Operation Nemesis: Captain Peter Hammarstedt 2016 Ocean Defense Tour

I was walking down Brunswick Street in Fitzroy the other day and I realized that it was 11 years ago that I first came to Australia and came to Melbourne actually in particular and with that realization came the realization that I'm no longer the youngest sea Shepherd crew member that was a title I had for some time I'm no longer even the youngest sea Shepherd captain that title was stripped away from me as well I realized that I'm starting to get gray hairs and as I was counting them I realized that about half of them are probably from being wedged between an 8,000 tonne factory whaling ship and a 5,000 ton refueling tanker right there the other half is probably from chasing a notorious tooth fish poacher for a hundred and ten days before it's sank but some of them are definitely from public speaking at events like this and if you saw me pacing back and forward they're jumping up and down slapping myself in the face a few times it's because I get very very nervous to speak in public because passion is something very difficult to put into words when captain Paul Watson says that if the oceans die we die he's not referring to the horrific slaughter of pilot whales in the Faroe Islands he's not talking about the cruel and criminal harpoon harpooning of whales down in Antarctica what he's referring to specifically is overfishing and illegal unreported and unregulated fishing so-called IUU fishing in particular now it's estimated that 15 to 40 percent of the global catch of fish is caught by these iuu operators 90 percent of the fish caught in the world is caught in the waters of some coastal state and that's because you can't just find fish anywhere fish congregate on continental shelves on sea mounts and Shoals generally quite close to shore and so ninety percent of the fish caught is caught under the jurisdiction of some country so if we take those two facts into account one fifteen to forty percent of the fish is caught illegally to ninety percent of the fish is caught under the jurisdiction of a state then if we are serious about saving the oceans we have to work together with governments that lack the economic means to adequately monitor control and surveil their waters last year my crew and I completed the longest maritime pursuit in history when we chased the Interpol wanted fishing vessel Thunder for 110 days from the frigid waters of Antarctica to the warm waters of Equatorial Africa after chasing them across three oceans covering 10,000 nautical miles the captain of the Thunder captain Cataldo decided to sink his own ship because he could not shake our relentless pursuit he sunk his ship about 80 nautical miles off the small African island state of South Tomei and príncipe and as my crew and I and the crew of the Sam Simon pulled the Thunder crew out of the water and saved their lives i sat on the bridge of my ship and I wondered why of all the places in the world why did Cataldo choose to sink his ship right there when I looked at the geopolitics of the area I realized that south to may and príncipe has no naval patrol vessel they have a couple of small boats within their Coast Guard that have a range of about 20 miles a quarter of the distance to where the Thunder now sis 3800 meters on the ocean bottom so captain Cataldo could feel safe and comfortable knowing that nobody was going to salvage his ship no Navy or Coast Guard was going to come out to meet him throw submersible pumps on board and keep that ship and the valuable evidence on board afloat he knew that his ship was going to sink and the evidence along with it and what I realized is that the same reason that captain Cataldo sank his ship in the Gulf of Guinea is the same reason why that area is a major hub for drug trafficking and for transshipment of illegally caught fish as my crew and I chased the Thunder up the west coast of Africa I was in contact with several governments begging them to please arrest that ship and it was the small African coastal state of Gabon that said to me that if the Thunder entered their waters then it would be arrested my contact for Gabon was an American conservationist by the name of Mike Fay now Mike Fay is a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and he rose to world fame in the late 1990s when he completed his mega transect walk a four hundred and fifty five day walk covering 2,000 miles of Gabon from the Congo Basin to the coast of Gabon he did this Trek with just 12 pygmy guides at times the jungle was so thick that they only progressed half a mile a day and during this epic expedition Mike Fay inventoried every single plant and animal that he came across he inventoried Gabon special lowland gorillas special because they spend most of their time out on the beach he discovered Gabon surfing hippos unique because like so many Australians they will head down to the beach they will swim out to sea just to bodysurf back to shore now the scientific community doesn't know why they do it but when I gave a speech in Israel about three weeks ago someone in the audience yelled out to me that they do it because it's fun and that's probably the closest thing to the truth a mic phase expedition laid the foundation for the establishment of Gabon national park system 11 national parks covering 15% of the land area of Gabon meaning that Gabon has more protected forests than any country in the world for its size less known is that 20% of the tuna caught in the Atlantic is caught in the waters of Gabon now in the European Union signs what are known as European fisheries partnership agreements with small African countries they look pretty decent on paper they'll say of course you can board our ships of course you can put observers on board of course you can inspect our catch but you're responsible for paying them you're responsible for getting them out to our ships and you're responsible for repatriating them back home from whatever distant foreign port we end up in so needless to say many of these African countries struggling financially can meet that term in the contract I was invited down to Gabon where I met with the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Fisheries and together we signed a historic agreement a Memorandum of Understanding where Sea Shepherd would provide a ship in this case the Bob Barker we would provide a crew when we would provide fuel and the gavin e's government would provide seven Marines with the Gabonese Navy three fisheries enforcement officers with the Gabonese fisheries enforcement agency and complete control and direction of where the patrols went we patrolled Gabon for five months we boarded over 50 legal licensed fishing vessels and during those inspections what we discovered is that what these fishing companies say that they're catching and what they're actually doing does not match up we documented one per saner killing 114 sharks in one single haul of tuna as bycatch and when that same fishing vessel was boarded the following day they declared five dead sharks for that entire day and to give you an idea of what that kind of operation looks like I'm going to show you a quick video you now it's often said that the oceans are out of sight and out of mind what operation albacore allows the government of Gabon to do is to put eyes on the water prior to the arrival of the Bob Barker these fishing vessels had been operating in Japanese waters and they had never been boarded before by having eyes on the water the government of Gabon can decide which vessels to ban from their waters which areas to close off to fishing and where to establish marine parks operation albacore also led to the arrest of four IUU fishing vessels prior to the arrival of the Bob Barker a fleet of eight Chinese trawlers flagged to the Congo were coming in across the southern border with Gabon every single night and fishing illegally in the very same Marine Park that protects cabins surfing hippos hiding the Bob Barker behind an oil rig we launched a coordinated coordinated nighttime raid we assisted the Gabonese Navy in boarding and arresting three of those ships those vessels were escorted into Gabon they were detained and ever since those arrests the incursions into that marine park stopped completely operation albacore was then expanded to include the country of South Tomei and príncipe and after picking up to coast Coast Guard officers with the South to make Coast Guard the Bob Barker headed to the very same area where the Thunder had sunk one year earlier and 16 miles from the site of the sinking they boarded a satays a vessel that was Spanish flag a Spanish flag long liner license to fish under a European Union agreement and license to fish for tuna the vessel was boarded its holes were inspected and on board they did not find tuna they found sharks and shark fins only the vessel was arrested it was escorted into South Tomei and príncipe and it was detained Gabon is a remarkable country it's one of just a handful of African countries that votes against the Japanese government at the International Whaling Commission two years ago the International Court of Justice the highest court in the world ruled thanks to bold legal action by Australia that the Japanese whaling program down in Antarctica is illegal last year the Australian federal court found the Japanese whaling industry in contempt of court for killing protected threatened and endangered whales in the Australia whale sanctuary and yet earlier this year the Japanese whaling fleet returned to Tokyo from the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary having killed 333 minke whales more than half of which were pregnant females so I stand before you today to tell you now that when the Japanese whaling fleet head south this Austral summer then sea Shepherd will be down there to meet them leading leading the campaign will be a brand new sea Shepherd vessel called the ocean warrior purchase purchase thanks to a generous grant by the Dutch postcode lottery and this is the fastest vessel that sea Shepherd has ever owned we have the vessel we now need to raise the money to bring it to Australia and then down to the Antarctic where it belongs and that's why we're here today we need your support to do it and I just want to announce that thanks to the generous donation that Philip Boleyn made this gift of twenty thousand dollars which which is made out to me personally as soon as my talk is done I'll be signing that over to sea Shepherd towards operation nemesis very often the media refers to our campaigns as a david-and-goliath struggle and it's a biblical story that's often used as a metaphor for improbable victory improbable because the lightly clad Shepherd David slew the heavily armored Goliath this giant and he did it by simply slinging a small stone but I recently read a book by the author Malcolm Gladwell and he's he speaks quite eloquently saying that victory who actually was inevitable for David Goliath was massive that's true but his size made him very very slow he was heavily armored but he still had weak points in the case of this biblical story it was his chin and the reason that we use this as a metaphor all the time is that too often power is confused with physical strength it's why this image is so dramatic of the 500 ton Bob Barker between these two massive ships but the truth is that power is rarely about physical strength power is about courage it's about innovation and it's about being absolutely relentless in pursuit of your campaign goals now in the past the Japanese whaling fleet has rammed us with their superior size they've outrun us with their superior speed but the ocean Warrior is a vessel that they cannot catch it is our David's sling and our campaigns down in Antarctica are a david-and-goliath struggle but not because we're going up against insurmountable odds its a david-and-goliath struggle because victory is inevitable we're calling our next campaign down to Antarctic operation nemesis and it's named after the Greek goddess of inescapable justice and it will be the most difficult campaign that we have ever done difficult because the Japanese government has changed the rules of engagement number one they've doubled the whaling area which means they will be twice as difficult to find too they've lowered their quota from 1035 whales to 333 whales they've done that because Sea Shepherd for the past 10 years has successfully prevented them from reaching anywhere near that bogus self allocated quota but they've also done it because they think that if I stand in front of you next year and I say that our campaign saved a hundred whales then they think that that will sound very different to your ears than me saying that we saved 800 whales now if I put all my cards on the table I cannot stand before you and say that I promise you we're going to save the way to find the whaling fleet I can't promise you that we're going to find them I wish I could stand here and say that I promise we will save hundreds of whales as we've done on all our past campaigns that's not something I can promise you either but what I can promise you is that if this campaign saves even the life of just one whale then it's absolutely worth every single effort because numbers and statistics that is how the Japanese whaling industry measures their success it's how I have measured our success for way too long but when you fight for life and when you campaign out of love you cannot reduce victory to some kind of number a life saved is not something that can be quantified and if we forget that then we forget who we are and we forget what it is that makes us see Shepard we are returning to the southern ocean because it is the right thing to do because just as we know that wealthy countries supporting wealthy fishing companies to steal fish from some of the poorest people in some of the poorest countries is wrong we know that killing endangered protected and threatened whales in a designated whale sanctuary is wrong and in a world where so many issues take on shades of grey here is an issue where right and wrong is simply black and white I know that we can shut down whaling in the Southern Ocean my close friends and family everybody I love and hold dear will always accuse me of dreaming big sometimes they accuse me of dreaming too big but I've been with Sea Shepherd for 13 years and I do not know any other way to dream but to dream big TE Lawrence more famously known as Lawrence of Arabia wrote in his 7 Pillars of wisdom that the dreamers of the day are dangerous people because they dream with both eyes open so as to make it possible they dream with both eyes open so as to make it possible two years ago captain Sid Hart Chakravarty and myself dreamt that we could shut down illegal fishing in Antarctica and with all six of the Bandit six out of action that dream became a reality 11 years ago I dreamt together with captain Paul Watson that we could shut down whaling in the Southern Ocean and ever since my first campaign in Antarctica and ever since we saved that first whale I've dreamt with my both eyes open so I stand before you today as I do every year and I ask you to please support us and I ask you to please continue to dream with me thank you

Channel: Sea Shepherd

Views: 70,999

Rating: 4.8817592 out of 5

Keywords: Sea Shepherd, OpNemesis, OpIcefish, OpAlbacore, IUUFishing, Whaling

Id: WQXPSw7tMCs

Length: 23min 12sec (1392 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 14 2016