Paul Watson: Calm before the storm

Paul Watson

ABOARD FARLEY MOWAT AT SEA - It has been 7 days since we departed the enchanted islands of the Galapagos. Today, we are rolling along in tropical seas, spooking thousands of silvery flying fish continuously before our bow. The beauty of the sun sparkling off their wings is stupendous. We saw a large fin whale this morning and we are being escorted by a couple of Shearwaters. We have set up a camera and tripod on the bridge and the task for the day is to see if we can capture the image of one of these remarkable creatures as they propel themselves into the air and glide over the surface of the sea.

At the moment we are at 7 degrees 46 minutes South and 109 Degrees 45 minutes West. We are 1279 miles out from the Galapagos heading towards the Archipel des Tuamatu with Papeete, Tahiti about 2500 miles from our present location. We will stop there for a few hours to take on 5000 gallons of diesel fuel and then it is another 3500 miles southwest to the Tasman Sea and around the bottom of Australia to Melbourne. We should get there around the 16th or 17th of November which gives us only two weeks to make all the preparations to get to Antarctica to intercept the Japanese whalers.

There is no place on this planet that bestows such a wonderful feeling of complete freedom as being on the rolling waters of the Big Blue. We are over a thousand miles from the nearest point of land, the nearest centralised authority, the nearest points of hominid madness. No television reception out her, no cell-phones, no irritating talk radio shows. Just the blue sky, the blue seas and a twice daily eruption of colour as the sun rises and sets and we all eagerly strain to see the momentary flash of green as the sun kisses the horizon and disappears until the next day.

How I love it out here. This living shroud of blue from horizon to horizon in all directions. When I am out here, I see the exposure of the misdirected perceptions that call this planet Earth. We don't live on a planet of land. We live on a planet of water. It is only our land-bound prejudices that proclaim water to be Earth but from space the truth can be seen for this is the living blue pearl set against the lonely blackness of space. From space we don't see the brown or the green, we see the blue of the seas and the white misty waters of the atmospheric ocean - the clouds. We dwell in that area where the two great oceans of this planet come together. The shallow ocean that covers the surface and the amazingly deep sea that enshrouds the globe in mists of the magical substance we call water.

All around us are billions of living things ranging from bacteria and zoo- and phylo-plankton to the great nations of fishes upon which we daily inflict bloody pogroms of extermination, to the godlike minds in the sea - the whales, sentient creatures that we barely understand yet the more barbarous among us continue to murder in a passionate quest for material profits. When I think of one of these fabulous leviathans screaming in pain from the ripping wound of a harpoon, I despair for my species and I mourn for the victims.

For the most part, we humans think little of these fellow beings, if we think of them at all. But out here, we see them, we marvel at them, we experience them. From the schools of squid that move like living spacecraft through the inky darkness of the waters using organic jet propulsion to the lonely sea turtles exploring the seas endlessly but always returning home to the same beach to carry on their kind, as they have done for a hundred million years.

How we will miss them when they are gone.

I think my entire life has been one of trying to express just how deeply the hominid war against the oceans has affected me. Inside me there is a rage that I have controlled for half a century. I have tried to direct it positively by selecting our opponents based on the degree of their illegal activity. But so much of what is legal is also wrong and destructive and it takes all my will to carry on in this endless, thankless struggle to protect life in the seas.

But there really is no alternative. I do what I must do, with the resources that I have, to the best of my ability and in the long run, that is all any of us can really do.

In a world where the most powerful man in the world is an ecological idiot, where the great masses of humanity have been harnessed into apathy by materialistic trivialities, where large environmental organisations suck the passion out of the movement to make it a business, the chances of success are slim and our victories are always temporary.

Another school of flying fish has just exploded from the sea and a Shearwater is diving down to capture one,and he does - what a dance of speed and precision it is to see these two species interacting as prey and predator. No fighter pilot could match that Shearwater for maneuverability and decisive action. The Shearwater glides across the swells with his meal and the surviving flying fish carry on their flirtation with flight. Both of them echo the poetry of life at sea and it is this poetry that makes life worth living for all of us.