The Next Eco-Warriors (11 page)

In the time it took me to pull out a video camera, the crew responded, and one of the whalers ran down and grabbed me, pushing me up against the bulkhead, followed by several more, until both of us were pinned to the ship wall. Our Delta boat veered off, and we were alone with what was like a mob against us.

I tried to quickly produce the letter I had inside my Mustang suit, but my hands were forced away by one of the crew and then zip-tied to the handrailing, so I was all but immobilized. Soon after he was tied up, Giles's circulation was being cut off by his wrenched-down plastic cuffs, and he screamed out for them to be loosened. The whalers suddenly disappeared and left us on the open deck as the ship turned hard to port, sending chilling sub-zero water flooding over the lower deck and immersing us up to our waists. A chill set in; I hadn't considered water boarding the deck.

Minutes later, the water cascaded below, and the whalers returned in helmets and life jackets and proceeded to cut me free. The captain of the vessel, in his dark sunglasses, was yelling furiously from the upper deck and motioning with his hands to get us off. Two of the bigger members of the crew grabbed me underneath the arms, and the harpooner, with gunner written on his helmet, proceeded to lift me off the ground and toward the railing. There was no way I was going into the water from a ship traveling at such high speeds and from a position so close to the massive blender of a prop circulating below. I struggled with all my might and managed to free my leg from the harpooner's grip and kick off the railing, sending all four of us sprawling on the deck.

After the failure of trying to throw us back to the sea, the whalers marched us up a stairway onto the upper deck behind the wheelhouse. Ropes were produced from everywhere, and as in some
Looney Tunes
cartoon where the victim is tied in masses of rope to the railway tracks, we were securely fastened to the satellite dish mast. Even with the captain screaming in Japanese in my face, I was able to produce the letter from my shirt front. “
You're under arrest!
” I yelled rather ironically. The captain refused to take the document, but a tall guy dressed in black came over and took the letter from my hands. Giles and I were left in this position while the crew went off to man the fire hoses, taking aim at the Delta boat and our helicopter flying overhead with cameras rolling.

After what seemed like an eternity since we boarded, we were hustled in to the bridge and below for interrogation. The man dressed in black turned out to be the second officer of the ship and could speak rudimentary English. I pulled out my “dirty” Japanese dictionary full of colorful insults and
humorous slang words and tried to find something appropriate to say from the extremely small selection. “Excuse my shitty Japanese,” I pronounced terribly in Japanese.

This broke the ice a little, and the whalers all laughed. Then the second officer said, “Excuse my shitty English.” We then informed him that their whaling operations are illegal under Australian and international law, that they were targeting endangered species, and that they should cease and desist and leave these waters immediately. We stated that we were here to deliver this message, pointing to the letter, and return to our ship, pointing out the porthole toward the Delta boat, which was still under chase outside. They were not impressed.

As the harpoon ship sped out of Australian waters and into international waters, the helicopter and small boat were forced to return to the
Irwin
without us, as they were running low on fuel. Giles and I were escorted to a cabin where a guard was placed by the door. We demanded contact with our ship and respective governments but were denied both. The whalers invited us to dine with the captain, but we sensed a publicity-photo setup and, not wishing to eat with a criminal, we refused and ate a vegetarian meal in our cabins. Later, we found out that the head of the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR ), the hack science body in Japan, had said that we had eaten whale meat. It was becoming a media war, while we were out of site and unable to tell the world what was really going on.

Meanwhile, footage of the action was being transmitted around the world via the
Steve Irwin
, and in the ensuing media storm, we became the center of worldwide attention and political negotiations at the highest levels. The Japanese were offering only to release us on the condition that Sea Shepherd would refrain from harassing their whaling operations and, in doing so, had turned this into a hostage situation. Making demands in exchange for the release of captives is a tactic usually reserved for terrorist organizations.

All this was unbeknownst to us at the time as we attempted to find an escape from the cabin we were confined to. Our greatest fear was that the whalers would begin hunting again with us on board. Should this have happened, or if we were taken back to Japan, we did not plan to make it easy
for our captors by causing as much trouble as possible. Each hour we would demand to speak to the second officer, requesting contact with our respective government via satellite phone. But the captain refused each time, as he was waiting to receive instructions from Tokyo.

The whalers requested a statement from us saying that we were okay and being treated well, so that they could quell the international public outrage that was developing. We knew this was our only leverage in the situation, so our reply was this:

The statement was taken and faxed to the factory ship for translation and then forwarded to Tokyo. Half an hour later, the second officer, who was obviously under a lot of pressure, returned sweating profusely. “You cannot say this; please, please make another statement,” he pleaded with us. We refused to make another statement until we had made contact with our governments. We knew this was our ticket to be transferred off the ship.

More time passed, and we counted the twenty-four-hour mark on our watches. We were beginning to think that we may be headed back to Japan. Giles paced back and forth across the tiny cabin like a caged animal, trying to think of an escape from this predicament. I was only too happy to rest on the top bunk. I figured to myself, there is an upside to all this. I had finally gotten out of the daily chores of cleaning toilets, scrubbing decks, and washing up the
Steve Irwin
—this was a well-earned break as far as I could determine. But as the hours ticked by, the claustrophobia of confinement began to creep into my consciousness.

I scanned out the porthole at the sun, which never sets at this latitude and this season, sitting low on the horizon. Its pale light reflected off the unusually calm ocean, and I tried to squash down the thoughts of incarceration in a foreign land and the possibility of having to endure the rest of the
whaling season on this cetacean Death Star harpoon ship. Suddenly, the dark outline of a huge endangered fin whale broke the golden surface off the starboard side, and a great mist of breath was exhaled. The great leviathan sprouted again and, with its enormous black tail fluke raised high, waved us farewell as it descended to safety. At least one whale had been spared on this day because of our actions.

A young whaler no more than twenty years old who knew a little English had been stationed to guard our cabin door and gave us the opportunity to have a less serious dialogue than the ones we were having with the second officer. We asked him if this was a good job and whether he was earning good money. “No good job, no good money,” he replied, shaking his head. A little time later, he knocked on our cabin door and was holding a videocassette. “I recommend, I recommend!” he motioned, bowing his head, showing a sign of respect.

I took the cassette, and we watched it on the TV that we had found in a cupboard in our cabin. The video was a Japanese animation called
Princess Mononoke
, a story of civilization's encroachment on the spirits of the forest and man's war against the natural world. The fact that this young whaler understood why we were there and had communicated this knowledge through this videotape gave me great hope that our actions would break through to the youth of Japan, despite the establishment's propaganda. In fact, our one action had finally pushed the issue of whaling through to the Japanese media, crushing the silence that had been there for decades. While a debate began to simmer in Japanese politics, one Japanese minister questioned why an industry that makes Japan no money, but which so severely damages its reputation overseas, continues to exist.

After sixty hours of tense negotiations between the prime minister of Australia and foreign ministers of Japan, coupled with a marathon of media assault by Captain Paul Watson, I received a knock on our cabin door. I was taken to a communications room, a radio mic was shoved in my face, and on the receiving end of it was an Australian government official. “Are you and Giles Lane willing to cooperate with Australian Customs, in a transfer to the
Oceanic Viking
, and from there to the
Steve Irwin?
” I exclaimed,
“Bloody oath! Come and get us.”
No prison
, I thought to myself.
We live to fight another day
. Several hours after the phone call, an enormous blue and yellow ship appeared outside of our porthole. With great relief, we were escorted out onto the deck, as a smaller fast boat approached with a mean-looking armed boarding party. Just as I was leaving the cabin, I handed the young whaler a small koala bear with a t-shirt saying I Love Australia. He smiled from ear to ear.

After a happy return to our crewmates on the
Steve Irwin
, big hugs, and congratulations, we learned the full extent of the publicity surrounding the incident. I was immediately placed to work, speaking to journalists from around the world to the point of exhaustion. Working sixteen, sometimes twenty hours straight. The story was front-page news from New York to Tokyo and made the world know that a commercial whale hunt was still continuing in the Southern Ocean off Antarctica, despite the laws. Most important, we had finally managed to breach the silence over the whaling debate within Japan itself. The action had also prevented the whaling fleet from whaling for more than a week during the chase—our boarding and subsequent release preventing the whalers from killing up to 10 whales a day. We took solace in the fact that our Sea Shepherd campaign in total had saved the lives of more than 500 whales—half of the Japanese target of 935 minke and 50 endangered fin whales—with a cost in the millions to the Japanese government and whaling industry.

Today, I am still serving with Sea Shepherd on board the M/V
Bob Barker
after having completed my third campaign to the Antarctic. The stakes have been raised. In 2010, one of our ships, the
Ady Gill
, was deliberately rammed and sunk, and its skipper, Pete Bethune, arrested and put on trial in Japan when he boarded another harpoon ship. Despite the costs and the risks,
we have saved thousands of whales from a brutal death. It's a battle for the sanctity of life in our vulnerable oceans. It's a battle of which I am proud to be a part. And it's a battle that continues today.

PHOTO BY JO-ANNE MCARTHUR

_________

Benjamin Potts is a co-star on the hit TV series
Whale Wars
on Animal Planet, bringing the plight of whales into the homes of millions of Americans. He is currently working with the pirates of Sea Shepherd in preparation for the next Antarctic whale defense campaign. The battle for whales continues in the Southern Ocean and Sea Shepherd will not surrender until the Japanese whaling fleet ceases their illegal operations
.

Twenty-five
Fiji
Speaker