The Next Eco-Warriors (22 page)

Every year, 275,000 baby harp seals, most between four and six weeks old, are clubbed to death on the ice floes of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the lonely coast of Labrador. The pups that find care by their mother's side—expecting to lose their molting hairs before taking to the water for the first time—only fall prey to barbarians with spiked clubs. Individuals paid to convert living, feeling beings into leather jackets and omega-3 supplement capsules. The Canadian government legitimizes this hunt by blaming the seals for the disappearance of the codfish—the cod comprising only a miniscule part of the seal's diet—rather than scrutinizing their own mismanagement of the fishing sector.

Every year, the organization I work with, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, heads to Canada, sometimes by helicopter, often by ship, to bring back video evidence to the world that the slaughter of harp seals in Canada is unsustainable and incredibly cruel. The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association paints an accurate picture of the seal hunt, I think, when it draws the parallel between men running around on a field filled with puppies, smashing their heads in with baseball bats. But it doesn't just end with spiking these seals; 60 percent of the seals are skinned alive. In 2008, the Sea Shepherd crew was once again able to bring back footage of seals being skinned alive,
showing the lie of the so-called sustainable hunt. I've seen it firsthand take five or six blows with a spiked club to render a seal pup unconscious. I've seen seals kicked and stomped to death. I've seen the carcass that remains after being skinned alive. After seeing all of this, it's a hunt I'm committed to stopping.

Upon arriving in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Alex and I were put in separate vehicles and driven to our respective interrogations. For the task, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans had enlisted the help of the RCM P Serious Crimes Unit. But as the moment the RCM P had pushed me to the deck at gunpoint after illegally boarding the
Farley Mowat
in the Cabot Strait, my lips were sealed, and that silence continued until I was released on bail.

I was put in a small concrete room, furnished with a table, three chairs, and a plain bookshelf. An hour and a half into the “interview,” the interrogating officer trudged into the room, removed my hat from my head, and yelled in my face, “When I look at you, I see a twelve-year old Palestinian boy with a backpack full of nails walking into a shopping center in Israel. Are you that boy? Are you?” It was enough for me to almost forget for an instant that the only thing that I was being charged with was allegedly being within a half nautical mile (3,038 feet or 926 meters) of a fisherman butchering a defenseless seal pup. I was then told that the only reason I could have to keep quiet was if I was “planning something like the next 9/11,” which was then compared to photographing a seal being skinned alive, the “crime” that Alex and myself stood accused of.

When all else fails, the police draw out the interrogation for as long as they can and believe that if they yell enough terrible things at you, you'll
eventually crack. Typically, if you don't know your rights, it's very effective. You're made to feel that the only way out of the situation is to “cooperate.” The distempered interrogation officer suddenly spit out, “You're like a prisoner of war. You just say your name and your rank. But even prisoners of war say what they're fighting for. They say, ‘I'm fighting for freedom, I'm fighting for America.’ Well, what the hell are you fighting for?”

What the hell was I fighting for? As the door to my jail cell slammed shut behind me at the end of a four-hour long interrogation, I began to reflect on the long road that got me there. Unbeknownst to me, at the same time a court clerk at the Sydney Court House was counting 2,500 two-dollar coins delivered by Sea Shepherd president, Captain Paul Watson, paid for by Farley Mowat. A sure slap in the face to Canadian national pride, two of Canada's most famous conservationists getting the so-called eco-pirates, Alex and myself, out on bail. But for me, there was nothing left to do but think. It wasn't the first time that I'd been to jail in Canada. Almost exactly three years earlier, I'd been arrested for the same thing—allegedly being within half a nautical mile of a barbarian butchering a seal.

_________

IT HAD BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE I was grabbed by the nape of my neck, kicked behind the knee, and thrown to the ice by a Department of Fisheries and Oceans officer desperate to keep footage of the seal hunt from reaching the mass media. With my face firmly pressed against the cold, hard ice, the government thug had twisted one arm behind my back, bent my wrist at ninety degrees, and thrust his knee into my back. I yelled out in pain. Between bursts of crude vulgarity, he whispered into my ear, “I hope that this is hurting you enough, you bastard,” and answered my cries with another twist of my wrist.

Far beyond my line of sight, a crew of six seal butchers walked back to their ship accompanied by officers of the RCMP. Between bashing in the soft skulls of four- to six-week-old seal pups, they had assaulted five of our crew, broken the nose of another and deliberately targeted our property and person. They were free to go. We were not.

As I tuned out the raging officer sitting on top of me, I tried to make sense of it all. Witnessing a seal being killed equaled interrogation, fines, and jail time. While mercilessly slaughtering defenseless seals and assaulting members of the international media community equaled pats on the back and seventy dollars per pelt. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one friend and shipmate hauled away in handcuffs. Just past him, another friend was dragged by her feet into an awaiting coast guard helicopter. With the purest of intentions, we had come to the ice floes of Canada to defend life and were being treated as criminals. Two of the most compassionate people that I knew were about to be put behind bars. Overnight, my world had gone twisted from the inside out.

It was then that I saw her, somewhere between my two arrested friends: a gray and black spotted seal stared at me with her big black eyes. She was thirty-three feet (10.1 meters) away and seemingly oblivious to all of the chaos around her. I thought to myself, because of our intervention, at least she was safe. At least the sealers were being escorted back to their ship, their day of sealing prematurely over. Maybe we couldn't save the world, but we could save the whole world for this one animal. And nothing that the government thugs from Ottawa dished out was comparable to what this innocent creature would experience if there were nobody on the ice to protect her. She was my anchor in reality. At least something still made sense. Defending her was right. No fine, jail term, or physical violence would convince me otherwise.

That was 2005. It was because of the nightmares that followed me after this, of seeing so many defenseless seal pups bludgeoned to death repeat in my mind, that I'd once again made the trip to the ice floes. I had seen a white expanse of ice stained blood red overnight, and you can never really turn away from that. Now being in jail gave me the opportunity to reflect on the twists and turns in my life that brought me to this stage, where I could safely say that I would risk my life to save that of a seal or any animal for that matter. But again, my expedition to the Gulf of St. Lawrence essentially began a decade earlier.

When I was fourteen, I met a dog named Marlboro through the chainlink fencing of an animal shelter housing pen. I had been volunteering at
the shelter for two months, and when his deep brown eyes met mine, there was instantly nothing more important to me than finding this dog a loving home. Marlboro never said a word; neither a bark nor a whimper escaped his lips for the duration of his two-month stay. But he spoke volumes about the way our society views animals—not as feeling, thinking, unique individuals, but as disposable things. For me, I would come to call him my best friend.

For an entire summer, we tried to make the best of the cards that Marlboro had been dealt. Every morning for two months, the concrete floor turned to mud and grass and steel fencing crumbled to a sun that kept us playing around the large oak tree that marked the end of the property for the better part of each day. From that oak tree, the kennel seemed far away.

But one Saturday morning, I came in to find Marlboro's cage empty. He'd been moved. But not to the wide expanse of a country home that I'd dreamed up for him, but to a set of cages down the road referred to as death row. Marlboro had inadvertently bit a volunteer. And because of that, he was condemned to die. The day before he was put down was the first time that Marlboro ever spoke to me. As I said my last goodbyes and turned to walk away, my quiet friend let out a howl and threw the entire weight of his body against the cage door. I ran home crying, feeling helpless. The next day, a Rottweiler named Holly stood in Marlboro's old cell. She found a home one month later.

Marlboro taught me more than has any other individual I've ever come across. He would help set the course of the rest of my life, and because of that, I am forever in his debt. Marlboro taught me that every single animal— human and nonhuman alike—is a completely unique individual. Until the end of time, there will never be anyone else exactly like you or exactly like me or exactly like Marlboro. A rookery of seals is a collection of distinct personalities. For me, that has always been one of the most powerful arguments for animal rights. That we have more in common than not. That's what my best four-legged friend taught me many years ago—that animals are worth fighting for.

The day I ran from the caged rows that separated Marlboro from the rest of the canine population, I made a promise: never again, when put in the position to save an animal's life here and now, would I turn my back. Now I found myself in a Canadian jail cell for the second time, hoping that our intervention had brought us one step closer to ending the seal slaughter. Not just because of the hakapiks that were scheduled to fall over the heads of 275,000 baby harp seals, but also so that Marlboro would understand that not for a single day had he been forgotten.

Not more than a year after meeting Marlboro, I stumbled upon a photograph of a whale being harpooned in Antarctica. I knew right away that there was nowhere in the world that I'd rather be than between that whale and that harpoon, to use my body to directly stop bloodthirsty pirates of profit from mercilessly pursuing marine mammals. There was nothing left for me to do but to sign up to be a part of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. As soon as I turned eighteen, I submitted a crew application. I responded to the question, “Would you be willing to risk personal injury to save the life of a whale?” with a resounding yes. I was by no means suicidal, but I recognized that power cedes nothing without demand. Within a few months, I was off to the Galapagos to help Sea Shepherd patrol for illegal fishing, allowing me the opportunity to keep the promise that I had made years earlier.

It took seventeen days to get from Seattle to Galapagos, but it only took an hour or two to find an illegal longline in the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Longlines are essentially the nuclear warhead of the ocean, as they are incapable of discriminating between species, killing hundreds of diverse creatures in their wake. Our first night on patrol had us pulling up dozens of miles of line and releasing any animals caught. I remember feeling distraught, knowing that very same night that there was enough line set in the oceans to wrap around the world eighty times. But as I pulled up my first hook and saw it gleam under the moonlight, I knew that that specific hook wasn't going to kill another seal, sea turtle, or tuna ever again. And to think that it didn't make a difference was completely wrong—it made all the difference in the world to that one animal. Since that day, I've worked to save as many lives as I can,
lives of individuals as capable of suffering as you and me, but incapable of defending or speaking for themselves.

On April, 13, 2008, the day after I was put at gunpoint, I sat in my jail cell and remembered that nothing that could ever happen to me could compare to what billions of animals are put through every year. I thought about the seal whose eyes I met on the ice three years earlier; I remembered Marlboro's howl, which was as clear as it was a decade ago; and it was as if I could feel the hook that I pulled out of the water in the Galapagos in my hand once more. I remembered that a promise is forever. And then I fell asleep on my concrete bunk.

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Peter Hammarstedt was later convicted for his role as first mate on the Sea Shepherd Seal Defense Campaign 2008. The Provincial Court of Nova Scotia fined him $22,400 for two counts of being within a half nautical mile of the Canadian seal hunt. Peter was unable to attend his own trial due to an outstanding deportation order
.

Today, he works as crew coordinator for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, when not out at sea. As of spring 2010, he was preparing for Sea Shepherd's sixth expedition to the Antarctic to shut down the illegal Japanese whaling fleet and prevent the killing of more than one thousand whales
.