A Brutal Death

By: Written and Photographed by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert | October 06, 2008 | News Politics

I saw a whale get killed today. Sadly, these days, this is not an uncommon sight for me.

I’m one of the two photographers here in the Southern Ocean off of Antarctica, commissioned by Greenpeace, and as such I either go out from the ship Esperanza in one of the inflatable boats or up in a helicopter to document the protests of the activists. I put these images on the Web site or out to other media outlets, so in the past few weeks, I’ve seen a more than few whales killed.

While it hasn’t been pleasant to see any whales killed, the killing today was particularly unpleasant. It died a horrible death.

Greenpeace’s Billy G boat had already gone out. It was following the Yushin Maru, a Japanese registered whaling catcher ship. Greenpeace’s “Orange boat” — we have never settled on a name for it — was also going out. I went on that boat along with Hernan, the other freelance videographer commissioned by Greenpeace. We were a little slow in setting out, but the crew did a good job getting us beside the catcher and the Billy G relatively quickly — and without getting wet, which is always nice. Odin, a Greenpeace activist and crew member, got us out there fast, but avoided the waves, only occasionally hitting us with a little spray, but on the whole we stayed dry.

We reached the scene quickly, and immediately were in the midst of it all. Alain, another Greenpeace activist and crewmember on the Billy G tells us the harpoonist had been deliberately aiming the harpoon at their boat. Minutes later as we rounded the front of the catcher, the harpoonist did indeed swivel on his green deck, pointing the ominous yellow harpoon with its black explosive tip in our direction. It is frightening. It is plain intimidation, but it works. I want to react, but don’t want to provoke the guy. I try to turn away, to look elsewhere, but it’s scary to not know what is happening behind you.  Where do you look? What do you do? We radio the Esperanza, the ship we set out from, to tell the crew about this hoping, perhaps subconsciously, that somehow this will be a guarantee of safety.

The Billy G swerves back and forth in front of the catcher, using the water hose to try and block the vision of the harpoonist. Our boat stayed out on its starboard side. It’s hard at this point to try and shoot any stills or video images because the boat is bobbing around, thudding onto the waves, swerving, twisting, and more thudding. To try and shoot through a telephoto lens is impossible: The camera jams into your face, your waterproof covers come off and get tangled, and the settings and buttons on the camera change as random things nudge them out of place. And of course there is always the threat that a huge wave will engulf you and all of your equipment.

It’s impossible to judge time when you’re in one of these boats. You can’t gauge how long you’ve been out or how many minutes there were from one incident to the next. But it seemed that after only a few minutes of us arriving, the Yushin Maru sighted a minke whale and decided to go for it.

Very rapidly we were in a chase scenario: the Yushin Maru chasing the whale, the whale breaching and coming up for air every 40 meters or so. The Billy G was in front of the catcher, swerving, distracting. Our orange boat was off to the right trying to keep a clear shot for images, but the Yushin Maru swerved, changed its bearings and continued to follow the whale. Odin maneuvered, glanced around and tried to keep us in position — and he did it well. The whale kept breaching and blowing.

“It’s over there to the left,” someone yelled.

“It’s dead ahead, Odin!”

“They’re going right, Odin! Over there, mate!”

It isn’t easy to second-guess where a whale fleeing for its life will surface, especially from an inflatable boat at a low level in the water. For the men in crow’s nest of the catcher ship — the spotters — it is substantially easier.

Bang! The harpoonist had fired a shot.

I should offer my apologies here as it gets a little confusing at this point to remember the number of times he fired and missed. Life seems to be speeding by; time seems short and there are so many things going through my head: Protect the cameras. Hold onto the boat. Don’t fall out. Where is the whale? Where is the catcher ship? Is the harpoonist pointing at us? I’m sure my recollection may differ slightly from the others in the inflatable, but I write what I remember in the order it seemed to happen, at least to me.

So, once the harpoonist shoots, all the boats slow down, all eyes fix on the white rope coming from the bow of the Yushin Maru. Is it taut? Is it loose in the water? Has he missed? Has the whale escaped?

The rope was loose and was being reeled in. The whale surfaces way ahead and everyone realizes it’s a miss. The chase is on again. We speed up. We’re pacing the whale, the two inflatables between it and the catcher ship.

Then we’re out to the right, the starboard side of the catcher, and then bang! We see the harpoon fly, hear the detonation sound an instant later, and then Odin and I cry out as we see the harpoon strike the breaching whale, but instantly we see that it wasn’t a fatal shot. I remember seeing a splash of white water, the black of the whale, but also a sudden tinge of red — the blood of the whale. It had been hit, but it seemed to be only a glancing blow.

So, now we had an injured whale fleeing for its life. Sickening. It was breaching more often at this point, the white of its spray tinged with a blood red, tiring from the chase, obviously losing blood and energy. It seemed like a big whale, it looked muscular and stocky. It was breaching to our left, then ahead, then left, then right. It was trying hard to escape — frightened, I imagine, not knowing which way to turn.

The inflatables, by this point, had backed off from the catcher ship, still parallel, but not directly in front of the harpoonist anymore. It seems senseless to delay the inevitable death of an injured animal. Now, it was only a matter of the harpoonist getting a clean shot to put the whale out of its misery. It would undoubtedly die from the injury it just sustained should it manage to escape.

Bang! He fired again, I was looking through the camera this time and I distinctly remember seeing the harpoon fly before hearing the sound of the detonation. We all watch the rope. He’s missed again. We wondered, is he a bad shot? That we doubt, as these are skilled men doing their job. Did he have one sake too many the night before? Have the inflatables unnerved him and made him loose his aim, his concentration? If so, then he shouldn’t be manning a lethal weapon. He shouldn’t be taking half chances. If he has to do his job then it should be with 100 percent certainty of killing the mammal in his sights. Perhaps the stress of knowing the world is watching is getting to him.

The chase continues, the whale breaches. Bang! Another shot, another loose rope in the water, another miss. There seems to be more people now on the deck of the ship. Is confusion reigning there? Are tempers getting frayed? The pressure seems to be mounting. The harpoonist must be feeling some kind of inner turmoil. Our inflatables have retreated even further off to the sides giving the catcher the space it needs to finish their ugly business. This chase has easily gone on for more than 10, 15, 20 minutes. It’s hard for me to know for sure.

The whale still breaches, sometimes very close. I try to get a photograph with it in the foreground, the catcher ship further away. We speed away trying to get ahead, but there’s no way of knowing where it will surface.

The catcher is turning to port side, to the left. It’s obvious the whale is directly in front of it and they are closing the distance. You know it is coming. The end. The end of the chase, the end of a life.

Bang! There it goes. He can’t have missed — and he hasn’t. In my memory, the fourth harpoon gets the whale and sticks. We close in with our inflatable boat to record the end. We circle from the starboard side of the catcher, around the bow to the port side. The Billy G is already there. The rope is being winched up, little blue marks on it telling the crew the distance or depth of rope let out. I shot an image of the taught rope across the name of the ship, YUSHIN MARU, thinking perhaps that photographically that would say it all: taut rope, dead whale.

I signal Odin to move closer. The water starts to smooth out, and it seems the whale is nearing the surface. Then the water breaks and a huge fluke rises up with a long, muscular, blue-black shiny body. It starts to thrash about, beside the hull of the ship. It is constantly being winched up, and then the fin part of the body breaks the surface and we all recoil in shock. Angry curses ring out from our inflatable. A harpoon has ripped apart the back of the whale — a horrible injury. Blood is gushing from the wound. And I see it all through my 70-200 mm lens, vividly close — in Technicolor. I see it as it whacks against the side of the ship, no doubt sending more searing pain through its shredded body.

I frame the picture vertically as a Yushin Maru crewmember leans over the side with a shotgun, ready to fire into the head of the whale to end its life. According to my colleagues, he fires twice. I didn’t notice; I changed a lens, cleaned another lens of water. Things are still going at high speed in my head.

I frame the whale’s tail as a rectangle in my viewfinder, checking my exposure and composition to keep the name of the ship in the frame. “I’m doing this to show exactly who committed this brutal killing,” I thought to myself. I fire off a few frames.

It’s sickening to watch and the thrashing goes on for so long. Aqua-green seawater is mixed with blood turning it a pinkish color. It’s all there, all at once. I see the blue and red of the ship’s hull, with its white numbers telling depths. This horrible scene goes on so long, I’m actually able to stop photographing and just watch. I shout to the crew of the catcher ship, “Just fucking shoot it!” Odin shouts also. I remember our briefing about not shouting or antagonizing the whaling crew and how we are not to be violent or hurl abuse at them or use obscene gestures, but I feel I have to shout; it’s too horrible to watch. I shout at them in a vain attempt to get them to kill this animal, to stop its thrashing and speed up this cruel death that is taking too long. The crew of the catcher ship watch us watching them. We’re about 15 to 20 meters off. They have a water hose running in case we come close, but we don’t. There is no point.

The whalers sink the whale, letting out the rope. The whale, I presume, just sinks under its own weight, or perhaps tries to dive with what little breath it has left. I wonder, do they sink it to subdue it or to drown it? Or do they drop it under the water out to keep it out of the sight of our cameras? Both, I imagine.

Then it comes up again. The fluke breaks the surface. We edge the inflatable closer; it’s best for video to be close; it’s easier to film, steadier. I’m photographing, still on the 70-200 mm lens, taking a shot of just the fluke, the hull of the ship and the vertical rope. I am trying to get something symbolic out of this death, of all the whale deaths I’ve witnessed. Through my viewfinder, the sky seems heavy. Gray, dark clouds have gathered. I notice this because it’s different from the usual bland white skies I hate so much.

I got the picture I was trying for and by now, the whale has lost its energy. Its tail is waving from side to side, not thrashing. The whale hasn’t been up for air for quite a few minutes by now. I look at the scene around me: the catcher ship and the whale, to my right the Billy G with my fellow crewmembers who have been standing there silently witnessing this horror show. To my left, the Arctic Sunrise comes gliding past, its foghorn blaring its displeasure or anger — a show of sadness. Off to my right is the Esperanza. I look up at the crew of the catcher ship. There they stand in their yellow waterproof outerwear, their goggles and their warm hats, just looking. Some busy themselves with ropes. It seems everyone is saddened, shocked perhaps, by what has just been witnessed. There seemed to be a poignancy to the moment, the end of a chase, the end of a struggle. Still, I hear the occasional curse from our inflatable. I still shoot the occasional frame, but the moment has gone. It’s over.

We watch as the whale is pulled around to the port side of the catcher and tied up by its tail, beside that of another dead minke caught earlier. The whalers have a water hose running in case we come close, but we have no inclination.

I turn to Odin and Hernan and I say, “Let’s go back. It’s done.” A whale’s life has been taken in a sickening fashion. Now, it will be transferred to the factory ship for flensing. Hernan and I recorded on video and film its cruel death. It’s our job now to get back to the ship, change into dry clothes and sit down to replay it all in our edit. It’s no easier seeing it the second time around, but it’s important to get the images out quickly to the news agencies and media. A whale has died, but unlike many others that get harpooned down here, it did not die alone. Its struggle for life was witnessed. Its death won’t go unnoticed. And I for one shall never forget it.

For more information on Greenpeace’s “No Whaling” campaign, visit http://www.greenpeace.org

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