Vasily Lozovsky flashed up on the screen and was gone. It left me questioning my sanity but a hunch told me he’d switched off his automatic identification signal (AIS). Too far to show on the radar, he was gone without a trace.
We entered Senegalese waters from the north as night was beginning to fall. Ahead of us was a long strip of echoes on the radar screen, all moving at the characteristic trawl speeds of 3.5 knots, none of them transmitting identification signals. It was too dark to identify fishing boats visually and being our first night I felt it safer to hold off till morning. We cut the engine and drifted, forty miles off St Louis.
As we motored down the coast in the morning I counted an average of 15 trawlers every twenty miles – all with their nets down. About half way between St Louis and Dakar we found Vasily Lozovsky – enormous. The ship is not even registered as a fishing vessel – it is registered as a Fish Factory with a gross tonnage of 7,765 tonnes and a length of 107meters.
The weather was not in our favour, the NE trade wind had stepped up to force five. Arctic Sunrise was pitching like a see-saw, her stern bouncing up as the bow came down. It looked like the helicopter might launch itself, the pilot told me that was not ideal. We had to rely on our trusty old inflatables for documentation.
I spoke to the captain of the Vasily Lozovsky. He did not seem to mind us being there, even invited us on board if we left our cameras behind. Everything the Russian ship was doing was legal, the governments had agreed. And then he took off into the weather, full speed on the Arctic Sunrise to keep up, up and down, smashing into waves. Our Senegalese campaigner, Raoul, turned from black to green.
‘He’s about to shoot his nets’ I called to the crew, ‘ready the boats’. We were too late. We managed some filming from the bridge wing of Arctic Sunrise, but by the time the small boats had arrived at the stern of the factory, its nets were down and Vasily Lozovsky had resumed a 3.5 knot trawl speed.
Campaigners went out in the second boat holding protest banners in four languages. I kept a half-mile off and watched the wee boats smashing through the high seas. It takes a long time to shoot a steady picture of a moving inflatable – from a moving inflatable with ocean waves and salty sea spray raining down on you.
