Pirates of the Southern Ocean

Sea Shepherd is a radical protest group made famous — or notorious — by the American cable TV series Whale Wars and by the support of numerous Hollywood celebrities and rock stars. Having previously concentrated on obstructing whale-hunting from Japan to the Faroe Islands, it now focuses on other devastating acts of marine plunder.

In Catching Thunder, written with Sea Shepherd’s active co-operation, the Norwegian journalists Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Sæter tell the story of a 10,000-mile sea chase, lasting 110 days, in which the organisation sought to bring to justice a Spanish vessel illegally trawling for highly endangered toothfish in the Southern Ocean. The result is an uproarious adventure — one predicated on the protestors’ ferocious sense of moral rectitude.

Sea Shepherd is run with Ahab-like persistence by Paul Watson, a Canadian who left Greenpeace in 1977 when he decided they were not hardcore enough. I happened to be in Hobart, Tasmania in December 2009 when their vessel the Ady Gil — a contraption that would have looked more at home on a Batman set — was readying itself for a mission which would end in disaster the following month, when it was rammed by a Japanese whaling ship, the Shonan Maru 2. Renowned for being vegan eco-warriors, the young crew might have been getting ready for Glastonbury as much as preparing for inevitable confrontation on the high seas. I met one adherent who seemed wild-eyed with his cult-like mission. ‘He’d take a bullet for Watson,’ I was told.

Later, in 2016, I was sent on assignment to interview Watson at the Cannes film festival. I’d already encountered him in Paris the previous year at the CO21 climate conference, where he told the audience, in a chic hotel, how his life had changed after he’d looked into the eye of a hunted whale.