When he read the news, Peter Hammarstedt sat down at his computer.
“The decision by the Spanish Supreme Court is as disappointing as the hard work of INTERPOL and Spanish law enforcement is inspiring. The ruling unfortunately sets the precedent that Spain is a safe place for criminals to organize and launder the theft of fish worth millions.
“However, the monster that is the Galician Mafia is still severely wounded, and while it licks its wounds, it does so knowing that if they resume their toothfish poaching operations in the future, then they do so under the watchful eye of police − who now understand their modus operandi better than ever before − and a proven commitment by Sea Shepherd to shut them down on the High Seas that the Spanish Supreme Court has surrendered to poachers,” he wrote in a message published on Sea Shepherd’s website.1
Then he wrote a message to the authors of this book:
“Kjetil & Eskil, had I been convinced that governments and courts of justice solved problems, I wouldn’t be doing the kind of work that I do.”
* * *
After the Thunder and the Viking sank, the Perlon was sold for scrap metal and the Kunlun, Songhua and Yongding were detained by authorities; most who had followed the chase of the “The Bandit 6” assumed that the pirate sextet was out of the game for good.
In March 2017 a ship agency in Sao Vicente on Cabo Verde received a letter from the company Pesca Cisne in Punta Arenas, Chile, regarding a vessel that had been detained on the island since Peter Hammarstedt spotted it by accident almost two years earlier.
“As you know, we are the new owners of the ship, which will be called Pesca Cisne 1. The vessel is currently docked in Sao Vicente and we would like to engage your services as our ship agent,” the letter written in Spanish read.
When it was chased in the Southern Ocean in 2015, the same vessel was called Songhua and was owned and operated by the Vidal family in Ribeira. The company in Chile who has now, according to the letter, bought the vessel, has since the late 1980s been owned by the family of Florindo González Corral from the small and unassuming town of O Carballiño in Galicia.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
One November day in 2014, we were discussing ideas for new articles for the Norwegian national daily newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. The conversation went something like this:
“Do you remember the two fishing vessels that were wanted by Interpol?”
“Yeah ...”
“What was it that actually happened?”
The work that led to writing this book began with one of journalism’s most fundamental questions. And although we weren’t aware of it, Peter Hammarstedt had just set his course for the Banzare Bank in search of the Thunder, the Viking and “The Bandit 6”. The documentary article about Hammarsted’s pursuit of the Thunder and our search for the ship’s owner in Galicia was one of the most read pieces in Dagens Næringsliv in 2015. A book deal followed, along with trips to five continents to speak with people who were involved in the story of the search for “The Bandit 6”.
It has been a long journey and there are many people who have helped us out along the way.
First, we give thanks to our bosses at Dagens Næringsliv, Gry Egenes, Frode Frøyland and Espen Mikalsen, who gave us the opportunity to work on the story for the newspaper – and who later granted us leave so we could write this book. Our wonderful colleagues Kenneth Lund and Morten Iversen deserve a solid pat on the back for their interpreting and reporting assistance.
We owe a huge thanks to Frode Molven, editor at Vigmostad & Bjørke, for his belief in the project, especially when our own belief failed us. Rita G. Karlsson, at Kontext Agency in Stockholm, has done a fantastic job of selling the book to the rest of the world. Thank you!
The Sea Shepherd captain Peter Hammarstedt
