4 - Wecnes-ay, August 29. 1990 ~ North Shore News One ship against a million miles of killer net ON BOARD the Sea Shepherd — Despite a delay of nearly five weeks, thanks to a successful sabotage operation, Paul Watson finally got his ship away from the dock in Seattle on August 3. It’s Where You Belong! Building upon 33 years creating values your family can share! We're building new facilities JOIN NOW before September 1st and beat the GST! Initiation Tees paid after September 1 will be 75% taxable under GST 1325 East Keith Rd., N. Van. I joined the vessel in Port Angeles a day later. The following night, under a full moon, we up- ped anchor and headed out into the Strait of Juan De Fuca. We passed two dolphins within half an hour of getting under way and a few minutes later, caught a glimpse of an Orca just off the starboard. Watson set a course for the southeast with the idea in mind of getting down roughly parallel with the northern tip of California, ECOLOGIC then heading due west for 2,000 miles, which ought to put us into the midst of the Asia driftnet fleet as it works its way northward toward the Bering Sea. Let us pause to consider the fleet. It is a collection of deepsea vessels engaged, cs no fleet before it has ever been, in a pillaging operation on a scale that comes very close to being, for all prac- tical purposes, incomprehensible. The fleet consists of some 1,800 ships. Between them, they set 35,000 nautical miles of net every night. That amounts to one mil- lion miles of net per season. I don’t know about you, but [ have serious trouble envisioning a mil- lion miles of net strung through the water. This vast ficet with its awesome array of nets is after squid, for the most part, the better to make sushi with. Some 750 of the boats from Japan, Taiwan and the Republic of South Korea are thus engaged. Another 500 boats go after tuna, marlin and sailfish, while another 200 zero in on salmon. A single net can be 35 miles long. It goes without saying that sound, ecological management of fisheries resources is utterly im- possible so Jong as a fleet of this size using nets of such tremendous length is loose on the ocean. But the full horror of the drift- net fleet is not to be found in the rate at which it is wiping out fish and squid. It is, rather, to be found in the bodies of all the other creatures that are either thrown back into the ocean after having died in the nets, or become trapped in abandoned or lost nets which drift by themselves across the sea, creating ‘walls of death’ that are nearly indestructible. The scale of the carnage caused by these nets has been debated for years. It wasn't until this summer that reliable data finally became available, thanks to an interna- tional observer team from the U.S., Canada and Japan, which monitored just four per cent of the Japanese squid driftnet-fishing fleet in the North Pacific between June and Decernber last year. The team reported 914 dolphins killed as an incidental ‘*by-catch,”” along with 59,060 albacore tuna, 58,100 blue sharks, and 9,173 sea birds. None of these creatures was supposed to be caught — just the three million squid which also died. By the morning of August 6, the Sea Shepherd had cleared the Strait of Juan de Fuca. | had awakened that night to the wonderful feeling of the Pacific swells lifting the hull of the 200- foot vessel like a mother cradling an infant in her arms. Not everyone, of course, feels quite so secure held close to the breasts of the deep. Qut of the crew of two dozen people, at least half a dozen were soon retching over the sidcs, less than thrilled to see the rocky spine of Vancouver Island disappearing far to the stern. The swells were, in fact, mod- erate that day, increasing the next night, and building up slowly, steadily as we ploughed westward. By the third day out the bow was heaving itself skyward one mo- ment, plunging like a broadsword down into the very heart of the sea the next, sending tremendous cascades of spray out like wings on either side, rendering the foredeck almost uninhabitable ex- cept for a few hardy souls deter- mined to ride the bow, no matter what ... By the fourth day, however, we had entered the perimeter of trop- ical storm Vinona, moving nor- theast with winds of 45 knots, stirring up 23-foot seas. It was the first test in my experience of the Sea Shepherd, a former North Sea trawler, built for the worst that the North Atlantic could throw at her. A relatively minor tropical storm posed no serious problem at all, except that the mostly-novice galley crew had failed to batten down properly, with the result that we lost half the cups and plates within the first hour of the storm. Other than that, there were the usual crashing of steel doors on fingers, the popping-open of lockers and the dumping of equipment on the decks, the clanking of pails rolling down hallways. By the sixth day, we had passed through the storm and reached the outer limits of the zone where the driftnet fleets were to be found. Two ships appeared dead ahead on the horizon. But they weren't driftnetters, They were something far stranger — and more dangerous. Ee 985-4135 Not thshore> IT’S WHERE sort BELONG! SO FREE AIRCONDITIONING or equivalent $1500 discount on purchase. LEASING AVAILABLE AND BANK FINANCING O.A.C. aa 700 Marine baa North Vancouver Assy Mon.-Thurs 99 Fri., Sat. 96 Sun 12-5 DL#7847