Posted by Dave at 07:20 PM, November 22, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
Sorry for the delay in posting this entry - the campaign is at an end now at end, following Karen's address to the UN General Assembly. But let me tell you what happened in Vigo, Galicia...]
Wednesday, November 17th:
It was still dark when I stepped out onto the deck of the Esperanza and sniffed the air - it smelled different. The weather already seemed more southern, with a promise of sunshine and warm winter days. We approached the coastline of Galicia from the east, the day brightening behind the haze-shrouded hills and Islas Cíes.
Continue reading "You Can't Make An Omelette Without Breaking Eggs" »
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Posted by Dave at 04:00 PM, November 18, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
At the weekend, we started sailing south from the Hatton Bank, back towards land. We stopped off for a little while in Bantry Bay, in the southwest of Ireland before heading for Vigo, the biggest city in Galicia, on Spain's Atlantic coast. By Tuesday we were west of the Bay of Biscay, a body of water that I'd always associated with unpleasant weather. For the Esperanza's journey across, it was flat-calm - barely a wave to be seen. After weeks of pounding by huge swells and 50-knot winds, nostalgia for the wild beauty of the high seas came as a surprise.
Continue reading "The Tiny Atlantic" »
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Posted by Dave at 06:40 PM, November 17, 2004
The other morning I was on the 4 till 8 watch, and thinking about the Northern Lights. Above the horizon, hints of pink and red were beginning to appear from a dark cloud. The colours turned to a deep red with a sudden searchlight of green sweeping in an arc across the whole sky.
Continue reading "The Greatest Show Off Earth" »
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Posted by Dave at 07:40 PM, November 16, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
[We were about to publish Mir's weblog on the day that we tracked down the bottom trawler Anuva - so it got delayed until now!]
Life on board the Esperanza is actually very simple, most of the time. Today, Maite was in my cabin listening to some CDs belonging to François - his entire Mano Negra collection. We are talking about the beaches in Majorca, about how as tourists, humans always end up wrecking beautiful places, and about not letting love pass when you find it. On the ship, you know, after work and after dinner there is not much to do - at the end of the day we are all still here, so we get together and have conversations, or read books - there is an awful lot of book reading going on, which turns into newspaper reading if we stop for a couple of days in some port and manage to get the Guardian or whatever (especially now, as the ship's network to Linux is undergoing some upgrades, and we are not getting the awful (but OK) daily news digest we usually get, so newspapers are really hot). And then there's the Mexican poker group playing almost every night using nails instead of real money. The point I'm trying to make is that the ships's population is small, life is simple, and in times like this, roaming about in huge ocean spaces looking for trawlers, not much happens.
Continue reading "Life Is Simple" »
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 | | (C) Greenpeace |
We have been on this campaign for over a month now, hunting bottom trawlers who trawl on the Atlantic ridge and destroy small but important ecosystems and the animals living there. My job is primarily based on board the ship. But I join actions as much as my duty permits. I have been on since Falmouth, at the start of October.
Continue reading "The Last of the Norwegians" »
We've now got an image gallery of our 24 hours occupation of the bottom trawler Anuva online - check out the action here »
Continue reading "Overboard and Online!" »
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Posted by Dave at 09:40 PM, November 13, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
I finished the last posting with news that Action Dave had suggested something... He appeared in the campaign office I was writing the weblog and asked 'Fancy boarding the bottom trawler?'
'Sure, why not?', I replied...
Continue reading "Overboard!" »
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Posted by Dave at 11:00 PM, November 12, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
It's 10pm, in the middle of the North Atlantic. I'm sitting in the Campaign office, just behind the bridge of the Esperanza, still wrapped in layers of thermal gear, as I've just spent six hours out in the dark, in an inflatable. But while I'm sitting here, in relative comfort, three of our guys are on board a Lithuanian-flagged bottom trawler, the Anuva. It's going to be a long night...
Continue reading "First Post From A Long Night" »
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Posted by Dave at 08:20 AM, November 11, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
Wednesday afternoon, still in the North Atlantic. As we move later into the year, we notice how the weather is changing. One low after another comes in, which means bad weather - most of the time. It's funny how relative it is. Yesterday we had force ten for a while, but it's down to a seven now. We're happy with seven. We used to print out our weather faxes, but now our radio operator gets them through the Internet while he downloads and grabs email. He puts them in our folders on the computer, which saves paper. It doesn't give the same feeling of expectation though. We used to switch on the weather fax, search for the right channel, listening to the squeaky and cracking radio-sounds and after ten minutes you'd find out what the forecast is.
Continue reading "Happy With Force 7" »
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
On patrol out here in the huge swells and squalls, we happened upon the Playa De Menduiña. The EU bottom trawler from Galicia is still out here - since we saw it two weeks ago - dragging the ocean bottom for deep sea fish. The Esperanza feels very solid, in comparison to the violent pitching and rolling of the Playa De Menduiña - it looks ungainly. In this foul weather (Maaike was joking that she was happy with a force 7 gale) - it's too dangerous to launch the inflatables, so we sail past. We let the bottom trawler's skipper know that we're still here, still watching, and not going to forget about the destruction they're causing.
- Dave
Continue reading "Hello Skipper!" »
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Posted by Dave at 07:40 PM, November 09, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
The Esperanza has spent much of the last month out in the Atlantic
Ocean, tracking bottom trawlers. Two weeks ago, when two of our
activists mounted the net of one of these trawlers, the weather was
unseasonably good - sunshine, and fairly calm seas. But now, as the year
sidles toward winter, the weather is getting wilder. Since we left
Falmouth, we've had many gales, of varying force. But today was pretty
wild, we were up against a force 10 - gusting to force 11 - all day.
That means a wind of 50 knots all day (90km/h), howling around the masts.
Continue reading "Gale Force Winds" »
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
When asked if I'd be the Esperanza's onboard press officer for the high
seas bottom trawling campaign , I thought wow, well I never? I then
remembered I get queasy on boats. The destination for the trip was to be
the Azores, the Portuguese territory in the middle of the Atlantic. I
had perhaps unrealistic visions of palm trees, sandy beaches and
importantly; calm seas. Although never having been 'to sea' before I
knew my brief spells of sickness on Sydney ferries, Greek island-hopping
ships and dive boats was evidence enough of my poor seaworthiness.
Nevertheless, I reasoned that the opportunity to be part of this
important campaign, on the frontline, was well worth a few days of
queasiness and vomiting.
Continue reading "Queasy" »
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Posted by Dave at 02:40 PM, November 06, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
On Thursday in Madrid, our Spanish land team organised the "other" fish market. Different species of deep sea life collected by the crew of the Esperanza, from the deep sea trawler Playa de Menduiña where taken to Spain, in order to display the other part of the catch - the animals which will never reach the markets, but are still part of the destruction carried out by these ships.
Continue reading "The 'Other' Fish Market" »
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 | | (C) Greenpeace |
A reader named Joshua asked, on the 'email the crew' page, what we do when we're at sea. It all depends on the campaign. Just this year, the Esperanza has been involved in campaigns everywhere from Scandinavia to Lebanon, dealing with GM shipments, nuclear shipments, whaling, and deep sea destruction.
Right now, we're out in the wild northeast atlantic, about half way between Scotland and Iceland. We're monitoring, documenting, and trying to stop bottom trawlers from wrecking the environment.
Continue reading "What Do We Do At Sea?" »
Posted by Dave at 08:40 AM, November 05, 2004
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
It's a Sunday morning. Unlike the last few Sundays, when we've been hanging out with trawlers and dead fish, today we embrace civilisation, for better or for worse. Over the last few days, we've braved storms out near Rockall; on Friday afternoon, we lots of dolphins around us, and in the dark, had sailed down between the coasts of Ireland and Scotland (a channel so narrow, you can see right across). On Saturday, we had stopped off near Bangor, just outside Belfast, to put some crew ashore. We might have been a few miles from the coast, but it didn't take long for word to get round - a local radio station called us up to see what we were doing there.
Continue reading "Dublin, Uncovered" »
 | | (C) Greenpeace |
The Esperanza had barely docked in Dublin before the first visitors started arriving - new crew members, local Greenpeace activists, and friends. I had the pleasure of welcoming my parents on board - they'd travelled a couple of hours just to see both the Esperanza and their wayward son. Their first words were 'The ship is huge!'. This was recurring theme for most of the visitors, who expected the Esperanza to be a wee little thing.
Continue reading "Docked in Dublin" »
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Posted by Dave at 07:20 PM, November 04, 2004
After plenty of deliberation, we have arrived at a name for the 'Trawler Pixie'. Suggestions, which came from all over the world, included Cederic, Hero, Emily, Séamusín O'Piccolo, Zephyr, Greenie the Genie, Pinnochio, Rainbow Pixie, Rambo, Bigfoot, Tom and Bottom's Up.
But our favourite - for its succintness, is 'Trules the Trawler Imp', suggested by Steve Campbell in Australia. For your information, Steve, we're not really anywhere near Norway, but we still like the name.
Steve is the winner of Rex Wyler's new book about Greenpeace - enjoy! It's a damn good read.
- Dave
Continue reading "Trawler Pixie Winner" »
Posted by Dave at 01:24 PM, November 02, 2004
Kate, our photographer, has been taking lots of cool photos while on board the Esperanza - check out some of the pictures from our trip, in the Image Gallery »
Continue reading "Image Gallery!" »
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