Text and photographs: Holly Meadows. Article from the March 2013 issue of Africa Geographic Magazine.
There are those who consider the environmental organisation Greenpeace and its Rainbow Warrior ships to be run by lentil-eating, bearded hippies who resort to wildly extravagant, even violent, public displays to preach their impractical ideals.
Having heard the naysayers, it was with no little trepidation that journalist Holly Meadows joined the current ship and her crew at the start of their recent campaign against overfishing in the Indian Ocean. But the people and their passion blew those earlier misconceptions out of the water. She explains why…
Meet Greenpeace. Established in 1971, this independent global organisation campaigns to halt environmental degradation by changing public and government attitudes and behaviour in a peaceful way. The name ‘Greenpeace’ and its signature Rainbow Warrior ships are certainly known to most people via global media, and it’s those vessels that play a vital role in its tumultuous 40-year crusade at sea.
The first Rainbow Warrior was bombed in 1985 by the French intelligence service. After 22 years of tireless ocean front-lining (blocking coal ports and shutting down illegal fishing operations, for example), Rainbow Warrior II was retired to become a floating hospital in Bangladesh. Rainbow Warrior III, launched in 2011, recently wrapped up a two-month-long campaign in the Indian Ocean to help protect East Africa’s waters from destructive deep-ocean trawling.
In October 2012, I boarded Rainbow Warrior III just before the eco-crusader set sail from Cape Town for Mozambique on the first leg of its journey. We cruised for five days, hooking around the Cape of Good Hope and surging through the Wild Coast waters towards Durban – the birthplace of Greenpeace International’s director Kumi Naidoo.
On board I met a team of seafarers who have put their lives on the line for pelagic protection, tying themselves to anchor chains and climbing oil rigs for days on end. They represented one of my biggest challenges to date. I was raised in uptight
If our mission in Rongelap made a first-world superpower that scared, then we must have been doing something right – Peter Willcox
England, where Greenpeace was widely considered to be a load of attention-seeking hogwash, so I had a stereotype to challenge, along with my embarrassing ignorance about the organisation and a time limit tested by press-cautious activists.
Captain Peter Willcox (left) joined Greenpeace in 1981. A conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, he taught environmental education on the Hudson River in the US and researched humpback whales on a square rigger. He was the first person to earn a salary on a Greenpeace ship (the crew works at a gherkin factory in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, between campaigns to make ends meet).
Willcox needed a little prodding to share his experiences. ‘In 1985 we rescued hundreds of people from the Rongelap Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, where women were suffering multiple miscarriages, babies were born deformed, people had thyroid cancer and two had died of leukaemia.’ Their plight was the result of radioactive fallout caused by a hydrogen bomb that had been dropped by the US in the mid-1950s. ‘It turned out that the islanders had been used as guinea pigs to test the effects of nuclear radiation,’ he explained.
The Rainbow Warrior and its crew then sailed to French Polynesia via New Zealand. While moored at Auckland harbour, the ship was bombed and sunk, killing photographer Fernando Pereira. ‘I later discovered that Francois Mitterrand had ordered the bombing. It had come from the head of the French government,’ Willcox said. The attack stopped Greenpeace from campaigning against the French nuclear programme in the Pacific for more than four years. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘if our mission in Rongelap made a first-world superpower that scared, then we must have been doing something right.’
He stressed the significance of non-violence, open debate and what founding member Bob Hunter coined a ‘media mind bomb’ – a single image so powerful it can change the way a person thinks about a situation. It is to get such images that many Greenpeace protests are staged – the most famous is of an activist on an inflatable boat positioned between a breaching whale and a Japanese harpoon.
UK-born bosun Penny Gardener runs a tight crew. Once a computer scientist, she quit her job to do a Masters in marine resource protection. ‘I always wanted to go to sea, it was deep within me,’ she explained.
During more than a decade with Greenpeace, Gardener has been involved in pursuing nuclear shipments around the world and documenting the impact of deep-ocean trawling in Alaska’s Aleutian Trench. ‘When you make a real difference through a campaign, you know that your gritted determination has paid off,’ she said.
Indian Amrit Baksh studied environmental science in Bangalore and worked for Greenpeace India as an actions coordinator before joining Greenpeace International. Campaigning against environmental injustice is in his blood – when he was 19 he was arrested for scaling Calcutta’s Howrah Bridge to hang banners about climate change and the shrinking of the Ganges River due to retreating glaciers in the Himalaya. He also took part in a peaceful campaign to stop the development of new coal-fired power plants across Southeast Asia and Europe.
Of the fisheries tour, Bakshi said, ‘Greenpeace can’t be the monitoring authority. We try to set up regulations that bind a country and the organisations in some sort of framework that establishes rules.’
Spaniard Emili Trasmonte is the navigator. Once a banker, Trasmonte left Madrid for the ocean and skippered a small boat running environmental education projects with Greenpeace Spain. At 31, he returned to university to study for five years and earn a sailing licence. He has worked on campaigns to promote marine sanctuaries in the Mediterranean and conducted a sampling at the nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan, which exploded in 2011. One of Trasmonte’s favourite duties is engaging with the public at ports around the world. ‘I don’t like the word “environmentalist”,’ he said. ‘What we teach is common sense. If you like a place when you arrive, leave it as it was; it’s simple.’
US-born Wendy Jennings is the ship’s cook. She serves lunch at 12h00 and dinner at 18h00 but between shifts you’ll find her punching a boxing bag in the storage hangar. During time off she trains environmental groups to stage non-violent actions. ‘You put your body between the destruction you see and the mechanism causing it,’ she explained.
During her six years with Greenpeace, Jennings has conducted scientific research for the deep-sea oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – an important campaign for her because it is close to her homeland. She’s also helped cut illegal drift nets in the Mediterranean, encountering aggressive fishermen from Turkey and Italy who rammed the ship and attacked its crew with lead weights.
Brett Trollope is Greenpeace Africa’s actions and logistics manager. He spent most of his early years in the Kruger National Park and later worked as a guide and safari camp manager in East Africa. But he wanted his concern for the environment to gain a greater reach. At Greenpeace, he arranges the procedures and safety measures for any action or protest.
In South Africa, the organisation’s major concern is climate change, with campaigns targeting coal usage and nuclear development and advocating sustainable energies. ‘We need to work on reducing our carbon emissions; deciding to carry on with fossil fuels is just plain stupid,’ he said.
Trollope’s actions mirror his beliefs. He played a pivotal role in the unloading of six tonnes of coal in front of the Megawatt Park buildings, home to Eskom in Johannesburg, challenging the power giant to take responsibility for its coal usage.
He also helped stage the clean-up of a nuclear spill on a beach in Cape Town to engage people in the potentially disastrous impact of a leak at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station. ‘If something happens at Koeberg, the prevailing winds will [carry the radiation to] Cape Town, and the city will have to be evacuated,’ he said.
My time as a Greenpeace activist had come to a close. As I disembarked at Durban, the ship was met by a jettyful of suspicious policemen who insisted on searching it. Bosun Penny Gardener rolled her eyes and said, ‘First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.’ She was repeating the words of Mahatma Gandhi; I hope those words come true.
Also on Board
Mong (Tararak Ruchirabha), from Bangkok, Thailand, is the ship’s radio operator. What does this former computer programmer miss most? Thai food and his girlfriend (not necessarily in that order).
Austrian Manuel Marinelli has a degree in marine biology. He joined Rainbow Warrior II as a diver during the bluefin tuna campaign in the Mediterranean.
Laswet Savadye, a book-keeper from Zimbabwe, became passionate about the environment as a child when he saw mining waste being dumped in the rivers near his home town.
Sofia Kuczerca is a second-generation activist. The Rainbow Warrior’s deckhand grew up sailing off the coast of New Zealand with her parents, also members of Greenpeace.
Nasreen Khan volunteers for Greenpeace Africa’s Durban group. She is currently completing her Masters degree in marine conservation.
Argentinian Pablito Nene de Antes is the ‘garbologist’ on board. He sorts the ship’s waste – only organic materials are thrown Into the sea.
Greenpeace in Africa
Rainbow Warrior Ill’s stopover in South Africa illuminated the work of Greenpeace on the continent where the organisation’s offices were established in 2008 in Johannesburg. Concentrating on the overfishing of Africa’s seas, climate change and deforestation, projects included negotiating with the government of Senegal to cancel the permits granted to 29 European super-trawlers that were plundering the waters for fish, thereby helping to sustain the artisanal fishing livelihoods of the local population.
By the time RainbowWarrior Ill’s Indian Ocean tour ended in late 2012, its crew had helped Mozambique’s ill-equipped Ministry of Fisheries patrol the country’s waters and act against illegal and unregulated fishing. Greenpeace facilitated inspections of Japanese and Spanish fishing vessels, and exposed excessive long-lining of albacore, bigeye and yellowfin tuna and swordfish, and the killing of sharks for the trade in fins.
Find out more about Greenpeace Africa at www.green peace.org/africa
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