The wind was blowing in my hair and my skin was burning from the sun as we were heading for one of the trawlers. Still I felt as happy as I could be. Being on an inflatable in the incredibly sunny and warm weather, just with some cool winds blowing makes life seem so easy. But the reason we are out here for is not easy and fun at all. Its about deep sea trawling and its going on everywhere in the world especially on the Grand Banks where we are now.

We were going to one of the trawlers nearby to give information to them about this and try to get the bycatch for documentation. Remon was driving the African Queen. He is an excellent boat driver and I was standing next to him trying to learn every little move he did. The fishing boat we were heading for was called Lomur 2 and we had been trying to contact them for a while on the radio but they were refusing to answer. We arrived after 20 minutes and saw that the trawler was not hauling their nets while we were there. So after some waiting we decided to go to another trawler which was just one mile behind. But it was the same story there. They were not hauling as long as we were close.

After one hour passing between the ships we got a radio call from Bunny saying that an Estonian trawler, which they have been talking to before was now really interested in getting information from us and wanted us to come straight away. The fisherman on the radio sounded suspiciously over-interested but we still decided to go to them with the information. The Estonian trawler was about seven miles away so it would have taken at least 20 minutes to get there. We sped up to get to the ship as fast as possible when we suddenly saw something in the water. A big shark was swimming next to us! Everyone stood breathless as we were at top speed. I had only one minute earlier thought about how nice it would be to swim in the water just where the shark was. It did not cross my mind that there might be sharks in the ocean here.

Several minutes later I was still thinking about the shark and judging by the looks of the others' faces I wasn't the only one. But as we finally arrived to the Estonian trawler I had to forget about the shark for a while and started to help the campaign people up the ladder. While the campaigners are starting to get ready to climb up the ladder Bunny starts talking on the radio again. Apparently the Lomur 2 started to haul their nets as soon as we went away. Maybe the whole thing was a set up and the Estonian fishermen were not really interested at all. Maybe they just helped the Lomur 2 to get us out of the way. The Esperanza sent out another inflatable to go there so we stopped worrying about it and got the people up to the other trawler instead. When they where safely up we drove to the stern to see the nets coming in and tried to get some bycatch. There were huge fights in the water between birds as the bycatch floated up on the surface.

Trying to get the fish was not an easy job but one and a half hours later we had one box of bycatch and the campaigners where ready to come down. Apparently the fishermen had been really interested so they had a long and good conversation with them. Sunburned and happy about the successful conversations we started to head back to the Esperanza. I asked Remon if I could drive the African Queen and driving with full speed back I felt really happy again. The Queen feels a little bit different to drive compared to the ones I'm used to but I soon got the hang of it and I didn't want to stop. We got back to the Esperanza, ate lunch, talked about the trawlers and then I had a nice nap before I had to get up again and start to cook dinner.

I'm still dreaming about the big and beautiful shark.

--Tara