The sails are up, the engines are off, and we're en route to Wellington, due to arrive on Friday morning. As I was writing this entry, a shout of 'Dolphins!' had us all dashing outside, where three dolphins were frolicking on the Rainbow Warrior's bow wave. It's as if they were welcoming us back to land... another auspicious event on this star-crossed expedition. Apart from the numerous encounters with whales, sunfish and dolphins, we had mostly excellent and unseasonal weather for our mission, with stunning sunsets and timely, symbolic rainbows. And all in the middle of winter.
Our expedition into the Tasman Sea was a success - with the sun shining and the sea like a millpond, we were able to observe bottom trawlers hauling up objects - fish, coral and even rocks - from the sea floor. We went out there to do a job, and we pulled it off, showing the world that these fishing practices are destructive to deep sea life.
On board the Rainbow Warrior, there's a sense that a chapter is closing... but a new one begins for everyone. Some of the crew are staying on board, for the Rainbow Warrior's next voyage. Some are heading home, others are taking some time off. There's no sense of finality though, there's way too much to do. We haven't stopped bottom trawling on the high seas!
While we were out on the Tasman, last week, the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS) took place in New York. Several organisations, including Greenpeace, had hoped to secure a recommendation to the General Assembly for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling.
Despite our work at sea, the efforts of Greenpeace people attending the UN, the thousands of cyberactivists who helped out, and the collaboration of other non-governmental organisations, the UN failed to make this crucial recommendation, mostly because of unhelpful blocking by certain countries. However, other nations from around the World expressed full support for a prohibition, including Norway, Thailand, Costa Rica, The Republic of Palau, and Trinidad and Tobago.
While we're all disappointed by the UN outcome, we're not demoralised. This issue isn't going to go away - Greenpeace will be continuing its defence of the millions of rare, protected and undiscovered species in the deep sea.
But back to our return to New Zealand, after more than three weeks away from civilisation. So much has happened on board the Rainbow Warrior in that time, that even things that took place on board events seem to be in the distant past, and the realities of land-based life are even more distant.
I joked in an earlier blog about the crew 'seeing other people'. We're looking forward to seeing lots of people this Saturday - docked at Queens Wharf in Wellington, the Rainbow Warrior crew be letting down the gangway to the public for an official Open Day 10am-4pm. So if you're in Wellington, come along and say hello to us!
Dave Walsh, Web Editor
June 24, 2004
Neptune Kicks Out Bottom Trawlers
The Rainbow Warrior may have been docked in Wellington - but we've have been kept busy! Earlier today, crew members and local Greenpeace activists, dressed as sea creatures, accompanied none other than King Neptune himself to a board meeting of the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council (SeaFIC), where his royal highness issued a trespass notice to bottom trawlers. SeaFIC is funded by the fishing industry, and lobbies for the industry. Three members of the SeaFIC board represent major bottom trawl companies - Sanford, Sealord and Talleys.
Neptune and his entourage arrived with an ice chest laden with discarded bycatch, all recovered by the Rainbow Warrior in the Tasman Sea.
"Enough is enough," the marine noble proclaimed. "The ancient coral forests of the deep sea are being destroyed for the sake of a few fish. Your scientists have hardly begun to discover the mysterious life of my deep sea kingdom but the bottom trawlers are continuing to destroy it."
"If your land-lubber Governments won't put a stop to this senseless destruction then I will. I hereby issue a trespass notice to SeaFIC. Tell your bottom trawlers to keep out of my ocean," he thundered.
Why are King Neptune and Greenpeace targeting SeaFIC? Well, SeaFIC representatives have strongly opposed a United Nations moratorium on high seas bottom trawling. The same moratorium is being supported by more than 1000 marine scientists, and an international coalition of environmental groups - including Greenpeace.
Carmen - the Rainbow Warrior's oceans campaigner, said that the "moratorium would allow time to assess what is in the deep sea, sort out where and how fishing could occur sustainably and put in place legally binding agreements to protect the deep sea."
"SeaFIC represents all the fishing industry in New Zealand, but the destruction of the few bottom trawl companies and organisations in SeaFIC makes all the fishing industry look bad. SeaFIC should act responsibly for sustainable fisheries and support the call for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling,"
Later today, King Neptune left for Auckland as a guest on the Rainbow Warrior. It's good to be the king...
On Saturday, the Rainbow Warrior opened its gangway to the people of Wellington. The crew, freshly windblown from their time on the high seas, transformed themselves into tour guides and Greenpeace ambassadors. We gave tours of the ship, and talked to an amazing variety of people - longtime Greenpeace supporters, tourists who just happened by, and others just genuinely curious about Greenpeace and the Rainbow Warrior. We even had a few people who turned up to volunteer their time and skills!
From mid-morning, we had a steady stream of visitors to the ship - Carmen or Vanessa would talk to people on the wharf, explaining our deep-sea mission, while Francisco would explain the Rainbow Warrior workings from the bridge. Later in the day, we opened up the hold, to show videos. We even introduced visitors to 'Dave the Dolphin' - the wooden carving on the bow.
We had been told about 'windy Wellington'... and today the warnings began to make sense. As the day progressed, the wind whipped in over the hills from the east, almost blowing away our wharfside tent, and some Greenpeace personnel with it. Squalls of cold, horizontal rain lashed the quayside, so our visitors had to squeeze into the warmth of the bridge, where Matt, Logi, Stuart and Roscoe regaled them with Greenpeace stories.
Despite the dreadful weather, the visitors just kept coming, and we had a full house until well into the afternoon.
After spending weeks on board, focussed on the job we have to do, it's easy to forget what the Rainbow Warrior represents to the public. It's more than just a steel-hulled sailing ship, it's a living legend, a symbol not only for Greenpeace activists and supporters, but for environmentalists throughout the world.
- Dave Walsh, Web Editor
The Changing Face of Photography in Greenpeace - updated
(C) Greenpeace / Grace
17/06/2004:
If you've been interested in Greenpeace for a while, you may remember some of my photographs from the first campaign of the current Rainbow Warrior. In 1990 we went into the Tasman Sea to protest at oceanic driftnetting, where mile upon mile of nylon nets were strung across the ocean to catch albacore and skipjack tuna. Unfortunately the nets also caught everything else in their path, including dolphins, whales, sunfish, birds, and numerous other fish species not wanted by the fishermen. The wastage was disgusting, and Greenpeace efforts were instrumental in having the practice banned from the high seas.
That Greenpeace trip was the first of many for me. I was taken on as assistant photographer on that driftnet campaign, and took many shocking underwater photographs which helped sway public opinion against driftnetting.
Back then, the work of a photographer on Greenpeace ships was very different. In order to be able to send photographs out from the ship, we had to shoot in black and white. After a few hours out in the inflatables, photographing animals caught in the nets, I would disappear into the darkroom. Using wet chemicals to process the film, I would hang it up to dry, print out a proof sheet of pictures, and then decide with the campaigners which pictures to send out on the wire machine.
Then I would disappear into the darkroom to print up some enlargements of the best pictures. This wan't always easy on a moving ship, but once I was satisfied I had the best print possible, the picture was captioned and placed in the wire machine for transmission. This involved wrapping the print around a metal drum, which then rotated at a constant speed while a sensor passed slowly along the cylinder 'reading' the blacks, whites, and greys of the image. This took about ten minutes, while the information was sent out on a radio signal to a receiver on the shore. This was how our pictures were sent out to newspapers around the world. From returning to the ship to sending out the pictures would take around 1.5 to 2 hours of hectic work.
Today, things are much easier. On this trip I am, for the first time, using a fancy new digital camera. It's a Kodak/Nikon DCS ProSLRn, with three autofocus lenses covering a wide range of focal lengths. I no longer have to change film after only 36 pictures. I take 3 batteries and 2 x 1GB memory cards when I go out in the inflatables. This gives me a capacity for nearly 500 high resolution pictures (13MB files) before I come back to the Rainbow Warrior!
Once back on board I simply remove the memory card from the camera, stick it in a port on the laptop computer, and download the 230 images, on the card. Then I simply flick through the images on the computer, select the ones we want to send out, crop or adjust them if needed in Photoshop, adjust the file size, then the Radio Operator on the ship emails the images to Greenpeace headquarters in Amsterdam, via satellite.
>From my returning to the ship, to full colour pictures arriving at anywhere in the world can take as little as 20 minutes. The changing technology is helping keep you in touch and up to date with what is happening out here on the high seas. I hope that the photos that I've taken on this trip will influence public opinion and governments in making the right decisions about protecting deep sea life!
Roger Grace,
Photographer onboard the Rainbow Warrior in the Tasman Sea
Hammerhead shark drowned in driftnet followed by sukerfish,
Arafura Sea (c)Greenpeace/Grace, 01/07/1993
________________________________________ Update: 24/06/04 - Reponse to Audrey's comments below:
Hello Audrey,
Many thanks for your comments on the picture on the website. I am the photographer on the Rainbow Warrior, just returned from the Tasman Sea, where we documented the devastating effects of deep sea trawlers.
The black and white photo you are referr to is one I took back in 1990 on the first campaign of the new Rainbow Warrior, protesting at the use of driftnets in the Tasman Sea. Unfortunately the fish in the picture was already dead so could not be released alive. Nearly all the animals we found in the nets were already dead, as most pelagic (ocean-going) fish rely on their forward movement to get water to pass over their gills so they can breath. When they get stopped by a net they cannot pump sufficient water over their gills so they suffocate within a few minutes. The only type of fish we found that could live trapped in the net for a long time was the ocean sunfish. This huge fish can continue to pump water over its gills and so can survive several hours trapped in the net. We found one alive on that trip in 1990 and we managed to cut it free from the net and release it alive and well - all documented on underwater film and in a series of stills. You may have seen the picture of the sunfish being cut free from the net - its a photo Greenpeace has used a lot over the years.
That campaign was instrumental in having oceanic driftnets banned worldwide, so Greenpeace was successful in helping to stop the destruction of sea and bird life by driftnets. We are hoping to eventually achieve a similar result for the deep sea animals living on the bottom, by getting a moratorium on deep sea trawling on the high seas.
You ask why it looks like the picture on the website was taken from down in a well. I was using a 16mm fisheye lens on the camera, which enables me to get close to the subject but still get it all in the frame. One side effect of this lens is that it produces a sort of "barrel distortion", making everything around the edges look curved. But there is more to it than that. The circle you see on the surface is a phenomenon called "Snell's window". If you are underwater on a perfectly calm sea (or even in the bottom of a calm swimming pool looking up), what you will see is a circle above you. Outside the circle you see a reflection of what is on the bottom of the pool, because the surface of the calm water acts like a mirror. Above that circle you see through the water surface to all the stuff above the water. You will see things above the water clearly only if the water surface is absolutely still and calm. Normally the water is a bit ripply, and this disrupts the image so it is not clear. This is also why in the picture on the website the circle itself is a little ragged, and not the perfectly smooth circle it would be if the sea was mirror smooth - doesn't often happen on the open ocean! So within the circle you are seeing a slightly wobbly view of the clouds above the water, and outside the circle you are seeing a reflection of what is in the sea. In this case the reflection back down into the sea is a view down into the deep sea, which here was around 3000 metres deep, so it just looked a deep blue. In this black and white picture of course it looks dark grey.
I hope that helps explain the picture on the website.
I will be joining the Rainbow Warrior again on 1st July, to travel to Fiji and then further north into the Pacific for the next campaign. There will be updates on the website starting again in a couple of weeks or so, so keep checking the site for updates of what we are up to.
Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss my pictures in future. You can reach me through the website once I am back onboard.
Best wishes,
Roger Grace :-)
June 17, 2004
An Interview With Emma
(C) Greenpeace / Grace
[Here's an interview with volunteer deckhand Emma Giles, who joined the Rainbow Warrior in Melbourne.]
Where and when did you get involved with Greenpeace?
I used to think that Greenpeace was a place for superheroes. I never dreamed that I would one day be on board the Rainbow Warrior. It all started when one day about 5-6 years ago, when I came across a Greenpeace frontliner in a city street of Brisbane. I was more than happy to become a member and sat talking about Greenpeace and environmental issues for a good couple of hours. I went home so happy to finally be doing something to help, but couldn't stop thinking... 'surely there must be something more I can do?'. Then I started chasing further ways to involve myself and became a volunteer with my nearest Local Group.
Why did you get involved?
My concern for the health of our planet and everything it holds seemed to become stronger and stronger each day. All around I kept seeing so much disrespect to the earth and our environment. I felt a duty to do something, to create awareness about the destructive behaviours that are harming us each day. I decided that I was a person who would stand up and make a difference, which brings to mind one of my favourite quotes: 'In all of our action, we must seek to be living examples of the change we wish to see in the world, by walking the path, we make the path visible' - Phil Lane Jnr
How did you become a deckhand on the Rainbow Warrior?
Recently the Rainbow Warrior visited the shores of Australia as part of our Anti-GE (Genetic Engineering) campaign. After being involved for some time now, and not having sailed on any Greenpeace ships before, I was offered a place for the transit across the Tasman Sea to the next port of call - Auckland. This journey was an extremely rough one (force 11 winds and a huge swell). Luckily didn't feel a hint of seasickness (which is how I landed my onboard nickname, Iron Maiden). Because of my 'iron gut' I was asked to stay on board for the Seamounts campaign in which we needed to brave the bumpy oceans again.
What environmental matter concerns you the most?
This is quite a tricky question to answer, as I feel that we still have many steps to take and many issues to deal with before we reach a green and peaceful future. One thing that really scares me though is Climate Change. Now is a crucial time, we really don't know what disastrous effects Climate Change could bring.
What do you miss most by being at sea?
I miss hacky sack, climbing trees, my friends and full cups of tea.
What message do you want to give people who are reading this?
I am a big fan of quotes so I hope you don't mind if I use another one: 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has' - Margaret Mead
...and besides that, always remember to HAVE FUN!
June 16, 2004
Living With The Albatross
(C) Greenpeace / Grace
At the start of the trip, we wrote about the graceful albatross, and how they'd become companions of the Rainbow Warrior. Roger's been taking lots of photos of them, and we've been treated to the huge majestic birds swooping low over our inflatables - so close we can almost reach out and touch them.
But we weren't prepared for masses of albatross that follow the bottom trawlers. As the nets are hauled to the surface, hundreds, even thousands of them seem to appear from nowhere. As they drop their undercarriage for landing, they become kind of goofy looking, with big feet splayed out to bring them to an undignified halt. They then sit on the surface, bobbing around, with what looks like a silly, quizzical grin.
When the bycatch is discarded by the bottom trawler, the albatross break into noisy squabbles with each other over fish scraps. We're caught in the middle, drifting along in our inflatables, collecting bycatch as evidence of bottom trawling. We have to carefully navigate through the massive feeding birds.
On the bow of the boat, we have fish-spotters - crew members armed with landing nets, ready to grab dead fish as they float by. They end up doubling as albatross spotters, warning the boat driver of possible collisions. For birds that can navigate the oceans of the world, albatross are not too smart when it comes to handling traffic. A slowly approaching boat is enough to scare away most birds, but the albatross don't seem to care about us too much, only moving at the last minute.
June 15, 2004
Night Mission II: The Sequel
(C) Greenpeace / Walsh
Not content with our damning discoveries of bottom-trawled black coral, we're still out here, keeping watch. Around midnight, we launch two of the Rainbow Warrior's inflatable boats into a rough sea. We're off to check out another trawler, and watch it bring up its nets. It's a dark, clear night, but the swell is heavy, and there's a strong wind. We stand around on the deck, cocooned in waterproofs, watching the crane lifting the boats. There's the usual wisecracking, a bit of apprehension, and impatience to get under way. There's four of us in two boats, the Avon and the Waka Nui. Wooley is in Avon with the big digital video camera, and I'm in the Waka Nui, armed with the night vision gear.
Stuart steers the Waka Nui, gently over the crest of each big wave, each one high enough to obscure our view of the target trawler. The fishing boat is lit up like a Christmas tree, with full floodlights.
Anna's sitting at the stern, grinning, enjoying herself immensely. Logi is sitting across from me amidships - he and I let go a 'woah, that's a biggie' each time the boat descends a wave. The ride is gentler than I expected, but then we're only doing 6 knots (11km/h). We get an occasional shower of spray over the side, but the inflatable's big pontoons keep us well out of the water.
The Avon races ahead, arriving just too late to see a haul being brought on board. We've seen this trawler before. The radio crackles... it's a warning from the bridge of the Rainbow Warrior; 'Be careful, the ship is turning constantly'. Unsure of what the trawler's skipper is up to, we hang well back.
We're about 100m directly astern of the trawler, almost blinded by the lights. The Avon is bouncing up and down between us and the stern of the ship. The trawler goes up over a wave, half disappears, the Avon goes up, then vanishes behind the wave. It's like being on a big wet roller coaster. I've become a human steadycam, watching everything through the LCD lens, my arm going up and down as the boat rises and falls. Every so often, a huge shower of spray comes over the bow, and soaks me. I'm drying to dry the camera lens with my wool hat, but I'm really just rearranging the water.
The trawler is twisting and turning still. We wait, hang back, keep filming, waiting for them to re-set their nets. Nothing is happening, we're just bobbing around, and the trawler keeps moving. 'Avon, Waka Nui, bridge' - the Rainbow Warrior calls us. 'Come on home'.
Logi's at the wheel, taking us back home, with the wind behind us. Matt calls us from the Avon - 'get a spotlight out and ride the wave'. Stuart gets up on the bow with the lamp, and guides Logi onto the wave. Now we're surfing, all the way back to the ship, with Logi keeping us right on the crest. Back on the Rainbow Warrior, it looks like there's a car coming to wards them - two headlights out of the gloom.
Back on the ship, I realise my face is covered in salt and my outer clothes are soaked. The boats are loaded on, battened down, washed and cleaned. The media mavens go below, to review video footage. Afterwards, we all sit around, chilling out, eating toast, analysing the trip. It's late now, 3am... but I can't think of a better way to spend a Monday night on the Tasman Sea.
Pyrosomes - Drawing: Roger Grace
Image Manipulation: Dave Walsh (C) Greenpeace / Grace / Walsh
A few nights ago, around 11 o'clock, the crew of the Rainbow Warrior heard an urgent whisper - 'Out on the stern, now!'. Crew members. We stumbled up onto the poop deck, pulling on shoes and jackets. Crowding around the railings, we were treated to an amazing light show. Behind the Rainbow Warrior, there was a trail of what looked like dozens of large bright green glowing sausages swirling in our wake! Those near the surface were clear defined shapes, about 30cm long, but those down deeper just looked like glowing irregular green spheres. A squadron of alien craft or perhaps, some of the deep sea extras from the James Cameron movie The Abyss? What the devil was going on?
No, we were not hallucinating. These weird spacey beings are colonial animals called Pyrosomes. Technically they are ocean-going sea squirts or salps. Each of the glowing shapes is a hollow cylindrical tube closed at one end and open at the other. The walls are made up of hundreds of tiny animals embedded in a firm jelly matrix. Each animal has an opening on the outside of the tube which takes in water, which is filtered and passed out another opening to the inside of the tube. They feed by filtering extremely small plants and bacteria from the water. Each animal has one or two light organs which glow green when the animal is suddenly disturbed, such as when passing through the wake of the ship.
These guys were tiny compared to the giant Pyrosomes Roger has seen at the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand waters. In 1970 he saw several large colonies, the largest being 10 metres long with a "tail" a further 10 metres long. The tube was so wide his dive buddy could fit his head and shoulders inside the opening! Imagine what it would have been like to see it at night, when it was glowing bright green!
- Roger Grace, photographer
- Dave Walsh, web editor
June 12, 2004
What A Day!
(C) Greenpeace / Walsh
First, we caught a bottom trawler hauling up stuff from the bottom - including black coral. Them, some of the boat crews saw a sunfish basking on the surface, and towards evening the Rainbow Warrior was surrounded by plumes of vapour, as we passed through a scattered pod of sperm whales. One passed within 50m of the ship, slowly surfacing then diving again. Then last night, we watched a huge glowing trail of bioluminescent salps light up in the wake of the Warrior's hull.
It was a successful day for the Rainbow Warrior's bottom trawling campaign, but a traumatic one for the ocean floor. We spent our time haring around in hot pursuit of trawlers, intent on catching them as they drew their haul. Our teams had a variety of encounters - the skipper of one trawler dragged his net on the surface while making a wide turn, in an vain attempt to make life difficult for our camera people. At the other end of the scale, the crew of another trawler gave us a Chinese language newspaper, featuring a picture of the Rainbow Warrior on the front page!
We followed many ships, bearing witness to all sorts of things being dragged up from the ocean floor - as well as more of the bottom dwelling fish of the last few days, today we saw starfish, sea stars (starfish), squid, sea urchins, huge rocks and most importantly of all, coral.
Our boat crews were trailing the Chang Xing, in expectation of large-scale disposal of bycatch. They weren't disappointed. Logi positioned the Waka Nui under the bycatch chute of the huge, rusty trawler, while Roscoe netted the dead discarded fish sliding down. Afterwards, as they were collecting bycatch floating on the surface, sharp-eyed Roscoe spied a twig of black coral, and managed to retrieve it.
It's astonishing to think that this brittle sprig of black coral - an endangered species - could have survived the journey. Probably snapped from a larger piece of coral on the bottom, it somehow endured being hauled up through one kilometre of water, in a net packed with the crushing weight of fish. On the surface, it was dragged through the water, up a rusty steel ramp, pulled out of the net, and hurled down a bycatch chute into the sea again, where it bobbed around before being spotted by 'Hawkeye' Roscoe.
According to Kat, the marine biologist onboard the Rainbow Warrior, this piece of black coral proves that bottom-dwelling organisms need protection on the high seas. Although considerable damage has already occurred, its not too late to save surviving corals. Kat described the black coral as relatively rare, and slow growing. "Some species are only found in extremely localised areas around New Zealand (and nowhere else in the world that we are aware of). These corals are the foundation of unique deep-sea communities and their destruction will affect everything else living in or near them on the sea floor."
Back on the Rainbow Warrior, morale was high. After listening to some of the bottom fishing industry saying they don't drag their nets on the bottom, there's been a few wisecracks amongst the crew about 'rocks swimming in mid-water'.
Night Mission Video
Due to popular demand, we're making available the video of our 'Night Mission' from two nights ago. Shot on infra-red digital video, it shows a team of Greenpeace activists approaching a trawler, bottom fishing in the international waters of the Tasman Sea. We're there to identify the ship, and record its presence. We've converted it to Quicktime and Windows Media so that you can experience the adventure...
When a bottom trawler gets rumbled in the Tasman Sea, it causes a thunderstorm in New York...
With all the media coverage the Rainbow Warrior has been getting worldwide, we've had people sending emails, wondering about how weird it feels to be in the middle of nowhere, yet still at the centre of attention. While we were discovering bottom trawlers in the Tasman, the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS) has been happening New York. Greenpeace have a crack team in attendance, working round the clock on pushing for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling. Thanks to them, the conference delegates know exactly what we've been doing on the Rainbow Warrior.
We've been in constant communication with the NYC crew, with emails and phone calls bouncing back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, so we've been getting a good sense of what's being achieved by everyone involved. Earlier this week, our onboard campaigner, Carmen did a 3am press conference by phone to the UN in New York. As she was waiting to be patched through, the UN technician asked her 'So where are you phoning from?'. When Carmen answered 'I'm in the middle of the Tasman Sea', he was blown away. 'Wow... man, that's so cool!'.
Cool it may be. But we need more than mere coolness to do this job - Greenpeace are in both the Tasman and the UN to remind the UN policy makers that they, and national governments, are the stewards of the oceans. The NY team have presented the UN with a petition of over 6000 signatures, and we want them to realise the impact of bottom trawling, and learn from what we've discovered. Some countries are already on board - Costa Rica, Thailand and Palau have all called for an immediate moratorium on bottom trawling in the plenary session, while many other countries have shown support.
But it still feels strange. While there's several seasoned sea-dogs on board the Rainbow Warrior, many of us have never spent so long at sea. We haven't seen land in two weeks, so things like trees, cars and horizontal floors have already become abstract ideas rather than 'real' things. Then there's the fact that there's 25 of us cooped up on a 55m long ship. It never feels too busy or packed, unless we're all milling around the mess. It got so hectic last night, that Chris was comparing it to 'human Tetris'. Apart from the occasional trawlerman, we've seen no one else for a couple of weeks.
As we head back to port, I can imagine the tearful disclosures amongst the crew; 'I think... it's time we saw other people... all of us'. Then, as the Rainbow Warrior draw up the wharf, 'look, look, I see another person, whoohoo!'. I jest, of course: we're getting along like a house on fire. We're really just one big happy family... albeit a rather strange one.
Trawler Bycatch: A dead shark is netted, as the bottom trawler moves away. (C) Greenpeace / Walsh
Just like yesterday, we spent the day rocketing around the ocean in pursuit of bottom-trawlers, monitoring their behaviour, and recording the size of their hauls. And again, the weather was fantastic - blue skies and calm seas. Who would have thought it? So much for winter in the Tasman Sea. The folks on board the bottom trawlers probably think we brought the good weather.
We've been spending more time collecting and analysing bycatch - the discarded fish that the trawlers dump back into the sea. There's an assumption that throwing back the fish is 'OK', because the fish can swim off in freedom. Not so - the shock of the kilometre-long journey to the surface, plus the crushing weight and friction inside the net, is more than enough to kill or maim them.
The nets rise to the surface, sometimes visibly full of orange roughy and with little apparent bycatch, while at other times the mesh is bulging with a variety of exotic deep sea animals. Small sharks that have survived the journey from below are desperately trying to thrash free, and have pulled themselves halfway through the net, but are trapped by the other fish. Once on board the trawler, these sharks are removed from the net and often thrown straight overboard, dying, if not already dead. In some hauls they seem to outnumber the roughy. The waiting albatross fall upon them immediately, tearing their stomachs open with hungry beaks and pulling their insides to pieces. We've been finding deflated looking sharks floating on the surface, their internal organs hanging out.
The bycatch we've encountered so far is fairly common to the waters around New Zealand. There have been rattails -large-eyed, pointy-nosed fish that get their names partly from their long, thin tails and rodent-like appearance, and partly from early perceptions that they were scavengers willing to eat anything. We've had ghost sharks, which have long strange cartilaginous snouts, differing from other sharks in having just one gill slit, and in having smooth skin instead of rough dermal denticles (scales to you and me).
There have been lantern sharks - small black sharks with luminous brilliant green eyes - and shovel-nosed sharks. We've come across commercial species, like oreos, floating on the surface, but as they're not a target fish for these trawlers, they are thrown back (dead) - a complete waste. All of these bycatch species have something in common - they are benthopelagic (live on or very near the sea floor) or demersal (living just above the sea floor) - meaning the nets are being towed just above or along the bottom.
Yesterday, we talked about the thousands of discarded orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) heads floating on the surface, many from fish at least a century old. A few interesting facts about orange roughy: When first captured, roughy was thought to be useless - a fatty layer under their skin caused digestive mayhem in anyone who tried to eat it, earning it the nickname 'diarrhoea fish.' Once a technique was developed for removing this ester layer, however, commercial roughy prospects seemed good, although it remained largely a museum curiosity until the late 1970s. Orange roughy belongs to a group of fish called 'slimeheads' due to the finely sculptured mucous-filled channels around the head. Lovely!
The discarded fish...
Rattails (or grenadiers, family Macrouridae)
Ghost sharks (family Chimaeridae)
Lantern sharks (genus Etmopterus)
Oreos (family Oreosomatidae)
- Kat, marine biologist, and Dave, web editor
June 10, 2004
Night Mission
(C) Greenpeace / Au
It's completely dark on the Tasman Sea. I'm bouncing up and down on the pontoon of an inflatable that's skimming across the calm waters at over 30 knots. The clear night sky is alive with stars, and the bioluminescence is sparking off our wake. Looking behind us, the lights of the Rainbow Warrior are fading into the distance.
We're on our way to identify yet another bottom trawler, which is bottom fishing in international waters. We've documented several already today, with two of our inflatables racing all over the sea, photographing and filming the trawlers as they drag up their catch from a kilometre below.
This morning, four of us were in the Waka Nui inflatable, tracking one ship, registered in Nelson, New Zealand. After it hauled up a relatively small catch of fish, we trailed it for a bit. When it dropped its nets again, we found a bunch of albatrosses squabbling over some of the bycatch. Armed with a landing net, Kat managed to grab two small sharks, with their intestines hanging out.
Later in the day, both inflatables shadowed a ship called the Chang Xing, registered in Belize. We photographed and filmed it pulling up a net of orange roughy. We then gently pushed through a thousand-strong flotilla of huge hungry albatrosses, while roughy heads were spat out a hole in the side of the trawler. Kat, Anna and I were out on the bow of the boat, netting any interesting bycatch that we could grab before the birds, while Francisco and Roscoe navigated us through. Sarah was on the wheel of the Avon inflatable, with Wooly and Roger festooned with camera gear.
Once a bottom trawler starts hauling up its catch, it can take 20 minutes or more to reach the surface. First, the huge (1-6 tonne) metal doors, which act as sort of wings to keep the net open, come out the water, and bang up against the side of the ship. As the net floats on the surface, most of the fish are already dead, organs ruptured from the sudden depressurisation - the 'bends'.
Then there's the hundreds and hundreds of disembodied orange roughy heads bobbing about on the surface, with their doleful eyes being pecked out by an albatross. Orange roughys have a very slow body clock. The live for up to 150 years in the deep sea, and don't breed until they're 20 or 30 years old. It's a shame to see bits of these ancient fish scattered around the sea, while the rest of their bodies are shipped off around the world.
But back to our night mission. After dinner, it's back into the boat again and off into the dark. As we approach our target vessel, we get our gear out of the waterpoof case. Derek is armed with a stills camera, and I've got a digital video camera, switched to infra-red. We sidle up alongside the lit-up bottom trawler, which has its nets down. This is a pretty small boat - maybe 30 metres long. We're looking for identification... up along to the bows, and there it is, the name and number. We get photos and footage, then stow the electronic gear, before bouncing back across the lazy waves to the Rainbow Warrior, with just a brief stop to take in the infinite sky above us.
The weeks of hard work have paid off... and the timing couldn't be better! While sailing through the Tasman Sea, the Rainbow Warrior discovered three New Zealand registered ships engaged in bottom trawling. This was on the high seas - international waters, 350 miles off the west coast of New Zealand, outside the exclusive economic zone, and right above the Northwest Challenger Plateau, a major underwater feature.
We spotted the first ship, the Amaltal Voyager, in Tuesday's early morning light, and hailed them by radio. We explained who we were, and stated that we would not interfere with their fishing in any way. We called them several times, but got no response. Interestingly, the Amaltal Fishing Company is a shareholder of the Orange Roughy Management Company, whose headquarters was the site of a recent protest by Greenpeace.
Two inflatables were launched from the Rainbow Warrior, the crews including Roger, our photographer, and Wooly, our videographer, who were later joined by lead campaigner Carmen and Kat, our marine biologist. The Amaltal Voyager was trawling at the time and was moving quite slowly, so it was easily reached in the high-speed Greenpeace boats. Our boats stood off all morning, monitoring the situation. After 1pm, the trawler began pulling its nets up. As the 'cod end' of the net was hauled in through the stern of the trawler, our guys tried to get footage of the fairly small catch as well as the bycatch/ (the unwanted fish caught in the net). It wasn't to be - their view was obscured as the Amaltal Voyager swung round suddenly, causing the inflatables to take evasive action. As the trawler steamed off with its haul on board, our folks returned to the Rainbow Warrior.
Later in the afternoon, we continued our trawler bonanza, locating two more ships, the West Bay and the Corsair, both from New Zealand. Again we tried to contact the vessels, stating our intentions, but they didn't seem to want to talk to us! Still, we launched an inflatable, and sent a team over for a look. As the West Bay hauled up its nets, there was a chance to get a few photographs and video of the catch being brought on board.
The crew of the Corsairwere also hauling, and our team headed down to get a look. At a glance, it seemed that much less than half of the fish netted were orange roughy, the trawler's target fish. While it wasn't possible to get close enough to inspect the fish caught in the net, it was possible to see lots of white fish, and disturbingly, the muzzles of several shark could be seen poking through the net. None of the trawlers were bringing up catches of any great size - indication of the devastation caused to the area?
Our discovery couldn't have been better timed - while we were finding trawlers, a Greenpeace delegation is taking part in talks at the United Nations, trying to secure a 'time out' on bottom trawling on the high seas.
Caught!
June 8, 2004
What IS coral?
(C) ExploreTheAbyss.com
[The Rainbow Warrior's marine biologist, Kat, explains everything you ever wanted to know about coral but were too confused to ask - Dave]
If you mention the word 'coral' to most people, it conjures up a mental image of the white branching skeletons you see in seaside tourist shops, or brightly coloured reefs with darting fish and dancing shrimp, and maybe Nemo and his father Marlin swimming by. But what is coral? It looks like a plant, but seems to have a stone skeleton, and didn't I hear somewhere that corals were actually animals?
Yes. Corals belong to a phylum of marine animals called Cnidaria (Ny-dare-ee-ah), which also includes jellyfish, anemones and sea-pens. Some corals are solitary (with individuals living by themselves, not forming colonies), but the best-known kinds form reefs. These may be broad and flat, like shelf mushrooms, or tall and branching, like trees. New Zealand has over 105 species of coral in its waters, and 70 of these form reefs, either in the sunny shallows, or, more importantly to us on this trip, in the deep sea. In fact, more than 50% of the world's coral lives in the deep sea, as far down as 5 km!
Hard coral reefs generally begin when a single free-swimming larva (planula) settles on a hard surface and begins to divide itself into many identical polyps, each one smaller than your little fingernail. A polyp is much like an upside-down jellyfish, with the bell replaced or protected by the hard limestone skeleton it produces, and the stinging tentacles stretching upward to catch particles and small prey in the water above. As individual polyps are eaten or die off, their hard skeletons are overgrown by new polyps. In this way, over tens to hundreds of years, coral reefs form.
Reefs harbour an amazing range of sea life. Fish, crustaceans, worms, molluscs, sponges, and many other animals congregate on and around coral structures to feed on them and each other, and to seek shelter in, around, or beneath them. Corals are at least as important in the deep sea as in the shallows; there they also provide a hard surface to which other sessile (stationary) animals may attach, as well as providing shelter in an otherwise largely exposed habitat.
When a deep-sea coral colony is knocked over, most of the polyps usually die, either from starvation (from being oriented the wrong way), or by suffocating in the sea floor. Sometimes a few can survive and begin to form a new colony on the dying old one, but most often a broken coral dies entirely, especially if it is taken from the water and thrown back, or broken into many pieces. It is quickly covered over with encrusting animals like bryozoans, and much of the other sea life that fed or sought shelter there moves elsewhere. What was once a thriving community becomes a ghost town.
Many of the deep-sea corals around New Zealand grow into large, beautiful forms, some of which sell for high prices overseas and are already under threat without the help of bottom-trawling. A few of these have never been found anywhere else. Since most of them grow very slowly, if we are not careful we may lose the chance to learn anything about them for several hundred years - if they recover at all.
- Kat
June 7, 2004
Sound and Vison
(C) Greenpeace / Walsh
Here's the first few uploads in a series of video grabs by Dave Woolford, the Rainbow Warrior's videographer. We thought we'd show some contrasting conditions at sea - the first shows a grey wet day and the second shows our recent dolphin visitors...
There was an Kiwi, a Tasmanian and an Irishman in a boat...
(C) Greenpeace / Walsh
When most people think about Greenpeace activists, they think of action: orange-clad climbers hanging banners from buildings, or of life-jacketed boat-handlers zooming around in that quintessential Greenpeace vehicle - the inflatable boat. In case you didn't know, these activists tend to be highly skilled people who train hard.
On board the Rainbow Warrior, we have several boat experts, some of whom have been using outboard and inflatables for years. I headed out with two of them, Stuart and Logi, to test communications equipment and procedures. In the middle of nowhere, in good conditions, we headed some eight nautical miles away from the ship to do the testing. Once out there, we stopped and had a snack. A Kiwi, A Tasmanian and an Irishman, sitting in a 6m-long boat, bobbing around with nothing around us for hundreds and hundreds of miles but sea, a few curious albatrosses and some petrels. It had the makings of a joke, and we're soliciting punchlines, if anyone's good at that kind of thing.
It's a very odd feeling sitting out there in the middle of nowhere, with infinite new valleys and hills appearing and disappearing on the ocean surface. There's a sudden realisation that the boat is merely suspended between two elements - liquid and gas, water and air, with a couple of kilometres down to the sea bed, and a few kilometres above to outer space.
So, with this in mind, I started quizzing Stuart about driving inflatables. He's a veteran of many a Greenpeace action - his first was 17 years ago in Tasmania. He's an expert boat handler and outboard mechanic, as well as being a sailor and an electrician.
So why inflatables? Why do you think Greenpeace use them so much?
Well, their manoeuvrable, safe, fast, hard-wearing, low to the water, and almost unsinkable. Also, with inflatable pontoons, it's possible to come alongside larger vessels at speed without damaging either craft. '
They've become iconic because people are used to seeing us with a banner flying off the back of the boat, or seeing us driving in front of a ship - like a whaler, for instance, as part of a protest or blockade. People love the idea of boats, its romantic, and it makes what we do look scary to anyone who is unaccustomed to driving an inflatable, but when you're trained for it, it becomes second nature. In my own case, I have many years of experience, both with Greenpeace, and with personal use.
What do rate as most important when using the Greenpeace inflatables?
Safety, safety, safety. Lots of training, and good communication amongst the crew of the inflatable - to avoid accidents. It's important to get the launching procedure right, to make sure it's fluid and that everyone knows what they're doing. It's quite tricky, coming alongside, while the ship is doing several knots, in a heavy swell. With the inflatable rising up and down, we have to get people on and off the boat safely.
Also, it's important to ensure that everything works as it should - we carry out checks of the communications equipment, as well as procedures for radio use between the inflatables and the ship.
Is there much difference between using an inflatable out here in the middle of the ocean, compared to the more normal use, in an inshore location?
Inshore, you've got sheltered waters, and help is close at hand - out here, its high seas, huge waves, and if something goes wrong, the nearest bit of land is several hundred miles away!
What's your longest trip in an inflatable?/
240 nautical miles! We were on our way to meet a yacht flotilla which was going to make a symbolic line to protest against the Pacific Pintail which was transporting plutonium between Japan and Britain.
Any last message for the weblog readers?
This particular campaign is something I've been passionate about for some time. The forests of the sea, that we can't see, need to be protected and understood instead of destroying them.
Dave Walsh, Rainbow Warrior web editor
June 6, 2004
Crew Stricken by Knitting Epidemic!
The knitting craze takes hold - Logan, one of the ship's logistics coordinators hard at work. (C) Greenpeace / Grace
It's already been established that we work long hard hours (see earlier entry) on the Rainbow Warrior. But what happens when we're taking a break, or at night, after dinner? We've got a DVD player in the mess room, and a large collection of movies. That keeps some of the Rainbow Warrior monkeys occupied. Other people retire to their bunks, to wind down with a book or their headphones. Others head up to the bridge, where there's usually some good music on, and watch the ocean slide by in the moonlight. During the daytime, the camera people go 'duck hunting' - photographing albatrosses. Francisco, the second mate, heads to the hold to lift weights, while other people check email, write diaries, and so on. Tonight there was a load of post-dinner guitar strumming and singing of half-learned lyrics.
But now, a craze has reached epidemic proportions on the Rainbow Warrior: knitting. Somehow, wool was smuggled on board in Auckland, without anyone noticing. Now, every day, we're treated to the feverish clatter of knitting needles, producing strange new garments at an alarming rate. We were barely out to sea before our videographer, Wooly (Dave Woolford) could be seen sporting a trendy woolen beanie, created by Carmen, our campaigner. This, we could handle. We could still sleep at night, sure that the knitting situation had been contained. But now, logistics and techie guru Logie has been spotted twirling knitting needles in his spare time. The horror, the horror...
June 5, 2004
Wind and Waves
(C) Greenpeace / Walsh
Hello from the middle of the sea. As I've received a few emails from people telling me that the porthole picture made them feel seasick, I've included a new vicarious experience. Take a look at the photo on the left. Does the horizon look a little... close? A little bumpy, maybe? That's because it is not, strictly speaking, the horizon. It's the top of a wave! We're in heavy seas at the moment, with a rather large swell...
Another story: WhenI was offered this position, I asked 'which ship?'. I was informed 'The Rainbow Warrior of course', and was told what it was like to be out on deck, at night, with the wind in the sails.
The night before last, I was out on deck. The engines were off, the sails were up, and the GPS told us we were moving along at 9 knots, with a 25 knot wind pushing us along. I got the minidisc out and recorded the sound of the wind in the sails, the whistle through the cables...And here it is »
What's in the net?
(C) Greenpeace / Grace
A few days ago, we told you about our first experimental 'fishing trip'. Since then, Kat has been casting her net almost daily, and Roger has been photographing the results.
Although the first couple of tows didn't bring in any squid, over the last few days Kat tried sampling at dawn, with a different net, and had more success. First, she picked up a little cranchiid (glass) squid, from the genus Leachia, and yesterday she found another different squid, currently unidentified, and six tiny Argonauta, or paper nautilus.
Below are photos of some of the tiny creatures we photographed through a microscope:
The net has also caught a variety of small fish, ranging from shallow-dwelling larvae to deep-sea species, and more of the invertebrates we found on the first night. These include:
Labidocera, a bright blue copepod, the males of which have a sexually modified antenna (pictured below)
Phronima, a transparent amphipod with a huge head that looks like something from the film Alien - this little crustacean eats the insides out of salps and then lives inside the hollowed-out body!
Euphausiid shrimp (krill)
Mysid (possum) shrimp
Yellow bristly polychaete worms with enormous orange eyes
Brown and pink pteropods - molluscs (like snails) that float upside down and swim using their foot as a fin
Isopods, like slaters (woodlice or roly-polies), that are ravenously hungry and begin to chew on everything else in the samples
Amphipods with enormous dark eyes that take up their entire heads
Physalia - bluebottle (Portuguese Man O'War) jellyfish of various sizes
June 4, 2004
An Interview with Carmen Gravatt, Campaigner
(C) Greenpeace / Grace
Today, we're talking to Carmen Gravatt, lead campaigner on board the Rainbow Warrior. She talks to us about the campaign, as well as her life in Greenpeace.
So, tell us what you're doing out in the middle of the ocean, on the Rainbow Warrior. What do you hope to achieve?
I hope that we start making the invisible visible. A lot of people are unaware of what is happening in international waters. So we're out here to tell the story of large-scale destruction of unique and vulnerable deep sea life for the sake of a few fish.
Armed with the video, photography and web guys, we can make more people aware of what is happening, inspire them to act and get governments around the world to put in place a moratorium. This will allow us to find out more about what's going on in the deep sea, and how to protect it before there's nothing left to protect.
Are you against fishing of all sorts?
No, not at all. We just need to do it sustainably, not just economically. Greenpeace calls this ecologically sustainable fishing - allowing for protection of the marine environment. Greenpeace believes that the objective of fisheries management should be to minimize the environment impacts of fishing in order to sustain long term benefits. I feel that a lot of fishing people are concerned with maximising short term yields, which is extremely unsustainable.
Do you eat fish?
You don't have to be a vegetarian to work at Greenpeace. But I don't eat much fish. Usually I just eat fish that my dad or his friends catch themselves. I hope that if I have kids they will also get to eat hand-caught fish too.
What makes you so passionate about this campaign?
It is the scale of this campaign that really gets me... Only 0.2% of the global marine fisheries capture is from bottom trawling on the high seas. For very little economic gain, employment or food (i.e. deep sea fish are hardly going to feed the world) we are wiping out unique and diverse worlds hat we are only just starting to understand. Everything is connected - we cannot expect to do so much damage to an area without it having an impact on us.
How did you get involved in Greenpeace?
I started when I was not long out of nappies, or at least that's how it seems. When I was 18 I joined the Greenpeace Greenteam, an environmental youth network. I realised that I loved both campaigning and non-violent direct actions, and have never looked back. Since then I have worked in all sorts of Greenpeace jobs around the world.
How did you become a Greenpeace campaigner?
Long hours learning how other people do it. I spent a number of years volunteering and picking up skills from more experienced campaigners. I then started as a logistics coordinator, moved to being an assistant campaigner on to a campaign and now here I am leading a ship full of environmental activists out to the high seas.
What's the toughest thing about spending a month at sea?
Well this could be a very long list. But at the top would definitely be not seeing my husband for a month. I have brought photos of him but they don't quite cut the mustard. The constant movement of the ship is also pretty hard to handle sometimes.
What's the best thing?
The good things definitely outweigh the bad. Best of all is the feeling that we are going out to sea to defend the incredible life in the oceans. It is an amazing experience to live in a small space with a group of like-minded people, all trying to save the oceans.
It is also nice to have someone cooking food for me everyday, and I don't have a long way to go to work in the morning!
Can you offer any advice on how to set about being an environmental campaigner?
Learn about what is happening to the world and then see what you feel passionate about. There are a lot of long thankless hours as an environmental campaigner, so you really have to believe in what you are doing. There are a million ways to be a campaigner - you really need to find which way works for you. Whatever you choose, stick at it.
How do people get involved in the deepsea campaign, in New Zealand and in other countries?
At the moment, the best way to get involved is through the Internet. There is loads of information, and an online petition to sign up to. As the campaign continues, there will be more ways to get involved But just getting out there and talking to friends and family about the bottom trawl fisheries and the need for change is a great start.
June 3, 2004
Another World
(C) Greenpeace / Walsh
[Today's blog is written by Matt, one of the Rainbow Warrior's hard-working deckhands.]
It seems like another world out here. Another world with no one else around. And this is just at the surface. I can't even imagine what the world beneath us is like.
Up here 3-4 kilometres above the sea floor, it is a world worthy of respect. The sea demands respect. Today has been calm. On a calm day, the feeling that we're the only people out here is magnificent. 360 degrees of large gentle swelling ocean. The only company are the light winds and albatrosses surfing ten centimetres above the swell. The Warrior rolls slow and heavy on the rolling hills of the sea. Sunny days and awesome sunsets. There is no way to describe being at sea on a calm day with no other ships around, no planes crossing the sky, you feel like you belong a perfect peace between the elements and ourselves.
On an average day it feels like the last place people should be. The way the ship moves on an average day makes you dread a bad day. The Rainbow Warrior doesn't exist for the sea. The sea doesn't notice us for a second.
Any task involves timing a movement, then timing the moment to brace yourself against a bulkhead, a rail, a rope, a bunk.
These contrasts, between the rare calm day, and the average gale sweeping through the crest of the swell, demand reverence. Both are a world far away from everyday knowledge and experience. And the thing that blows my mind is how far away from our knowledge and dreams is the deep sea world beneath us.
I could have never imagined what it could be like out here alone on the ocean this winter; but I can't imagine what it is like down there on the 99% undiscovered sea floor.
While the Rainbow Warrior is sailing the big blue sea on its campaign to preserve deep sea life, we want you to take action yourself
Next week in New York, Greenpeace will attend a meeting of the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS), where we will press for a 'time-out' on bottom-trawling on the high seas.
The high sea, in case you don't know, is not just somewhere where pirates hang out and say 'arrrr' a lot, it refers to the international waters, outside a nation's Exclusive Economic Zone. More than 1,000 marine scientists from 60 countries have already signed a public statement calling for this moratorium, so that humankind can work out how to protect deep sea life.
So how can you get involved? By signing the E-Alert Action! All the names and comments posted will be presented to the Co-Chairs of UNICPOLOS next week in York, at a reception hosted by non-governmental organisations, including Greenpeace.
The weather last night was eerie. The moon was high in the sky, and didn't provide much light. The Rainbow Warrior was moving through a calm inky sea, towards a sharp, abrupt horizon. It felt like being on a sound stage in a movie studio, and there was the expectation of a dull thud when we might hit the wall at the end of the ocean, like Jim Carrey in the The Truman Show.
Around midnight, we had lots of crew out on deck, milling around excitedly. Kat, our marine biologist, was supervising a 'fishing trip' - towing a small, fine-meshed fishing net just below the surface of the sea.
We wanted to find out what creatures had come up to the surface at night, and Kat was especially interested in any squid that might swim our way. Many of the squid that normally live in the much darker deep waters migrate upwards at night, following the food layer. The darkness of the surface waters offers them protection and invisibility that during daytime would have to be sought deeper down. Now was the best time to find them.
Roscoe, Stuart and Emma saw to the lowering of the net, using one of the ship's booms. Then the floodlights were dimmed, to allow near-darkness around the net. After ten minutes or so of foot-tapping and clock-watching, the net would be hauled out, and Kat would detach the small catcher-bucket at the end of the net, emptying it into an acrylic cylinder, so we could examine her findings.
As most of non-experts pointed and asked 'what's that, what's that?', Kat and Roger our photographer (also a marine consultant) were reeling off long, complicated names as fast as they recognised the creatures.
In the hauls, we found an exciting variety of animals. Kat and Roger were surprised to see some deep-water fish, up to 6cm long, with brilliant silvery sides and photophores (light organs) along their bellies, and eyes that glowed bright red under the torch. There were also many interesting invertebrates - stunning blue copepods, red krill, a big grey isopod that seemed to be tasting everything else, a wriggling yellow polychaete worm with big orange eyes, some fairly mashed salps, and a bluebottle jellyfish with long dangerous-looking tentacles. Unfortunately there were no squid, but Kat decided to try again at dawn with a finer-meshed ring-net she had brought along. Tomorrow the sampling continues...
June 1, 2004
At Full Tilt
The Rainbow Warrior under sail (C) GREENPEACE / Walsh
Here's Kat, our marine biologist, on the ups and downs of onboard life
Let me tell you a little about life on a ship.
Not the parts you usually think of - the neatly coiled ropes and highly specialised knots with names like 'Turk's head' and 'one-handed bowline', the countless stars at night, the pods of dolphins frolicking in the bow wave, the inherent coolness of being able to bandy about terms like "fo'c's'le" and "reefer flat" and understand that others who use them aren't talking in secret code. The knowledge that you are one of the few people on Earth who has actually done a night watch. The unparalleled feeling of standing on the bow, wind whipping through your hair and nothing between you and the horizon, a secret treasured by a precious few people until Leonardo DiCaprio made it impossible to do so without feeling ridiculous. No, although these are all integral and unforgettable parts of life at sea, there are also important parts that rarely get the consideration or publicity they deserve, not least to those contemplating their first extended voyage. These are the parts I wish to share with you now. They are little, everyday things that landlubbers take for granted. They are things that I, once returned to dry land, will never take for granted again.
Perhaps the best approach is to walk you through a typical day's routine, touching on the little mundane things that usually get left out of schedules. OK. You wake up to a gentle knock on your cabin door, and the voice of the person on 4-8 am watch saying "Good morning, it's 7.30." The voice says this not once, but as many times as necessary until you and the other three people in your 3x4 m cabin have all acknowledged that, yes, it is 7.30 and therefore time to stop rolling around in a horizontal position and begin rolling around in a vertical one. You greet this announcement with one of two emotions: if you are new to the ship, and haven't yet gotten used to the constant motion, or haven't learned to bolster the sides of your mattress underneath so it creates a sleeping trough you can't roll out of, you are relieved - you can stop trying to sleep, or pretending to sleep, while listening to your cabin-mates' infuriatingly relaxed breathing, and get up and try to do something else. Or, if you have gotten the hang of sleeping at sea, you react with panic, because there are 24 other people on board this ship, and everyone except the sea-watchers is waking up right about now and realising they have to go, as soon as possible, and BAD. This creates a slight logistics problem - there are way more people than toilets (heads) aboard your ship, so that - if you are unlucky last, and everyone before you takes two minutes - you could be waiting an uncomfortable while. No problem, it's not as though you're constantly moving, agitating your already bursting bladder...
Of course, to alleviate some of the head traffic, each cabin is equipped with a sink. So if we move on to less pressing steps in the morning routine, we can stave off the urgent pangs from below and address other concerns. You probably have morning mouth and will want to rinse. Let me just warn you now that although your trusty water bottle, or other wide-mouthed drink container, may have been your best friend and constant companion on terra firma, it has been waiting all its plastic life for the chance it's about to get. The chance not only to send half its contents rushing down the sides of your jaw, but also, if you are foolish enough to drink in bed, to douse the sheets and sleeping bag sufficiently to make you strip the bunk, under the watchful eyes of your new cabin-mates, and mutter, stuffing the dripping linen into the laundry hamper, "it's not what it looks like."
Having toweled off, your next mission, if you are a contact lens wearer, is to render yourself visually acute - more of a mission than it may appear on the surface. First of all, in most dry-land lens-insertion situations, the fact that both hands are required is of little inconvenience. On board, it means you must decide between holding on with one hand (remember, the floor is pitching back and forth over a range of about 30°) and fumbling for your eye with the other, putting you at constant risk of poking yourself in the eye, with possible long-term effects, or surfing with your feet while you attempt to quickly and accurately deposit the lens on the front of your eyeball. Remember also, one good lurch can (and will) send your forehead into the mirror and the lens into your ear. It's a fun and exciting fifteen minutes.
For those of you blessed with naturally good eyesight, we will proceed to oral hygiene, which has a surprisingly similar two-handed requirement. Flossing can be the culprit of surprise amputations, while the seemingly simple process of squeezing toothpaste can cause the brusher to go through a week's worth of T-shirts in under ten minutes. Then, assuming you make it successfully to the spit-phase, being close enough to the sink to actually land your loogie in the vicinity of the drain also means you are close enough to get a good jab in the eye from the faucet. Don't laugh. It's hard to type when you have no depth perception.
Bravo, you have survived the first half-hour of your day. You are beginning to get an inkling of what it actually means that your body will not be sitting, standing or lying on a completely stable surface for one second during the entire voyage.
The ascent of a steep stairway we will leave to the reader's imagination - but consider, please, in the imagining, that at least once a day, without fail, you will also have to use this stairway (more of a ladder, really) immediately after it has been mopped and is therefore still wet. More frequently, of course, if you have new sailors with delicate stomachs aboard.
At the top of the stairs, bruised and battered and clinging to the railing like a cat over a bathtub, you are ready to run the gauntlet of the ship's main alleyway. At any point during your rollicking stroll toward the mess, doors on either side (of which there are several, some very heavy, all of which swing outward) may fly open, so you've got to be quick. If you meet someone coming the other way with a beverage or other open container of liquid, you may as well flee back to the comfort of the stairs, but more on this in a minute.
Upon entering the mess, you notice one thing immediately. You have been told that your cabin, on the lowest deck and mid-ship, is one of the most stable places on board, and though you may have scoffed before, you realise with some amazement that this is true. Standing in the doorway of the mess, you are looking up into the faces of the seated crew one second, and down into them the next. Every table is covered with a rubbery sheet of "elephant skin," much like the non-slip layers used to anchor rugs to wooden floors, and every loose item is either lashed in place or stored in a cubby or container so deep it can't fall out. Each roll of the ship causes a melodious shift of dishes, cutlery, and dry goods, first to port, then (about ten seconds later) to starboard. You are surprised to discover that a cup of tea or coffee placed on a flat surface (coated with elephant skin, of course) actually stands its ground without spilling; however, your elation is short-lived when you attempt to add milk and are first frustrated by a dribble and then a gush that overflows your cup and sends you teetering into the galley for a wipe-up rag. You also discover, when you lift the cup to take it to the table, or anywhere else, that it does much better on its own than under your tender ministrations and balancing attempts. If you are lucky, you will drench only yourself; if you are unlucky, you will be introducing yourself to people with sentences that begin "Oh no, I'm really sorry....!"
I myself was fortunate enough to take part in a mango-orange-juice double-header the other morning. Standing at the toaster, waiting to catch the toast in the split second between its leap into the air and plummet to the floor, I was chatting with another crewmember, who had just poured herself a cup of juice, prudently filling only the bottom two-thirds of the cup. "So," I was saying, "it was pretty rough last night. Seems to have calmed down today, though." She was about to reply, no doubt with some similarly optimistic words (on land, weather is considered a boring topic, but at sea it means the difference being able to shower today or waiting until next week), when a terrific roll sent us both into an instinctive scrabble for something to cling to. It also sent her juice over the counter, down my leg, and across the floor. "Oh no," she began, "I'm really sorry... " We set about mopping up, she reeling off a litany of words I was surprised to hear a non-native English speaker emit with such feeling. I, never one to learn from others' experiences when I could learn the hard way myself, decided the juice looked good (in retrospect, I don't know what I was thinking - nothing ever looks good dripping from a kitchen sponge) and poured myself a cup. "See you later," I said, balancing the cup in one hand and a slab of toast smothered in Nutella in the other, intending to take both up to the relatively stable bridge and enjoy them in the morning sun.
Two steps down the hallway, the ship hit a wave. And I mean a big wave. The usual grab-for-the-railing-and-wait-it-out manoeuvre was nowhere near adequate for this baby. Of course, I was trying to split my attention between saving my own skin and preventing Juice Catastrophe #2. As you can guess, neither got the priority it deserved and both good intentions went straight off to somewhere hot in a handbasket. "Oh no," I began, out of habit. Juice slopped over my wrist; my shoulder hit the wall and the toast disintegrated into a horrible sticky handful. Just as I began to straighten up, thinking the worst was over, the ship heeled over about another 15°. Standing opposite the cleaning closet, I was perfectly aligned to shoot through the door and land safely against the wall. There were just two problems. One: the bottom of the doorway has a ledge to prevent liquid slopping in (or out). Two: the human body, faced with the prospect of being propelled somewhere unexpected, tends to lash out and make a desperate grab for anything handy. In this case, my right knee grabbed the side of the doorframe while my left foot was busy tripping over the ledge; juice went everywhere and my torso made it to the window while my legs were still in the kind of shock that you know will turn into a throbbing black-and-blue agony all too soon. I gave a repeat performance of the words lately used in the mess, with a few extras added for emphasis when, in trying to reach the mop, I skidded across the juice (defying the laws of physics by being simultaneously sticky and slippery) and nearly sat in it.
The clean-up was prolonged and bitter, full of ginger movements and over-exaggerated care punctuated by the occasional glare of sheer hatred at my cup in the sink, bleeding its last pulp down the drain. Having finished the floor, I sponged down my arm, shirt (the fourth for the day) and trousers, and dragged myself up to the bridge, attempting to pass through the door during another strong surge and catching my wrist between door and jamb. The start of another beautiful day.
The other incomparable experience aboard a ship (although I'm sure the cook could add a few more to the list) is taking a shower. "A shower?!" you may cry, "what kind of luxury outfit is this, anyway?" I suppose you should call it a fair-weather shower; rumour has it that on the last trans-oceanic voyage, the swell was so high that no one showered for ten days. (Jeez, sorry to have missed out on that one, but count me in for sure next time, guys... ) But even in fair weather, you are taking your life into your hands when you grab your shampoo and lock yourself in. First of all, the shower and toilet are in the same room, approximately twice the size of a normal stand-up shower stall. So when you venture in there for a good steamy cleansing session, you know that you are increasing the demand for the other shower by 100%, and should someone else happen to shower at the same time, you'd better pray that yours is the door that's harder to unlock from the outside. Fine, you've got your load of shower-guilt settled nicely on your shoulders. Maybe it will help you balance, because between standing on wet tiles in bare feet (there is an anti-slip bath mat, but, let's face it, when they designed the suckers on the bottom they weren't intending them to function as grappling hooks at sea), trying to clean yourself with one hand and hang on to the wall-handle with the other, you need all the assistance you can get. You know that one slip in the wrong direction will send you, naked and vulnerable in unusual places, skating at high speed toward the sink and toilet. You also know that a grab for the handle with soapy hands could lead to a swift slippery collapse and a few broken fingers. Additionally, someone who was probably on sea-watch overnight is sleeping on the other side of the wall, a flimsy few centimetres away, and if you are lucky they will only be lying awake cursing you softly, and if you are unlucky, you will wind up sharing a very wet bed with them for the brief mortifying moment before you throw yourself overboard in despair.
So you see, the phrase "adventure on the high seas is an accurate one. It just entails a few more adventures than usually get brought to light. There are amazing, life-changing experiences to be had, and there are those who are whole-heartedly devoted to this life and no other. I admire those people, and in fact, as I begin to get the hang of this perpetual-motion existence, I am beginning to see the advantages it has over a life lived out entirely on the safe stable haven of dry land. At sea, for example, all food tastes extraordinarily good - the constant exercise of just standing up and walking around puts your body into a state of total appreciation for anything you can get inside it instead of all over it. You also begin to appreciate simple luxuries far beyond your capacity to do so on land - weather calm enough to shower in (precarious though it may be) or, better still, launder the toothpaste out of your T-shirts, is cause for a celebration. A pod of dolphins or a bright rainbow becomes the highlight of a long day (and rightly so - how often do these things receive the appreciation they deserve in the bustle of everyday life? Granted, a dolphin sighting on land would probably be cause for some stir).
All in all, once you are used to it, going to sea is a surprisingly agreeable shift into a simpler, more relaxed life, and brings unexpected insight into the complexities of daily routines we take for granted. Having found my sealegs, I am enjoying it more every day - the salt spray, the soaring albatross, the cresting waves. I can only imagine how beautiful it must all look to someone with perfect eyesight. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm sure my other contact is around here somewhere.
Shocked and Disturbed
An unidentified fisherman holding a piece of paragorgia coral. (C) NIWA
Hi, Tamsin here, communications officer onboard the Rainbow Warrior. Dave is having a day off from weblogging [But I'm still here editing! - Dave].
I just wanted to share a little of my day with you. After I finished cleaning the heads (toilets), I sat down in the mess (dining room) and began trawling through heaps of scientific reports concerning the effects of bottom trawl fisheries on deep sea life, and in particular seamounts - the mountains that rise up from the sea floor.
What I found in these reports made me want to jump into a submersible, and get down to the seamounts, get a load of footage, and beam it right here to the weblog.
Unfortunately for me, I can't! So I just have to make do with words beamed from the Rainbow Warrior, thanks for having the day off today, Dave.
Here's what got me fired up today:
'98% of the ocean's species live on or are associated with the sea floor and over 50% of the world's corals live in the deep sea.' However... 'a single 13-18m wide trawl can take a metric tonne of coral.'
That struck me as a hell of a lot of coral, what's more I read further on that once coral has been trawled it might not recover at all. I am disturbed by this because I know how much coral is the life support system of the ocean.
'The total value of deep sea bottom trawling in the world is USD$400 million', the total global fisheries value in the world is... wait for it... USD$75 billion. I am struck by the irony of how much havoc is being caused by bottom trawling for such a small economic return.
'Bottom trawl fishing poses a major threat to the biodiversity of vulnerable deep sea habitats and ecosystems, and high seas bottom trawl fishing has often led to the serial or sequential depletion of targeted deep-sea fish stocks.'
Yikes.
I stopped reading at 5.30pm, went up to the bridge and watched one of our friendly albatross cruise around the ship. What a life, what a wing span, what grace. Really wish you could be here with me.
