‘Bring out the cheese’ crackles through the VHF on the bridge and I signal to the deck to swing the big yellow buoy out over the railings.

It is in fact, just one quarter of an enormous yellow buoy that has been code-named ‘the cheese’ for its wedge-shape and colour. The quick release is pulled and it plunges into the sea to be picked out of our wake by the hurricane. Greenpeace is engaged in a Direct Action to stop this enormous European trawler fishing the last remaining stocks from West African waters.

It is a glorious day, perfect light and the winds have abated. The ‘cheese’ is attached to the trawl cable of Helen Mary and we all watch to see what will happen next. We have three rhibs in the water, but those crew not directly engaged in the action are seated on the empty boat cradles that provide tiered seating for the event. The mood on board is jovial and when a response is noticed on the stern of the trawler, an applause rises from our decks. The fishermen are hauling in the net.

The net stretches out for five hundred metres behind the trawler, it rises to the surface as the cables are reeled in. The trawl doors are lifted out of the sea and with the port-hand door comes the cheese. The hurricane goes in towards the net again, this time an inflatable raft bearing the same message ‘STOP THE PLUNDER’ is deployed on the fishing gear. The trawler is compelled to keep hauling.

By the time the raft is hoisted on board Helen Mary, the distance to the end of her net has shortened considerably. It is our intention to make her take it all in, this is a direct action to stop overfishing West African waters. Due to the collapse of the fish stocks in Europe, the European fleet is now decimating the stocks off Africa.

It is now time for the yellow cone. In similar fashion, it is dropped into the sea from the Arctic Sunrise. This time it is the Novurania that takes it in tow over to the net which extends to only two hundred metres off the stern of Helen Mary. With Rita at the tiller and Sergiy at the hook, they draw up to the gear streaming out behind the fishing boat. It takes less than a minute. Through the binoculars there is just a flurry of white water and then the small tiller boat is travelling backwards. It is not designed to do that. A dark cloud looms over our glorious day.

The novurania is caught up in the trawl, its occupants are forced to abandon ship. Sergiy swims clear but Rita gets caught by a trawl wire. It catches her midriff and tugs her little body beneath the surface. Six persons in the press boat watch Rita disappearing just metres in front of them. In an effort to assist, the press boat draws closer, too close. It too becomes entangled, spins around and starts its own sternward journey to hell. Now there are eight bodies in the water.

In the eternity that Rita spends beneath the waves she is first pulled backward, then spun around like a rag doll and pulled forward. Rita’s first life was spared during the Lebanese civil war when a nine inch shell whistled through her kitchen window, skimming the side of her head and ricocheting off every surface around her. Her second life flashed passed crossing a busy road in Beirut, leaving her with a broken arm. Now she is fighting for life number three. There are angels. This buoyant girl is spat out of the net, alive.

Bedraggled survivors are brought back on board the Arctic Sunrise, their cameras left to sink slowly to the ocean floor. This is the second Greenpeace camera lost to the sea on this expedition. Our two capsized rhibs are hauled on board the Helen Mary and the helicopter returns to the Arctic Sunrise. Rita is diagnosed with two broken ribs by the ship’s doctor. I inform Helen Mary that all activists are out of the water and turn away, putting the throttle down to make full speed towards the nearest hospital in Dakar.
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The gannet flew off into the distance but came back to do close circles around the Arctic Sunrise. One of its legs was caught up in the net trailing from its neck. If this bird landed in the sea it would never take off. Its feathers were dishevelled and its eye appeared vacant – the pride of being a gannet was gone from it.

It made a fumbled one-legged landing on the heli-deck, coming to rest in the helicopter net. Rita, Stefan and Iris drew their knives, I grabbed a pole net. The bird let out an angry squawk as the net came down over its head and I leapt forward, grabbing its neck in one hand then the beak in the other. There was life left in this bird – I could feel it in the struggle as I wrestled it to the deck. My assistants drew near with their knives. Pierre snapped away with his Nikon.

The gannet’s head was through one hole of the net and its left wing through another. Taking great care, the crew sliced the net into little pieces and freed the bird from its bright green bondage. I gathered its free wings in – bringing them together under my arm – just like I’d learned to do with chickens on the farm. We checked its legs – they were both fine and strong. Crew stood back as I settled the bird down once more and let go of its beak. It spun around giving me an almighty squawk before launching itself from the side of the ship. It was airborne and free.

The gannet circled the ship once and was gone, leaving behind it a general feeling of wellbeing. And one flea. That night, when I went to turn the covers down on my bed there was a fish beneath my pillow. Fortunately it was made out of paper and in the form of a note. It read, ‘THANK YOU GREENPEACE, From the big Angry bird!!’

By 0600 in the morning only the Cornelis remained – the others had disappeared. We altered course to intercept and no sooner had we done so then the Cornelis too, disappeared without a trace. The fleet had turned off their AIS transmitters. We kept ours on to remain transparent. The odds were stacked against us though: they could see us, we could not see them.

At 0915 the helicopter took off with coordinates of a search pattern based on the last position, course and speed, of Cornelis Vrolijk. The visibility was under 3 miles and so the search was a narrow corridor along the projected track of the target. Chances of finding the vessel were slim.

At 1030, in the last mile of search the helicopter sighted Cornelis Vrolijk. I can’t begin to describe how I felt when the pilot called back on the air-band radio with a confirmation. Whilst vectors on a paper chart gave reassurance of where the target may be – they were nothing in reality. There is some mathematical skill, there is more intuition, but mostly there is sheer good fortune when it comes to finding something at sea in poor visibility. I identified a corresponding radar echo with the observed target and called the bird home to roost. We had our mark.

Cornelis Vrolijk was not fishing, she was hunting at a speed of 12 knots – faster than the top speed of the Arctic Sunrise. And so began a slow game of cat and mouse. At times she would turn and it was at these times we had the chance to close the distance. Eventually she shot her net and slowed. A dark shape emerged out of the dust and there ahead of us was one of Britain’s largest fishing boats.

Its nets were down for a couple hours before she hauled and we drew in closer with John Vidal, from the Guardian newspaper, to ask a few questions. He called them on the radio, asking how much fish they had caught today and where was it all going? The captain from the Cornelis Vrolijk replied that he did not have time to talk.

The Cornelis Vrolijk is a PFA trawler registered in Hull but it is clear from the carvings on the side that it has recently been registered in Scheveningen, in the Netherlands. These boats jump quite easily from one register to another, gobbling up the subsidies and quotas of each country. There is nothing illegal in what they are doing – they are just going about their business.

We passed slower boats with their nets in the water but our intention was a direct action to stop a vessel setting nets. Boats were hanging on the railings in a state of readiness and activists dressed in boat suits ready to go. With each erratic change of the fisherman’s course, our time of interception would change. Going by the computer on the radar it would not happen at all. There is excitement in the chase. We had closed the distance to two miles by the time our target slowed, a sure sign of shooting nets. I stepped outside, cupped my hands to my mouth and bellowed out: ‘five minutes to launch’ .

Weather has been on our side this week. Helicopter took off and was followed by small boats dropping down to the water. The big yellow buoy was lifted by the crane and swung over the side, its quick-release was pulled. There was a splash and the hurricane attached the towing bridle for a final dash across the water to reach Dirk Diederik’s trawl cable. The trawl doors had just disappeared beneath the water.

The view from my bridge windows this morning was one of action. I admit to holding my breath as the small Greenpeace boat, with its cumbersome tow, manoeuvred about the nets of the trawler. But success… the buoy was hooked onto the trawl cable and her tow released. I watched it bobbing on the surface of the water, then being dragged creating a wave of white water in the path of the trawler before being pulled beneath the surface. We all watched. The captain of the trawler had his binoculars trained on the trawl, mine were too. The fishermen, one with a video camera were all on the stern of the Dirk Diederik. Our inflatables and helicopter were keeping well clear of the area for fear of the buoy popping to the surface like a champagne cork.

Finally the trawler slowed and started hauling in its net. The big yellow buoy rose to the surface intact and the trawl doors came up with it. The enormous net followed. We had successfully stopped the Dirk Diederik from fishing. With no effort the buoy was lifted onboard the fishing boat, complete with messaging: ‘STOP THE PLUNDER’.

A press release went out talking of action taken to stop the plunder of West African waters: each floating factory processes 250,000 kilo of fish per day.

European ministers meet next week to discuss the reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and its impact on fishing in foreign waters. Meanwhile Dirk Diederik’s nets have gone back in to scoop up the remaining fish.

Day broke unlike any I’ve experienced off Mauritania. The veil of dust that has been with us for a month was shaken off in the night and the sky blushed a crimson red in its nakedness. We closed in on a chaotic cloud of gannets and seagulls to find the Lithuanian registered Margaris hauling nets. There came no response over the radio when I called and no reaction from the fishing boat’s deck as paint rollers dipped into the colour yellow. It was a magnificent start to the day.

The Franziska, registered in Peru, was next but not before a change in paint as demanded by the stone colour of her hull. Still, the ‘N’ of ‘PLUNDER!’ came out more yellow then green but the fish bones were clear. It took just twenty minutes from launch to recovery. I was starting to feel like a fox in the chicken coop.

I had one radar on six-mile range filled with targets, their yellow vectors extending like matchsticks. I flicked between true and relative to calculate best course for interception. For the Dutch Dirk Diederik we launched the helicopter to capture the event from the air. Our approach with boats, helicopter and ship brought images of Thunderbirds to mind.

The Willem van der Zwan, named after the Dutch owner of one of PFA companies, is shaped like an over-developed sports car. I felt the Arctic Sunrise needed to be included in this activity and so drew up close to get in the picture. With radar on a half-mile range I matched course and speed whilst keeping safe distance. It was midday and the press release went out that Greenpeace had painted four ships off Mauritania.

The enormous trawlers were churning up and down all around us sucking up the fish from Africa. Johanna Maria put up a little protest: her sailors ran about the decks with fire hoses. They had tremendous pressure and made painting difficult. The boats left her with only a ‘PLUND’ and two mauled yellow fishbones on blue.

The German, Helen Mary, the most subsidised boat in the PFA fleet, was next. She got ‘PLUNDER’ twice and two fish bones to go on her racing stripes.

We brought the frenetic day’s painting activities to close with the Maartje Theadora. By this time, we’d run out of yellow and she was painted in red. Activists managed to recover some of the magnets off her hull left there from last week’s direct action.

Today we painted seven of the world’s largest fishing factories – all owned by the European PFA and all over-fishing in Africa. We painted them to draw attention to a problem that needs to be addressed before it is too late.

I should have had the boats brought on board for the night, but I wanted the ship to be in a state of readiness at first light. We made them fast with extra lashings and the crew went to bed. I did not sleep, the wind freshened and Arctic Sunrise became restless. The boats, hanging off the sides, were on my mind. I may as well have stood the graveyard watch for all the sleep I had. At 2am we put out more lashings and we nursed the ship through the dark waves until morning came.

As the sun rose, Helen Mary hauled her nets. This was our moment to act and everyone was ready, the boats were ready. We lowered one boat and then the next but that was all we did. The next did not start. I listened to the repeated peep of electronic ignition and the starter motor whirring round and around. ‘Like a Canadian car on the first of February’ is what Po Paul said. The fishing nets were coming in. The Parker was poorly. We missed our moment. Boats were brought back to the railings and crew went for breakfast.

We switched targets. For the news to be received/published/heard in a way that will have impact has deadlines. Sadly, the impact of these monsters fishing is very real and does not pander to deadlines – it is happening round the clock.

Maartje Theadora became ‘it’ again. She was close by and hauling her nets. We went in with a life raft and two swimmers. The boat stood off as the fish were pumped on board and then at the end of the pumping operation activists attached the life raft to the suction pipe. The swimmers climbed inside. It was mighty brave of the two girls in amongst the net and cables.

This small act was likely an irritation for the Maartje Theadora. It prevented the monster from immediately racing off to set her nets. But not for long. The fishermen cut their hose and lifted the life raft up the transom stern. The girls were thrown into the sea and flushed away in the propeller wash as the fish factory’s engines thrust ahead. The boat rushed off with out much ado and then slowed within sight to set its nets once again.

We keep taking action out at sea, raising the issue again and again about over fishing. The baton is picked up on shore where there are campaigners, lobbyists and lawyers calling on the EU to seize a once-in-a-decade opportunity to reform the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Where will it end?

Eight crew arrive as the sun battles dust clouds to bring a new day. It is early enough to see the sand artists brushing their teeth and the jewellers stretching themselves towards the yellow sky. Goats and cows turn their heads as we walk the battlements where enormous calibre guns expose their rusting skeletal mechanisms. We step over cats alive and cats dead. One inbred dog smiles as we pass and hawks by the hundred lift off the cliffs where Gregory Peck starred in ‘The Guns of Navarone’.

The buildings, now protected by UNESCO, rise from pasts Portuguese, Dutch and French. Doors open to the model slave house and we are ushered into cells that separated young from old, women from men and the children from everyone. How dark is this history we come from? There is a passageway, darker still. It leads to the sea, to where a wooden jetty once loaded the waiting slave ship. Thousands of men, women and children walked through this dark canal in chains to reach America (if they were lucky).

I wonder at the dark ages of our history. Will there come a point in the future where we will look back on what is now the present, with horror? Will we wonder at how we stood aside and let greed steal the forests, the ore and the fish?

I was enjoying the quiet of the day. Engineers going about routine Saturday morning safety chores and sailors washing down the decks for arrival into port. Things were ticking along nicely and the fact there was no internet reception added to the tranquility – there was just the sunlight and the birds and the swoosh of water running by the hull.

The internet returned in the afternoon, it was ushered in by a pair of swallows. They flew down the alleyway and through my open cabin door to find a perch on the bookshelf above my desk. I flipped open my laptop and facebook was first to spring to life. There was a picture of an adventure race at the top of the screen with many comments below, tributes to my brother-in-law, George. I felt my heart chill, they all seemed to begin with RIP George. It was confusing, I read one after the other until my computer went ping. New mail had just arrived, a message from Dad. He had terrible news.

Penny and George left home at 0430 in the morning to setup an adventure race. They were travelling up the double highway and had just passed Mooi River when a drunk driver flew across the barriers, coming from the opposite direction. Georgeous George was killed instantly, my sister Penny miraculously walked away from the wreckage, a widow with cuts and bruises.

George, my sister Penny’s husband and father to Liam and Axl, was my star in the sky – the only sane man in the world. He could make a stranger feel at home and if the tables were turned he mucked in and got things done, albeit with a bush-like finesse. His lawn had weeds, the swimming pool green and the gutters all sagged and dripped from the roof of his house. George was out, perhaps running on top of a mountain with nothing but a compass and a sleeping bag, or paddling white waters of the Umsinduzi River.

George did not bow to corporate conditioning – he followed his heart and no other religion. He wrote about it too – in a twisted, macabre hand that inspired me. His life was a terrestrial adventure in which his body twisted with the earth and her elements.

Thank you George for sending me the birds on the day of your flight from here. I did not sleep much that night for the intensity of my grief. When my moans quavered the little birds would chirrup in the dark beside my bunk. They reminded me there is more to life then meets the eye and I would cry again – but tears of thankfulness. Fair winds my dear brother.

The German, Maartje Theadora, was our ‘target’. There was no singling it out from the others, they were all ‘Pelagic Factory-trawler Association’ vessels funded by EU tax payers’ money. European taxpayers have contributed to the construction and modernisation of these boats and their fishing gear. The EU has also paid €142 million to secure fishing rights for PFA vessels in Mauritanian and Moroccan waters.

With EU support the PFA scored profits for the period 2007-2009 of €54 million. The Ocean Inquirer states that without EU subsidies those profits would shrink to €7 million at best.

Today’s action was colourful and in good weather. The boats went up to the side of the 140 metre long trawler and attached banners to its hull using magnets: seven large euro notes and a message in the middle reading ‘STOP EU SUBSIDISED PLUNDER’.