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.
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.
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!
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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?
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
[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.
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 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.
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.
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.
An albatross visits next to the Rainbow Warrior (C) Greenpeace / Grace
It feels really bizarre being hundreds of miles from anywhere, with several of kilometres of water underneath us. Apart from the ever-changing sky and the infinite waves, there's little to see. That doesn't stop many of us from sitting up in the bridge, or standing out on deck, watching the spray coming over the bows, or watching the moonlight on the swell.
Visitors come to the Rainbow Warrior, albatrosses that swing by, fly around, stay awhile, then vanish. Lesley, our medic, is an avid alba-spotter, and has so far have identified juvenile black-browed mollymawks, and some dark-coloured juvenile wandering albatrosses.
As you know, we're on the Rainbow Warrior as part of an international campaign to protect the deep sea. While we're out here in the middle of the ocean, things are happening elsewhere...
News arrived this morning from our colleagues in Greenpeace New Zealand, who had just performed a peaceful land-based protest at the Orange Roughy Management Company headquarters in Nelson, a major fishing port in the South Island.
Hi, this is Kat (marine biologist on the Rainbow Warrior). One of my projects on this voyage will be to sample the small squid in the surface layers of the international waters we pass through. Using a fine-meshed net to collect squid at dawn, dusk, and sometimes at night, I'll examine them to see what they are, how old they are, and what they are eating. This information will help us understand more about both the geographic and vertical distribution of these species, their life cycles, and their diets.
Dolphins alongside the Rainbow Warrior (C) Greenpeace / Walsh
All over the Rainbow Warrior, there are carvings and emblems of Dolphins. There are Greenpeace books about them, crewmembers wear t-shirts emblazoned with Dolphins logos. We're just four days into our voyage, and the dolphins have inspired us again. But before you all start groaning under the weight of cliches, read on...
The view from Dave's office (c) Greenpeace / Walsh
This morning I woke up at 6:50am, and could feel the ship rolling from side to side. There was a strong sea outside, but I felt lulled, cradled by the waves, and dozed off again. It's quite a contrast. Yesterday, we had blue skies and warm sun... today its driving rain, strong winds, and a good swell. We're not talking Perfect Storm waves here, but it's rough enough for our third day at sea. As I write, there's some slightly green crewmembers seeking refuge in the wheelhouse.
Laying a wreath at the final resting place of the old Rainbow Warrior (C) Greenpeace / Walsh
It's 7:30am, and we're up, and getting breakfast, and cleaning the ship. It's a busy morning, and no one is idle. Stuart, Logan and Chris head ashore in the Wakanui semi-inflatable to pick up Bunny McDiarmid, campaign director of GP NZ, a local journalist and some visitors.
The weather is fantastic - blue skies dotted with distant clouds, and the sea is pretty calm. It may be winter in New Zealand, but here off the coast of Northland, we're in shorts and t-shirts.
Heading out to sea, and into the weather (C) Greenpeace / Walsh
The stars are out, and the moon is lighting the sea. We're heading north-west, up past the Poor Knights Islands on our way to Matauri Bay. When we arrive there tomorrow, we're having a memorial ceremony at the final resting place of the Rainbow Warrior I.
Tonight, there's only a slight swell, but some of us landlubbers are having trouble getting our sea legs. After dinner, many retire to their cabins. Later on, up in the darkened wheelhouse, Franz, the captain, and Emma, an Australian deckhand, are poring over charts. The bridge is glowing with the light from the radar console. Johnny Cash is on the stereo. Perfect.
Leaving Auckland
One of the Warrior's inflatables following us out of Auckland harbour. (C) Greenpeace / Walsh
Midday Wednesday 26th of May: It's a beautiful, sunny day in Auckland New Zealand. The SV Rainbow Warrior pulls away from Prince's Wharf, the crew waving goodbye to friends and colleagues. It feels good - a relief, in fact - to be finally under way. The Auckland cityscape recedes behind the ship, while some of the guys whisk along beside us in the ship's Avon inflatable. Derek's at the helm, taking the legendary vessel away from the city, under the guidance of the harbour pilot.
While some of the crew had come over from Australia on the Rainbow Warrior, many of the campaign team are from Greenpeace's New Zealand office. Additional members have been arriving over the last few days. Most had been living on board since the weekend, and were settled in. Now we were anxious to get moving, to get the campaign under way.
Welcome to Mysteries of the Deep. Right now, the Rainbow Warrior is in Auckland, New Zealand. We're planning to depart on Wednesday 26th May, so be sure to check back here for daily postings by the crew.
The Rainbow Warrior is perhaps the most famous Greenpeace ship due to its predecessor sinking in 1985 after French Secret Service agents planted two bombs on the ship in New Zealand...
