Today ended with a sad and bizarre scene. At first we thought they had missed. Both of our boats were caught far out of position - on the whaler's starboard (right), while the whale was to port (left) and ahead. Then the Hughie (heli pilot) reported blood in the water. A huge amount of blood. The whale had been hit. It was mortally wounded, but for the first time we have seen the harpoon had not set. Our boats fell to the back of the Yushin Maru No. 2, well out of its way - hoping the whalers would end the animal's suffering.
It is an unpleasant oddity, this moment when Greenpeace activists and the whalers want the same thing...the end of a whale's life. We put our boats in the way, we put our safety on the line, we endure freezing cold spray and brutal conditions to protect whales. But after the harpoon hits home, it is only a matter of ending the poor thing's pain. We often see that taking minutes - sometimes five, sometimes ten, sometimes longer. This time it took roughly half an hour.
The whalers reloaded the harpoon and took a second shot. A miss. Then the whale slipped away from all of us. The whalers, our helicopter, everyone. We knew it was dying, in pain and barely able to swim. Another whaling vessel, the Kyo Maru, came to look for it. For a brief twisted period we found ourselves on the same side, both Greenpeace and whalers working together - maybe for different reasons, but I would like to think that they also regretted the animal's pain.
At one point, the whale was seen off our starboard side. Frank (captain) actually called the whalers on the radio to tell them (in no uncertain terms) where to find it, and to finish it.
Well over twenty-five minutes after the first shot we heard the third harpoon, and then saw the man with the rifle fire from the Yushin's deck, finally putting the whale to rest.
I smelt it before I saw it...
by Lally, onboard the Arctic Sunrise
Last night I was standing on deck smiling and waving at the crew on the Esperanza who had just pulled up beside us for the first time in nearly two weeks, when my nostrils started to twitch with the arrival of a new and highly unpleasant aroma. I don't know about everyone else but my sense of smell has sharpened considerably since leaving port. I think it comes from breathing some of the purest air on earth, all be it with an undercurrent of diesel fumes. So there I stood, nostrils twitching trying to work out what the awful smell was. After a quick sheepish look at the underside of my boots I looked around and there behind me was the Nisshin Maru flanked by one of her hunter ships.
The cause of the smell was clarified in a second. It was the smell of death, a mixture of butchers shop and decaying flesh and it was coming from the Nisshin Maru. As I stood and stared, the entrails of what would have been, just a short while ago, part of one of the most
beautiful creatures on earth floated by.
A wave of conflicting emotions overtook me. Suddenly the mental
ware-and-tear of the last two weeks chasing an invisible Armada seemed like an emotional holiday. On one side of me were our friends on the decks of the Esperanza making ever more bizarre gestures as the novelty of waving wore off, including a strange little dance that I guessed was possibly an enactment of the song "Walk like an Egyptian". On my other side was the reason we are here, the looming shape and foreboding smell of the factory ship where the dead whales are processed.
That was all last night and as I type, our inflatable boats have been
lowered into the water and are heading towards the factory ship at full speed. We are about to let them know that once again we have arrived and once again we mean business...
