BEHIND THE LENS
O M: YO U ’ V E D ON E A L OT OF W ORK WITH SEA SH EP H ERD IN RECENT YEARS. H OW DID TH AT F IR S T MI S S I ON C OM E ABOU T ? SA: I started watching this show called Whale Wars on Discovery Channel. I knew about Greenpeace but I didn’t know so much about SS. There were these guys down in Antarctica facing off with the Japanese whaling fleet, direct action, getting into the think of things, banging steel on steel. I thought: I want a piece of that. I needed a change from the film industry and this feeling I’d had as a kid resurfaced. It took a little while of me bugging them, but I got there. It was meeting Paul Watson in Vancouver that changed things. I got to sit down and have a cup of tea with him in 2009. I told him I loved what he was doing and that he was a huge inspiration. I asked how I could help. A little while later I got an email from Paul: “We’re going to Libya for the bluefin tuna. Get your ass to New York and get aboard the Steve Irwin (SS’s flagship) if you want a piece of this.” I ached over it for a few days - leaving a good job and its security, going into the fray, doing something completely different. I decided to take the leap. O M: H OW D I D T H AT F E E L ? SA: I turned up in New York in the small hours of the morning and looked up at the Steve Irwin. I thought: Man, I’m really doing this! I’d seen these guys on TV, and now I was climbing aboard. Initially I thought it might last a year. I knew Libya would be interesting, but after that, who knew? It’s now been almost ten years. O M: H AV I N G D ON E T E N Y E ARS W I T H SS, WH AT ARE YOUR EMOTIONS NOW, P RE-DEPARTURE, C O M PA R E D TO T H AT F I R S T O U T I N G ? SA: I think I’ve done almost twenty campaigns, but the first is still one of my favourites. We did it all - jumping inside tuna nets, cutting the nets and setting the fish free; having a fishing boat ram us; having fisherman throwing missiles at us. I felt like a big kid - I’d been promoted as we were crossing the ocean from New York and was now running around, camera in-hand, with a big smile on my face, action all around me. Then I’d be jumping in the water to set tuna free. It was spectacular. I was then asked to go to Antarctica to mix it up with the Japanese whaling fleet. I think that was the flagship campaign at the time, and I did five seasons. There’s always a heightened level of expectation on those campaigns. Everyone’s looking at you to get down to the Southern Ocean and kick some ass, to try and stop the Japanese from killing more than 1,000 whales. All eyes are on you. I was on the Brigitte Bardot (SS ship) during that time. A lot of money went into making those campaigns happen. You feel pressure. Conservation group vs Japanese whalers made mainstream news. We had to return home with a victory. O M : WA S T H E R E PA RT I C U L A R P R E S SURE AS A PHOTOGRAPHER? SA: There was always a pressure to get ‘the shot’, something that said something about the campaign as a whole. That’s where I prefer photography over videography - the ability to capture one image that pulls it all together, that shows the world what we’re doing. I like that side of things. I perform better under that pressure, when it’s all kicking off. That’s a better environment for me than having all day to turn something around. My better shots are when the action is unfolding. That’s when I’m in my element. O M: D O YOU F E E L P ROGRE S S H AS B EEN MADE IN TH E TEN YEARS YOU’VE BEEN AT SS? SA: Whale Wars put conservation on the map. A lot of people didn’t know whaling was still going on. It definitely got the general public involved more - we saw more applications to get involved as crew on our ships, to be actively involved in trying to stop illegal activities on our ocean. There are more people now aware of the direction we’re heading, and they don't like it. So I think things are moving forwards, but I do feel, sometimes, that the world’s conservation groups - including SS - are putting band aids on problems. We need formal, decisive action from governments and big business to stop those band aids from falling off. The whaling campaign made a lot of progress, for sure. The Japanese were down there trying to kill 1,033 whales every year. We did that campaign for ten years, until they got taken to the International Court of Justice at the Hague where they were found to be conducting commercial whaling in the guise of research. Iceland and Norway are now the biggest perpetrators of whaling. Iceland landed a blue whale this year, a highly endangered species.
Continued on p.80... Oceanographic Issue 04
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