Conservationist group’s four-month pursuit of Thunder ended off west Africa, with the captain cheering and applauding as the boat went down, say rescue crew

After one of the longest aquatic pursuits in history, a vessel wanted for illegal fishing lies wrecked nearly 4km beneath the water off west Africa.



The vessel, Thunder, had been stalked by the Bob Barker, operated by the conservationist group Sea Shepherd, since 17 December. The two ships played a game of cat and mouse for 110 days, across 10,260 nautical miles through the Southern, Indian and Atlantic oceans, before the pursuit came to an end in the waters off São Tomé on Monday evening.

“The Thunder suddenly came to a complete stop, the crew came out with their life jackets on and threw a ladder over the side,” said Peter Hammarstedt, captain of the Bob Barker. “I radioed the captain to ask if they were in distress and he said ‘yes, we’re sinking’.”

The Sam Simon, Bob Barker’s sister ship, took Thunder’s 40 crew on board as the boat gradually slipped below the waves over a six-hour period. The crew of the Thunder comprised about 30 Indonesians, with Spanish officers. The captain was Chilean.

Hammarstedt said the Thunder’s captain was cheering and applauding as the boat went down and was recalcitrant when offered shelter on the Sam Simon. Sea Shepherd spent four months preventing Thunder illegally hauling large quantities of toothfish, a protected Antarctic species, from the waters.

Three Bob Barker crew members boarded the Thunder and reported that the boat was deliberately scuttled.

“It was suspicious that all the hatches and doors were left open, some tied open,” Hammarstedt said. “That’s counterintuitive to keeping a vessel afloat. They opened it up so it would sink, the engine room was completely filled with water.”

The Chilean captain said the Thunder was struck by a cargo ship, causing the sinking, but Hammarstedt said the vessel simply ran out of options.

“They have spent the last month going around aimlessly, simply burning fuel and hoping that we would run out of fuel first,” he said. “It’s been a siege situation – who would run out of fuel, food and patience first. They obviously ran out of patience first.

“It’s a strange situation to be in. Bittersweet, really. I had thought this would end with us escorting them to a port and handing them over to law enforcement. The evidence is now in the bottom of the ocean, although we did take some plans from the Thunder and I do have a toothfish in my freezer that I’ll send to Interpol. I hope the captain is prosecuted and I’m glad the Thunder won’t be poaching again.”

The lengthy chase began in the Banzare Bank, a remote part of the Southern Ocean, about 15 days’ sailing from Perth or Cape Town.

The Thunder made a number of attempts to lose its pursuer, attempting to dodge between pack ice or using huge waves to create a barrier between it and the Bob Barker. Finally, the Thunder’s captain tried to simply outrun the Bob Barker, skirting around the Cape of Good Hope before the final scenes played out in the Gulf of Guinea.

There were flashpoints – about two months in, the Thunder deployed gillnets to scoop up some toothfish, only for the Bob Barker to use grappling hooks to cut buoys from the nets, rendering them useless. More than 1,400 fish, weighing more than 45,000kg, were returned to the ocean.

Patagonian toothfish, known by some fishers as “white gold” due to their value, are large predators found in some of the coldest waters on Earth, in the Southern Ocean. Dwelling in depths of up to 2,500m, toothfish can weigh up to 150kg and produce a solid piece of white flesh, high in omega 3, when filleted.

The capture of toothfish is tightly regulated but at least six vessels, including the Thunder, are suspected of targeting the species in the largely lawless international waters.

In 2013, Interpol issued a “wanted” notice for the Thunder, which has operated under at least three different names and several different flags, including Mongolia and, most recently, Nigeria.

Interpol estimates that the owners of the Thunder, probably an organised criminal gang, have earned more than US$60m from illegal fishing since 2006. The governments of New Zealand and Norway have condemned the activities of the Thunder, accusing it of “violating international laws and conventions”.

Sea Shepherd will be pressing São Tomé and Nigerian officials, who are leading the search and rescue operation, to work with Interpol to prosecute the Thunder’s captain. But most illegal activity in international waters goes unpunished and even unnoticed.

“We hope this makes government think a bit more about co-ordinated action against illegal fishing,” Hammarstedt said. “These criminal syndicates take fish from some of the poorest countries in the world and they need to be stopped.”