What other jobs have you done?
Ten years ago I was a senior journalist for the New Zealand Herald, where I specialised in maritime and Pacific affairs, and spent many hectic shifts as an assistant chief-reporter. Throwing away a regular journo's pay cheque I moved to the countryside to reinvent myself as a freelance photographer come small time publisher, specialising in conservation issues.

How did you come to be on this Rainbow Warrior for this trip?
This is not my first trip on the Warrior - 15 years back, when most other reporters were badgering the editor for front-line roles covering the Commonwealth Games in Auckland, I was pleading for a posting to the Tasman Sea, because I was incensed about drift net fishing. For once in an editorial conference, conservation beat sport and politics - I was sent sailing to report on the "walls-of-death" being strung across the seas of the South Pacific.

Even before then I had shown Greenpeace sympathies, helping fund raise in Whangarei when the protest sailing ship Fri was being readied to sail for the French nuke testing zone at Mururoa. Earlier this year Greenpeace needed a photographer to cover the occupation of a power plant that a big electricity company wants to convert to coal burning, not far from my home in Northland. At least some of my power station photographs must have been in focus, for within a few weeks the emails were flowing and here I am, back at sea in the Tasman and proud to be here.

Essential survival item for spending time on the Rainbow Warrior?
Humour!

If you were a fish, which one would you be?
One too small to take baits or be caught in the cod end of a fishing net

Anything else you'd like to say?
Outside of work I love surfing and snow skiing with my family. At 56 years-old, the oldest on the boat, I still rate myself as a surfer, riding a shortboard and hoping to not even consider graduating backwards to a longboard until I'm 70.

- Malcolm