A Report for FIBS by Lee Hazell (LH)
This week, I have two guests with me in the Studio – Marine Officer, Jon Clark (JC) and Fisheries Officer, Kevin McFarlaine (KM), who was onboard the DORADA when she intercepted the Toothfish poacher, Viarsa1, along with the Southern Supporter and the John Ross. I asked Jon Clark to briefly run through the operation from the first day of the chase, to when the Falklands were asked for assistance.
JC: The Uruguayan registered Longliner, VIARSA1, was first sighted on August 7th this year fishing illegally off Heard Island, which is an Australian Fisheries zone, by the Australian Customs and Fisheries Protection Vessel, SOUTHERN SUPPORTER. Probably about a week later, we first became aware of the hot pursuit when it began to appear on various websites. We obviously watched it with interest. At that time, it seemed a very long way away.
It was only later, as the chase came out of the ice and approached an area about 1200 miles south of Cape Town that we began to show more interest and we began to get approaches. In the first instance from the Superintendent of the Customs Marine Unit to ask whether we would be in a position to assist and whether we could become involved in any way. We had already been looking at it as to the distances involved and whether we could be of any assistance.
I told Keith Johnston, who is the Superintendent of the Customs Unit, that we could very well be in a position to assist, if we were approached through diplomatic channels. That is, in fact, what happened. In the first instance, the approach was made from the Australian High Commission in London to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Later contacts were not quite as remote as that. I think the Foreign Office dealt directly with the Australian Customs Unit in Canberra. We were then approached by the Foreign Office to assist.
In the meanwhile, there had been quite a lot going on in the background, to look at the legal position as to the parameters under which we could become involved and what we could do and what we couldn’t do. Once that was sorted on the 22nd of August, the Foreign Office contacted us and said we might very well get permission to join the chase later that day. We, in fact, finally got permission at 1630 on Friday, 22 August.
We were fairly well placed to assist in that, at the time, the Dorada was on patrol in South Georgia waters. She was probably 700 or 800 miles nearer to the chase than had she set off from Stanley.
We were in almost hourly contact with the ship (presumably SOUTHERN SUPPORTER) by telex and telephone. Modern communications certainly assist in any operation like this. In fact, on the computer at the office, we were getting automatic 2-hourly updates from the Australian Vessel Monitoring System as to where the SOUTHERN SUPPORTER was. And, with our permission, they also locked on to the DORADA. So, in almost real time, they could watch the two converging in the Operations Room in Canberra.
LH: They were out there in really rough seas. It was really rough weather.
JC: The weather certainly wasn’t of the best. Four days later, they actually made contact with the chase, by which time, they were probably nearer the Tristan da Cunha group than they were South Georgia. The next day the boarding took place.
LH: How did everybody feel onboard when it was decided that you were going to go and help?
KM: I think everyone was content about that. We had been on a routine patrol around South Georgia. So it was a bit different and a bit sketchy as to what was going on. We had five days in which to get up there and by that stage, we were pretty well in the picture. We listened out to find out what was going on and to find out what was expected of us.
LH: It was really rough travelling, wasn’t it?
KM: Some days there was pretty grim weather. Especially on the last night before boarding it was pretty horrendous. We were on a nasty course and we were being hit by the waves that evening so it was a bit rolly polly in a force 10.
LH: Your first siting of VIARSA1, what was that like?
KM: We had been listening to the communications on the VHF. It was a bit slow going because the weather was quite bad and it took some time to get at it The first siting would have been on the first thing in the morning of the 27th. When it first got light, we were actually in position at her stern -about 5 cables, so that was the first siting.
LH: I know they tried to board once before but they couldn’t. They had to abort that, didn’t they?
KM: The intention the previous night was to board but the weather was bad and snow squalls came through and it was called off until the following day.
LH: I guess you wouldn’t have gone onboard but.
KM: No. We were there purely to assist and to provide back-up. I think it had been organised before-hand that the Australians and the South Africans would go aboard.
LH: So, there was four vessels actually met up there.
KM: There were four involved in the chase. One, the AGULHAS had stayed back quite a distance. She was carrying a helicopter but for the timing, she wouldn’t have made it in time.
LH: And the rig up on the VIARSA as well, I mean they obviously knew there was a helicopter onboard one of the ships and they rigged up some sort of set-up, didn’t they?
KM: They must have been aware there was some sort of Helicopter assist for boarding. The rigging was covered right across the top from either side of the vessel, just to hinder any attempts.
LH: After the initial boarding, what happened then?
KM: Once it was secure and under the control of the South Africans and Australians, we weren’t really privy to much information after that but an initial investigation was conducted. It was a bit sketchy for us after that.
LH: DORADA actually escorted the vessels part of they way then they came back here.
KM: That night about 1800 we were given the go-ahead to help escort the VIARSA along with the SOUTHERN SUPPORTER towards Cape Town. JOHN ROSS had to head off quickly for another job so it was down to just the two of us. I think the Australians were concerned that the vessel was going to be more secure overnight and there wasn’t going to be any uprisings by the crew. By the morning everything seemed to be contained, so we were given permission to leave.
LH: Jon, things like this, I mean, there is a lot of politics involved, isn’t there? I guess that’s probably why DORADA was there just as back-up. Is that right?
JC: Yes. She was there to assist. The main idea was to put on a massive show of strength, to try and cowl the Master of the VIARSA into giving up. The site of three large ships around him must have been reasonably demoralising, especially when you look at the JOHN ROSS. She is the biggest salvage tug in South Africa. She’s 20 metres longer than DORADA and has massive strength and power. By the time he was tightly surrounded by those three, I think he knew the game was up. From the course, his idea, obviously, from the very first position we got from the SOUTHERN SUPPORTER, the course he was on lead straight to the mouth of the River Plate. All the time he just had one ship following him, he was going to try and run for home. Fortunately, we managed to dissuade him otherwise.
LH: The Australians still would have had some sort of jurisdiction over the vessel, surely, when it got to Uruguay.
JC: Not really. The Uruguayans said that they would allow Australian Officials to go onboard the vessel and examine and probably question the crew. But once it reached its own Flag State, it would be down to them to take any action. In fact, under the rules of Hot Pursuit, it’s not allowed to continue through any Country or State’s territorial limit. So, any pursuit would have had to cease 12 miles off of Uruguay.
LH: This chase has been the longest.
JC: it’s the longest Australian Pursuit. It’s slightly longer than ours a few years ago into the Indian Ocean. I think this was rather more than 4,000 miles. Ours was about 3,800. But there was one longer pursuit a few years ago when a U. S. Coast Guard vessel pursued a Taiwanese vessel all the way across the Atlantic and back to Kaohsiung. But, again, he had to stop on the 12-mile limit.
LH: So really, this was a big show of strength to crack down on Toothfish poachers because there is a lot of it happening, isn’t there?
JC: There is, especially in remote areas like Heard Island, where any patrol vessel has a 2,500 mile steam before they even go on patrol on the fishing grounds. We were carrying ice, weren’t we Kevin?
KM: There was a lot of ice in the water.
JC: You still were encountering Growlers.
KM: Yes. Surprisingly they were north of the Convergence, so two days before the rendezvous position, we were still encountering ice. Growlers don’t pick up on radar too easily.
JC: An iceberg sort of breaks down into big bits that they call Bergie Bits and then the Bergie Bits become Growlers as they calf down and get smaller. A good sized Growler will probably have fairly jagged edges and it can weigh many tonnes. If you rip the shell plating of a small ship like the VIARSA, allowing the ingress of water into one of the big spaces like the engine room or the fish room, you have lost the ship. Somebody asked me why they just didn’t let the VIARSA get fast in the ice. That’s just about the last thing the Australians wanted. From the orders that we received from the Australians, it was made absolutely clear that safety of life was absolutely paramount throughout the operation. Had anything happened to the VIARSA, the SOUTHERN SUPPORTER would have ended up having to rescue 41 men in the South Atlantic, either from the ship or from life rafts or from the water. And, they would have lost their evidence if the ship had gone down. The main piece of evidence is the Toothfish onboard.
LH: It was alleged that it was poaching Toothfish. It would be bizarre if they caught up with it and they had nothing onboard.
JC: We did wonder whether they might dump the fish. But it was fairly unlikely because a fishing vessel relies on putting fish in the hold to replace fuel burnt, for stability purposes. If you are low on fuel and you’ve got no fish in the hold, you haven’t got much stability left.
LH: Both vessels must have been running really low on fuel by the end of it.
JC: I don’t know about the VIARSA. I presume she must have had enough to get home. A lot of these long-distance long-liners, or long-liners that go poaching ma very long way from port, the only thing they could possibly rely on is probably a rogue reefer to refuel them. What a lot of them have done is convert all sorts of spaces to take extra fuel. A few years ago when we investigated the loss of a South African vessel that was lost at South Georgia, we found that they had converted things like the fore-hold – it was everywhere, even the Old Man’s bathroom – just to increase their duration at sea.
KM: From what we heard from the conversation between the crew onboard VIARSA and SOUTHERN SUPPORTER, the estimates were 11 days duration of steaming at 9 KTS. That’s what the initial estimates were.
JC: He just about would have made it.
KM: Of course, SOUTHERN SUPPORTER was running short. That’s why they had to act fairly promptly. They would have just had to turn away and leave it.
(100X Transcription Service)
