Trevor Van Der Gulik |
Thirty-year-old Trevor Van Der Gulik has already spent more than half his life as an environmental activist. He recently spent over two months working as the Chief Engineer aboard The Sea Shepherd's flagship Farley Mowat. Home again in Canada, he talked to me about the 2006 Antarctica Campaign to confront Japanese poachers of protected and endangered whales inside a designated whale sanctuary.
[Editor's Note] In this interview Captain Paul Watson is referred to as Paul. Captain Watson has spent almost three decades and 160 voyages enforcing international laws on the high seas on behalf of marine wildlife and eco-systems.
Robyn Lee: You were only 14 the first time you went on a campaign with the Sea Shepherd?
Trevor Van Der Gulik: Yes, but the first time I went it wasn't on an actual campaign. Paul was interested in getting me involved, because he knew that I had always had an interest in his work. He had come to my public school to speak, and I was always reading up on it. I'm his oldest nephew. He sent a letter off to me asking if I was interested in doing a delivery with him, so there was no campaign or anything, just bringing a ship from Holland to Florida. Naturally I got very excited. I had to leave school in May. There were other times after that when I left school early. In fact, I missed my Grade 8 graduation. My sister had to pick up my diploma for me, because the ship was leaving. I went to my principal and said: "I get to go across the Atlantic on an old, decrepit ship, so… can I go?"
RL: Your school was supportive of that?
TV: For the most part. In my younger years the schools were very supportive. But in my later school years it became difficult. I've had some challenges trying to do this work.
RL: Do you think it's because some people see this as civil disobedience?
The Sea Shepherd vessel |
TV: It isn't really, because you have to be in a civilian area in order to have civil disobedience. Sea Shepherd is the only international law enforcement agency in the world (self-proclaimed obviously). It's not recognized by any international government. The United Nations (UN) doesn't recognize us, but we work under the laws of the UN. For example: Conservation laws and the charter of the UN [United Nations World Charter for Nature Section 21-24] basically state that it's people's duty to interfere with unlawful acts on the high seas, or anywhere in the world for that matter. But we're conservationists for the oceans. That's where we concentrate our work. The laws state that what we're doing is legal. Then there's the International Whaling Commission (IWC) which is a body of nations stating what can and cannot be done when it comes to whaling (currently there is a global moratorium on commercial whaling). Japan is in violation of all the rules that the IWC has put out.
Basically what we want is for them (the Japanese) to challenge us in a court of law, in The Hague, or even Japan. If we can get them to challenge us in a court of law they'll lose, because what they're doing is one hundred percent illegal. They are trying to use the facade of research. When you see pictures of the ship they've got "RESEARCH" plastered on the side. But Australia's doing research and they aren't killing any whales. They say they're researching, but they're killing the whales, chopping them up, and off-loading them onto other ships to bring to the meat market in Japan. It's pretty disgusting, and an outright violation of international law. That's why we get away with what we do. Who's going to challenge us?
There's nobody else out there doing it.
Greenpeace happened to be down there this trip, and they wouldn't co-operate with us on any level. It was too bad because they had two ships, whereas we only had one. They had the Esperanza, which is a fast $30 million ship. She was able to keep up with the Nisshin Maru, which is the Japanese factory ship. All they had to do was sit on the stern of the Nisshin Maru constantly so that the whaling boats would not be able to off-load their whales, but they wouldn't do it. They're saying that would be "intervening." The other boats would come up and push them out of the way. It's just pathetic. Greenpeace is an organization that makes $300 million a year --and they're not even capable of shutting down a small operation like that!
RL: So what does Greenpeace do? Do they just go back and report to the rest of the world in order to elicit public sympathy?
TV: Basically their job is to "bear witness." To let the rest of the world know what's going on. They do a very good job of that. But at the end of the day it doesn't stop anything, because the world doesn't care. Look at what happened while we were down there. You were probably very aware of what happened to the whale on the River Thames. The whole world knows about that. One whale dying in the Thames, meanwhile there were thousands of whales being slaughtered in Antarctica and who cares? I'm still in awe of that.
RL: Have you ever tried to analyze why people become focused like that on one incident?
TV: People see something happening in their back yards, and think that they can give some money to help that one thing --without really understanding the global issues. It's unfortunate, because if we had one-tenth of Greenpeace's money we'd shut down whaling forever. It would cease to exist on this planet. There's the difference. It was pretty frustrating to be down there with Greenpeace. We're there to be putting ourselves out of business. We don't want to be doing this kind of work, but we have to be doing it. You have an organization that you think has got the same idea, and they falter in every way. Greenpeace crewmembers called out to us in support, but there was nothing from the actual organization --the hierarchy above. For example: There was no communication to us from Shayne Rattenbury their Campaign Director. He doesn't want anything to do with us. That's a shame. This campaign was the first time ever that Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace were on the same front, but Greenpeace was totally ineffective.
RL: Do you suppose that their supporters know that nothing is being done with their donations to actively save these whales?
TV: It's back to the idea that people are just trying to feel good about themselves by sending off ten or one hundred dollars to organizations like Greenpeace. I'm not sure that people even want to know what happens after that. A lot of times they're doing more harm than good consuming energy instead of actually saving energy, and stopping the slaughter of innocent creatures on the planet. The Sea Shepherd operates with a limited amount of funds --seven hundred and fifty thousand a year. And we're ten times more effective!
What happened last month is a perfect example. We came across the Nisshin Maru on Christmas Day. Greenpeace had already found them and were just "standing by" watching them kill whales when we came creeping up over the horizon at our pathetic eight or nine knots. The Nisshin Maru sees us and starts to 'sus us' out. The weather was horrendous. We were pitching and rolling all over the place. The Nisshin Maru is a big ship, but her bow was coming right out of the water. We start heading toward the Nisshin Maru. Our objective was to put our bow up her stern, where the slipway is. We just wanted to smash up the stern regardless of what happened to our ship. We wanted to get her rudder stuck, the same thing that happened to the Bismarck, but without the torpedoes. Just to try to foul up all that gear in the stern so that they were unable to unload whales anymore. That was one of our ideas. So we started toward the Nisshin Maru, but she's much faster and more manoeuvrable than we were. She starts toward our port side and starts threatening to run us over, but the captain, Paul, he didn't flinch. He just kept going, waiting for the ship to run us down. Alex and myself, and other crewmembers were tucked down and setting out prop-fouling gear. That was the thing we really wanted to do. The Nisshin Maru came charging at us expecting us to turn away as Greenpeace did. But their captain must have seen us getting ready to throw all the prop-fouling gear at them, because they took off.
A chase that ended about 3000 nautical miles across the South Indian Ocean began. Greenpeace started up their engines, and started following them while we just cruised along. About a week and a half later, on January 6th, we came creeping over the horizon again. This time the weather was the opposite, and we thought we'd got them, because they were tied up to the Oriental Bluebird, a Japanese supply ship hired to bring supplies and take whale meat away. Greenpeace was there painting "Whale Meat From Sanctuary" on the side of their (Oriental Bluebird's) ship --their way of protesting, I guess-- and we showed up and all hell broke loose. The Nisshin Maru dropped all her lines and turned off to starboard. She crashed into one of the Greenpeace ships just to get away from us! Takes off full speed, north. The supply ship did the same thing only 20 nautical miles parallel to the east. We launched all our zodiacs to chase down the Nisshin Maru with the prop-fouling gear. We had ropes with chunks of steel and floaters. We tried everything, but unfortunately we were unsuccessful. It's not easy to foul props. But we did chase them off so there was no more whaling (for this season).
That was about the end of what we could do. We brought back the zodiacs, loaded them onboard, and we had to head to Cape Town, because we were low on fuel. As Chief Engineer I was doing calculations every day, and the captain kept asking me: "So are we going to make it?" We used the same number of litres per day regardless of how fast we went. It was all up to the weather. We made it to Cape Town with about three-and-a-half days of fuel left.
RL: Was the purpose of fouling the props so that you could get them to charge you in court?
TV: No. The purpose of fouling the props was so that we could catch up to them. That would make the engines useless so that they would just be there like a sitting duck. Then we could use one of many tactics. One was to ram our ship up their stern, and another was to try and get butyric acid on their deck. It's non-lethal, but it smells really bad. Take a rotten egg and multiply it by a thousand. It's horrible, there's no way to describe it. We wanted to make them uncomfortable. The smell gets through the whole ship and they can't stand it. They want to go home after that.
Those were some of the options to damage their equipment. We've never hurt or killed anyone. We don't want to. The captain is quite calculated in how he rams ships so that we don't end up injuring or killing anybody. We just want to damage their equipment and send them home. So that would have been the purpose of fouling the props.
RL: You were talking about trying to get them to take you to court so that they would lose. What would it take to do that?
TV: It would never happen, because they know that they're wrong. We confronted the Japanese drift-netting fleet in the early 1990s on two occasions, and we rammed a couple of their ships. It was a very successful campaign. We pulled into the Honolulu harbour, and the captain left the ship to call the Japanese Embassy from a payphone. He asked them what happened and they denied all knowledge of it. It "never happened." Meanwhile, we have video footage of it happening. They don't want anything to do with international courts, because they know what they're doing is illegal. The world knows that Japan eats everything. The people are nice, the country is beautiful, but their ethics and ideas about how they manage the environment is sickening.
RL: It's an overwhelming task to get a culture to change its ideas and standards. How do you feel about that? How do you get a nation to stop eating endangered species?
TV: That's a good question. Money talks. Every time we damage equipment or put whaling ships out of commission we are challenging the investment interests of the industry. Education is going to be the key. Informative advertising. Media messages. But public awareness only goes so far. I guess it comes down to influencing the younger generation. They are the ones who are going to have to stand up to their culture and history. Tradition is about learning and growing, not repeating. If we wipe out all the whales on the planet where's the culture then?
RL: The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society considers itself a police force. So why do you fly a pirate flag?
TV: It's because of the modern romanticism of piracy. Real pirates are harsh. They steal and kill. They're brutal. We don't do anything like that. But the captain liked the appeal of the modern pirate, the "bad boy" image. The Sea Shepherd's flag is our own version of the Jolly Roger. We're the "Good Pirates" who pursue the "Bad Pirates" (driftnetters, whalers, sealers, and poachers). The "crossbones" of our Jolly Roger logo are a shepherd's staff and trident representing protecting the ocean's creatures.
RL: You've been on four or five SSCS campaigns but you've been working elsewhere for the past few years. What motivated you to join the 2006 campaign in Antarctica?
TV: It was a request from the captain. He needed a relief chief engineer. His chief engineer goes home for Christmas every year, and when the campaign got pushed ahead --he had to go. The captain thought of me. He gave me a call and asked if I would go. I looked over at my wife and asked her if I should go.
RL: You were leaving your pregnant wife behind. Did it ever occur to you that something would happen to you? Did you ever feel in danger?
TV: Anything can happen to us. We wake up in the morning and could get hit by a bus. There are risks and challenges when you try to do good work.
RL: But you have to admit that this was perhaps riskier?
TV: A little riskier I guess. But being at sea is not as dangerous as everybody would think. I can't deny that it is dangerous, but we put as many safety measures into effect as we can. You try to put that element out of your mind and just do the job. Take care of the task at hand.
RL: And what is the "task at hand?" What really drives you to do this?
TV: For me it's hard to say, because I was born into it. The real answer for me would be thermodynamics. The conservation law states that there's only so much energy on the planet. Everything has a birth and has a death therefore the planet will die. But it's a matter of how fast it will, and we have the ability to speed up that process. Because of my studies in thermodynamics there's two levels. There's the conservation law in engines of trying to make an engine more efficient. But there's also trying to make the planet more efficient. We have to understand energy values and reduce consumption levels. Using all this energy to go and kill whales in Antarctica has to stop, because the amount of energy being consumed just to go and slaughter those whales is unprecedented. There's no need to do it. It's like getting into your car and driving to the store just to buy milk. The amount of fuel that it takes just to drive the car to the store for milk, then drive all the way back uses more energy than you get from the milk.
RL: I don't think that most people see it in these terms, because we are so consumption-driven. That raises another point. Do you see this as an individual choice when you do this? Or do you see yourself as part of a bigger movement? I don't think that people believe that they can do anything to change the world. They feel guilty, but they don't know how to help. You talked about people donating to Greenpeace to make themselves feel better, but do you think that people can help with the choices that they make as individuals?
TV: That's the most important point: Everything happens on an individual basis. Everything that happens on this planet can be brought back to one person. Of course, individual effort is the most important thing. Without the spark you have no fire. With every individual act you have a reaction. Paul Watson is a perfect example of this. Here's an individual who grew up with passion about conservation and he ignited a spark into so many people all over the world. Individuality is definitely key. Just as being part of the bigger movement is key.
For myself conservation is important. This was also part of building up my career as an engineer. I started with Sea Shepherd and after that I went to school to get my licence. Being part of something bigger is important to me. But at the end of the day it's also about getting the job done for the captain, for my uncle. He wants something done, and I know I can do it for him. You get a lot of bickering when you have volunteers.
RL: You don't want to lose your volunteers, but there's a lot of politics involved.
TV: Always.
RL: What about some of the other people on board? What brings them?
TV: The people who've worked for the Sea Shepherd come from all different walks of life. We've had people from the navy and military. We've had tree-huggers, journalists, and National Geographic. We've had people who are just your average people fresh out of school. And they have all different purposes. They do it for selfish reasons. They do it for conservation reasons. They do it because it's a neat thing to do. They do it because they have an unbelievable passion to do whatever they can to help the conservation of our planet. And they do it for the adventure. They come from all different backgrounds and with all different ideas, but at the end of the day, we're all there to make sure the captain gets his job done. That's one thing that I enforce with my crew. I tell them "I don't care what you think, I don't care what politics you have, I don't care how many trees you've hugged, I don't care how many bombs you've dropped. At the end of the day we're here to make sure the captain gets what he needs. It's him that we're here for. Depending on what campaign we're on, this time we were down there for the whales. Keep your mind on that. One job at a time." I like working for Paul because he needs people under him who can keep everything in operation so that he doesn't have to think about that. He has enough stuff to think about as it is. I have to take care of my family.
RL: There's that motivation for you too.
TV: Yes.
RL: What's next for Sea Shepherd?
TV: Paul is busy now looking for a new, faster ship. What we've learned from this campaign is how to shut them down. He's determined to go back down there. The problem is that we can't do it with a ship that only does a maximum of 10 knots. We need a ship that can go up to 19 or 20 knots. He's campaigning hard to find that vessel, get her crewed up and supplied up so that this time next year we can shut them down. Also: The seal campaign is going on. I'm not sure how they're going to confront the sealers this year.
RL: What's up with that? Sea Shepherd succeeded in shutting down the Canadian commercial seal hunt in Canada. Why is it happening again?
TV: It's Canadian politics. Fishermen are saying that the seals are killing all the fish. A friend of mine made a video of last year's baby harp seal slaughtering campaign. It's pretty hard to swallow, but it's worth watching to see what's happening on Canadian waters and under Canadian law. It's tough to be a Canadian after watching that.
RL: What about the new government? Do you think that Stephen Harper's Conservative government will be willing to make any changes?
TV: Not for the better on environmental issues. The Conservative government has always been heavily into business and technology, which is important but tough on the environment. I don't know what happened to the Liberals. Maybe they got too comfortable.
RL: What can we do to bring about change?
TV: There are three levels of helping. Start by taking care of your home environment. Be aware of your energy consumption: How you heat your home, what kind of light bulbs you use, and where you could reduce your consumption. Think globally, but act locally. From there, educate yourself about what's going on in the world and who you support. Research these organizations --don't just recklessly send off money. You shouldn't feel comfortable just doing that. That's just doing the celebrity thing. Finally: Act globally by supporting action. Act by writing letters. Write a letter a day to the Ministry of the Environment or the Head of the Department of Fisheries. Bombard these people with letters and harass them. Tell them what you think. It's all good. Every little bit helps. Imagine if the Department of Fisheries got a million letters a day!
RL: But we should email them, right? Save the paper?
TV: No, use the paper. They'd have to sort through all that. Emails are too easy --just click on delete. It's hypocritical, but it's the same when we go down and try to fight these Japanese whaling ships. We have to burn thousands of litres of diesel each day. At the end of the day we're all hypocrites, but you just have to try to limit the amount of hypocrisy you involve yourself in.
RL: Sea Shepherd advocates non-violent intervention, but sometimes the actions hurt people in other ways. You live on the East Coast so you know first-hand how depressed the economy is. When Sea Shepherd interferes with fishing and sealing operations, those actions result in job losses that directly affect people with families to support. How do you reconcile yourself to that?
TV: They have to understand that if fishing continues there will be no fish left. They are inevitably going to come against that wall anyway.
RL: But are the local fishermen the ones who are doing the damage, or is it the big factory ships?
TV: The local fisherman who is out there with a couple of nets trying to feed his community is not the problem. But the Canadian government won't allow these locals to fish, while at the same time they are allowing Spanish trawlers to come into our waters and take thousands of tons of fish in. I would prefer to work with the local fishermen at that level, but a lot of them just get so angry and frustrated that they take it out on the environmental organizations.
A funny example happened when Paul came up to confront the Spanish trawlers. The local fishermen and sealers were totally supportive of what he was doing, but when he came up a year later to confront them about the sealing they all hated him. It's a touch-and-go situation. It would be much better to work with them. They're going to have to change their industry anyway. It's just a matter of when they're going to do it. Are they going to wait until there's no fish left or are they going to do it while there's still some and let the fish come back? They are the ones who are going to have to make the change. We are trying to incite the change and getting them to educate themselves. But it's up to them to make the change.
RL: There again it's a way of life and a culture that they are clinging to. Their artwork, their songs, their writing, their poetry, it's all about fish. It's not just fish, it's them. It's no different than expecting the Japanese not to eat whale meat. It's hard to get people to change. Do you see any hope for this?
TV: I look out the window and I see a beautiful sky, and snow. There's always hope. But for me it's not about hope. It's about existence. The planet is an incredible life system. It will take care of itself. I just hope that the human race can take care of itself. We've been told for the last 30 or 40 years that it's all coming to a head. Thirty years from now there will be all these great environmental leaders like David Suzuki, Paul Watson, and the late Bob Hunter who are going to be saying: "I told you so." It will be the "I told you so" generation. But I see hope. Humans are pretty resilient. We're able to cope with the most amazing things. We're one of the most adaptable species on the planet. We'll even adapt to the greenhouse effect. You have to do what you can do. It's not about saving the world. A lot of people get that idea, but it's about saving the human race. The planet will take care of itself. The idea is to make the human race a more educated and understanding group of animals.
RL: Do you ever think of yourself as a hero?
TV: Absolutely not. It's not a hero's work. And I certainly hope that others don't see me as one. It's just work that has to be done and you do it. The heroes of our nation are people like Paul Watson, Bob Hunter, Edward Abbey, Farley Mowat, the people who have instilled the ideas into our minds. The rest of us are just trying to get the job done. It's something that all of us can do. Something that everybody's going to have to do if we're going to succeed as a species. If it's the "hero complex" then everybody's going to have it. It's something that one person can start, but everybody's going to have be a part of to bring about change.
Robyn Lee is a writer, painter, avid gardener, and Cultural Studies graduate.
Interviewer's Note: Nissui (the private company that owns the whaling fleet chased and harassed by Sea Shepherd) has distanced itself from illegal "scientific" whaling, because of intense global public pressure on its subsidiaries.
Environmental organizations and thousands of individuals expressed such outrage against whaling that Nissui's corporate shareholders came to the conclusion that there is no longer a commercial future in this "taboo" industry, and they sold their shares and interests in whaling. The shares were taken over by the government of Japan who intends to target endangered fin and humpback whales in the Southern Ocean this December. Captain Paul Watson has found a faster ship, and Sea Shepherd will be returning to continue its fight for the whales.
For more information please visit: www.seashepherd.org
for internet marketing, web site design, development, promotion, and maintenance.
