The three-week pursuit of a Uruguayan boat accused of poaching nearly £1-million ($1,5-million) worth of rare fish from the Antarctic ended last night as Australian and South African officials boarded the vessel and arrested its crew.
It ended a 6 880 kilometre, 20-day chase through southern oceans by Australian, South African and British ships.
The Uruguayan-flagged Viarsa I will now start the seven-day trip to Cape Town, flanked by a South African tug, the John Ross, and the Australian customs ship Southern Supporter, a South African environment ministry spokesperson, Phindile Makwakwa, said.
She added that about 40 of the Viarsa 1’s crew had been arrested.
A British fisheries vessel from the Falkland Islands became the fourth boat to join the hunt yesterday, alongside two South African ships and the Southern Supporter.
The Viarsa 1 is believed to be carrying more than 150 tons of Patagonian toothfish, a species popular in Japanese and American restaurants and the main ingredient for the signature dish of the Michelin-starred chef Nobu Matsuhisa.
Also known as Chilean seabass, it is rapidly becoming endangered because of over-fishing. On August 7 the Viarsa 1 was allegedly spotted illegally fishing in Australian waters, just north of the Antarctic circle at Heard and McDonald islands. The remote volcanic islands are snowbound for nine months of the year and receive an average one hour of daylight, but they are home to one of the world’s biggest stocks of Patagonian toothfish.
The chase has taken the Viarsa 1and Southern Supporter, which pursued it from the start, through some of the most perilous waters on earth. Their crews have covered 350 kilometres a day while enduring storm-force 95 kph winds, high seas and temperatures well below zero in the half-light of the Antarctic winter.
The cold has been a particular hazard as the Viarsa tried to shake off its pursuers by skirting the edges of the Antarctic pack ice. Last week the Southern Supporter’s crew had to radio advice to the Viarsa 1 to enable it to escape from thick icefields. On Monday they sighted 75 icebergs in 24 hours.
The build-up of ice on deck has also posed a threat to the stability of the boats. The Viarsa 1’s crew is nonetheless believed to have carried out a paint job at the weekend to reveal the ship’s name and number, which had previously been obscured.
The South African tug John Ross was dispatched secretly last Friday to join the chase.
The perilous seas earlier prevented the pursuing ships from sending out dinghies or helicopters.
Australia is determined to put the ship’s crew on trial. Its fisheries minister, Ian Macdonald, said yesterday: ”We believe we are dealing with a well-organised criminal racket, with up to 20 boats.”
The toothfish’s white, oil-rich flesh fetches up to £22 (about R250) a kilogram in shops. Australia says 22 000 tons of toothfish were poached from the region between 1997 and 2000, although increased surveillance cut the illegal catch to 1 700 tons in 2001.
Australia and South Africa allege that Uruguay is a key player in the illegal fishing trade in the southern oceans, and there are concerns about the level of official involvement in the trade.
The Viarsa 1’s crew, drawn mainly from the Spanish province of Galicia, include one fisheries observer from the Uruguayan government. Officials in Montevideo initially claimed the boat was off the coast of east Africa when it was first spotted at Heard Island.
Navalmar, the Spanish-Uruguayan company which owns the Viarsa 1, was fined in Montevideo after its vessel monitoring system — which would have enabled the Uruguayan government to keep track of its boats — was found to be inadequate.
The chase will provide Australia with ammunition at October’s meeting of the commission for the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources.
Australia, the US and Britain are expected to propose a blacklist of boats used for poaching, a centralised system for pinpointing the locations of vessels and a change to the UN convention on the law of the sea to account for developments in technology. – Guardian Unlimited Â