Warrior rides high on wave of sea justice
BATTLING poachers in wild, rocky seas is all part of the job for the crew of Sea Shepherd. While docked in Darwin, they shared their turbulent tales with reporter JASON WALLS
DURING the past four years, Antoine Amory has spent just three weeks with his feet on dry land.
As boatswain on the Sea Shepherd’s state-of-the-art Ocean Warrior, his work is his life.
The 32-year-old former firefighter left his comfortable existence in France for life on the high seas in 2013 and has never looked back.
In their latest mission, Amory and the rest of the Warrior’s crew took down an illegal fishing operation in East Timorese waters, working hand-in-hand with law enforcement to bring the poachers to justice.
But while he calls what he does an amazing job — and it is work, with crew members rostered on six days a week, even while docked, and every day while at sea — it’s also dangerous and at times, confronting.
“We are the small boat crew, so we are the heart of the action, so it’s really intense,” he says.
“Doing all of the mobile operations really close to the poachers is always kind of risky, but doing them at night is even more risky with the gear in the water, with them maybe spotting you and we don’t know what they have on board they could throw at you or use against you, so it’s always kind of risky, but we train and we work well.
“It’s always a mix of feelings, it’s always really exciting to find some poachers but you’re also going to be confronted with the killing and all this death that they bring with them.”
This last point was driven home for Amory during the Timor operation, where the crew played a key role in the arrest of fishermen they suspected of illegally harvesting endangered species of sharks.
But what they found on the fishing boats was even more confronting than the experienced seaman had expected — thousands and thousands of illegally slaughtered sharks, some just babies.
“When we did the raid, going full speed with the police with us was the first time for us. It was a really good feeling and we boarded the ships and then we discovered all of the sharks, so once again it was up and down, it was a rollercoaster of emotions, always,” he says.
“But this is what we do. Unfortunately it cannot just be exciting and fun — we do this
because there is death out there — so we need to be confronted at some point.”
UP until recently the not-for-profit conservation organisation’s donationfunded fleet consisted mostly of ships built between 40 and 60 years ago — positively ancient next to the year-old Warrior.
Paid for with a $12 million donation from the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the 12,000hp vessel is capable of reaching speeds of up to 30 knots, and on its low-torque electric motor, travelling oneand-a-half times around the world. When faced with a confrontation at sea, one of the four 3000hp engines can be redirected to the ship’s water cannon, delivering a 20,000L payload to its target every minute.
The cannon is one of a number of modifications Sea Shepherd made to the off-theshelf Dutch ship, which allows crew members to take the fight to the high-seas outlaws.
But Amory says the goal is intimidation rather than injury.
“We don’t want to aim at people, we don’t want to injure anyone, we just want to scare them and it is quite scary,” he says.
“Because we’re targeting poachers and illegal fishermen, these people aren’t respecting any laws, so they’re pretty keen to target us as well, to stop us from stopping them.
“So they could use their ship to scare us or to ram us, they could throw things at us — they usually don’t really like the fact that we’re trying to shut them down.”
While the East Timor police were compiling their evidence after the joint raid in the recent campaign, Amory and the others kept the cannon trained on the poachers, helping prevent them from escaping justice.
“They were anchored in the bay and during maybe a week the authorities were just trying to build the case to see how they could have them in court,” he says.
“The problem is that the (Timor authorities) don’t have any ships, they don’t have any naval assets, so we were the only ship trying to prevent them from escaping.
“So of course we used the water cannon to show them that we could, if we wanted, damage the ship, so it was just enough.”
As well as illegally targeting sharks, including protected species, Amory says the crew members on board such vessels are often also poorly treated, including being forced to work basically as slaves.
And while he doesn’t know whether that was the case on these vessels, most of them were pretty happy to see them.
“The Filipino crew came and basically helped with the boarding, that was not what we were expecting,” he says.
“But in the past we’ve had some stories like that with people who are basically slaves on board ships.
“We have been in contact with some Filipino crew deckhands on board those ships and they’ve been saying they were not paid for a few months and they were not even fed so they had to buy their own food, so we heard about that and we are trying to investigate a bit more now.”
Food and board are not issues for Amory, as Sea Shepherd ensures he wants for nothing in that regard — like everyone on board, he doesn’t eat meat or animal products — and as a volunteer he doesn’t expect to be paid.
And while the hi-tech Ocean Warrior is in many ways luxurious compared to the rest of the fleet — “on the Steve Irwin you have a big wooden (steering) wheel” — he stresses it is not designed for comfort.
“This ship is designed for speed so if you go over 16, 17 knots it’s really stable and the faster you go the more stable, but under 15 knots she’s rolling a lot,” he says.
“And when I say a lot — it’s like sometimes you don’t sleep at night and you’re like ‘OK, there’s a hurricane outside’ and you arrive on the bridge to take your watch and there’s nothing ... it’s really frustrating.”
But despite the wild weather, cramped conditions, recalcitrant poachers and the odd close call with an iceberg, Amory says he doesn’t miss solid ground.
“I worked before in France and saved some money because this is what I wanted to do, and (I don’t go) often out of the ship because I can’t afford it, but at the same time, I have food, I have a bed to sleep in,” he says.
“I feel really lucky and I don’t want to take so many breaks because I’m really lucky to be here.”
In fact, the hardships — being on the front lines of the conservation crusade, getting his hands dirty — are part of the attraction of working with Sea Shepherd that makes it all worthwhile.
“I used to surf and I wanted to protect the oceans and I have always loved animals and I think it was kind of the organisation I wanted to work for. Because this organisation acts instead of just protesting — and this is kind of my philosophy,” he says.
“Maybe 40 per cent of the fish caught in the world are caught illegally so if we shut these down it would be a lot better for the oceans. So that was the idea and I think I made a good choice.
“We have all the tools, all the sanctuaries, laws and quotas, and we just need to enforce them to protect the oceans.”
The Ocean Warrior crew will host tours of the vessel while it is docked in Darwin Harbour next Friday evening between 5pm and 8pm and again the following Friday, depending on demand and scheduling.