Pirate Fishing - Robbing from the Poor, Stealing from the Planet

Finally we can talk about what we have been doing over the last couple of weeks.

We left the Tuna hunting grounds and sailed to West Africa where we started documenting pirate fishing vessels. We have kept quiet about it so as not to scare them away.

We have filmed and photographed over 70 different ships and logged their positions. We have also boarded several of them and filmed activities on deck, the fish stocks in the hold and the living conditions on board.

The ships are often rusting and falling to pieces, it is hard to imagine why they don’t sink. The sleeping areas are squalid and the freezers are dirty and stinking.

One ship we boarded in Sierra Leone had a ramshackle construction on its stern. I had a look around and saw that it was divided into four levels, and was amazed to learn that it was home to some 200 fishermen. The ship had picked up 40 fishing boats and their crew in Senegal and brought them to the plentiful fishing grounds of Sierra Leone for three months. In the morning the canoes, called pirogues, are put to sea, each with 5 or 6 fishermen on board. They fish all day. In the evening, they return, unload their catch and stack the priogues back on deck. A floating hotel. In fact the ship is called Five Star, but there is nothing five star about it - cardboard mattresses squashed together, bundles of clothes hanging from strings. You have to crawl in as the ceiling is so low, and they cook and eat in here too - 200 of them!

We went to an area sixty miles off the coast of Guinea where there are a group of abandoned ships. Each one has one or two Chinese fishermen on board, stranded in the middle of nowhere, waiting for God knows what. Supply ships bring them food every three months. When they run out, they signal to passing boats hoping they will stop. They do not know how long they will be left there.

The ship we arrested today had a crew of half a dozen Chinese and one from Sierra Leone. We were told they have no passports with them and that they work on two-year rotations.

These people never get to dock, they remain on the ships until they are replaced. The ships stay at sea for many years, simply transferring their cargo to refrigerator ships. These ships unload the fish in ports such as Las Palmas, straight onto the European market.

Today as I filmed the arrest, I was sad at the plight of the crew and the thought of what will happen to them. I felt like apologising to them. They are also victims. Even the captain had my sympathy as I shoved my camera in his face and got him to say that his fish goes to Las Palmas.

I filmed them shovelling piles of unwanted fish over board and thought surely they must be digusted at this waste - but then what importance can a starfish or a seahorse have to them, when their own life is so harsh? Each catch has about 70% bycatch (unwanted or inedible fish) which is quite simply pushed, dead or dying, back into the sea. Many stunning marine animals are killed for no reason… well, at least the seagulls were having a ball.

After the Guinean fisheries officials boarded the Chinese trawler Lian Run 14 for fishing without a licence, today three colleagues and I stayed on board with one of the officials until the ship was brought to Conakry the next morning. During what was a very long night, we discussed the problems and dangers they face when doing their job and their expectations to improve the situation.

It was also an opportunity to meet some of the crew from the fishing vessel. They all came from a poor rural area of China and were brought to Africa to fish for two years at a time. Some of them had never been at sea before. The owners of the vessel just tell them what to fish where, and most of them have no idea of what is legal or not.

Both the Guinean officials and the Chinese crew have to work in extremely difficult conditions while others continue to take advantage of the situation.

Today I left the Esperanza to go to Conakry (Guinea), to make the final arrangements for the joint programme of surveillance in Guinean waters with the fisheries minister and his services. After three weeks at sea, it was really weird to be on land again. Different people, noises, smells, colours. The first night, I could feel my bed moving and when I woke up the next morning, it took me a while to figure out where I was. Then, after five days, I was on board the Esperanza again with no land in sight. The presence of the two fisheries officials on board was the only proof that I had not dreamt it all.

Yesterday we crossed the Equator and we were subjected to the initiation ceremony presided over by Neptune and his delightful Queen. I cannot disclose much about what happened as it would bring bad luck, being superstitious and in need of luck I will not push it!

I can say that it involved being closed in a refrigerated container followed by a sort of smelly baptism. At around 2am the radar picked up the signal of a fishing vessel. We followed it until dawn, when we were able to identify it. Once we had established that it was not a pirate ship, radio contact was made. The Spanish owned ship had been fishing Yellow Fin Tuna for a month. They claimed that they had caught next to nothing, and that in previous years they had never experienced such a small yield.

So we have returned to our course and the search continues…

Two islands in four days! Today, we arrived at Ascension island. One of our crew members had to leave the ship to go home and this is the only place where it is at all possible. As we sailed closer to shore, a few dolphins accompanied our ship, swimming lazily in front of the bow for a while and disappeared. Then, it was the turn of a few sea turtles swimming not far from the ship. Ascension island is a very important nesting site for sea turtles in the Atlantic ocean. Unfortunately, it is also in the middle of a tuna fishing area and many get caught on the thousands of hooks deployed all around.

Ascension island is also a British military base. We did not seem welcome at all and were ordered to stay well away from the shore. I was here in May 2000. That time, as soon as the MV Greenpeace approached the island, we were contacted by radio by the authorities who asked if someone could come ashore and go to the local school to meet the students and talk about environment protection. I spent the morning at the school, and in the afternoon, we ferried all the kids and their teachers came to visit our ship. Times certainly have changed.

We are getting closer and closer to the equator and apart from flatter seas and hotter weather it also means (for those, like me, who have never crossed it by ship before) an age-old maritime ritual. We do not know exactly what we are in for, but there will be some sort of initiation ceremony which will probably involve something unpleasant and someone dressed up as Neptune.

Luckily about half the crew are in my same position so at least I won’t be alone!

Meanwhile, ship life carries on its daily routine - wake up calls, fixed meal times and slow, long evenings looking at the stars and chatting to fellow crew members. It is quite a unique sensation, being on this ship, gently chugging along, in what seems to be, and in many ways is, the middle of nowhere.

We have not come across any pirate fishing vessels yet - but the area we are monitoring is vast and it is still early days.

What an exciting day!

This morning, we arrived at the island of St Helena. Yes, where Napoleon was exiled and died. It is far away from any land, in the middle of the ocean. There is no airport, only some ships that come from time to time. We just stopped off shore to do some reparations around the propeller. We could not go on shore but, for a few hours, we could look at the land instead of the sea. In fact, I have been there before, in 2000 sailing on board the ship MV Greenpeace.

I never thought I would see this island again.

Into the second week now, the sea is getting calmer and the weather hot and clammy. We should be in the tuna fishing areas in the next 48 hours and start our hunt for pirate ships.

The Esperanza is getting ready for action, engineers are doing maintenance on the cranes to enable quick deployment of inflatable boats which will help us to cover more ground and document the ships close up. Radio contact will enable campaigners to check the names of the vessels with the lists of pirate ships they have compiled.

Deck-hands spend their days chipping off rust and repainting – an endless task and even the ship’s doctor (who fortunately does not have much to do) has to don his overalls and replace his stethoscope with a paint brush.

Everyday life takes a different dimension on a ship. Have you ever tried taking a shower, when the shower moves all the time? You learn very quickly to do it with one hand, the other firmly holding the handle. The same goes for pouring a cup of coffee, without your cup going flying off the table. And it gets really funny when you want to go up or down the stairs with your cup full of hot coffee while the stairs are moving up and down. Or when the ship starts rolling during the night and you wake up almost falling off your bunk. No wonder one gets so tired in the first few days. Life becomes a struggle of every moment. Then, you get used to it. Until you get back to land, and the land moves… But that’s another story.

The week has come to an end and we are now five days at sea. It has been some time now that we have not seen other ships, it seems that not many people use this part of the Atlantic. Days are spent filming video blogs for Greenpeace, interspersed with safety training on what to do if the ship sinks or catches fire and how to put inflatable boats into the water quickly. While filming some shots for the video blog, a documentary crew on board filmed me, and I realised for the first time how embarrassing it is to be the other side of the lens.