The Great Whale Battle

On a sunday in late April 1975, over 20,000 people gather at Jericho Beach in the port of Vancouver in British Columbia to celebrate the departure of an 87-foot halibut boat called the Phyllis Cormack.

The reason for so much attention is that she is embarking upon the fifth official voyage of the Greenpeace Foundation, an organization that, since 1971, has been sending expeditions into Pacific waters on missions of peace and ecology. The purpose of the present voyage had been stated on thousands of posters the foundation had distributed throughout Canada and the United States. These advertisements depicted a diving sperm whale and, in a black bandit's mask, a seaman standing behind a loaded harpoon gun. Beneath the two combatants was the announcement that Greenpeace V intended to put itself between the whales and the hunters' harpoons, thereby both impeding and protesting the killing of the earth's largest creatures. As the speakers this Sunday at Jericho admit, that is a drastic and somewhat melodramatic gesture, but it seems the only method left that might bring about the broad public support necessary to force the International Whaling Commission to declare a ten-year moratorium on the hunting of whales. If a confrontation can be recorded on film and the brutal methods of modern whalers shown to enough people, then perhaps the whaling industry will be forced to defend itself against moral as well as commercial arguments.

"Either way, the whaling industry will be embarrassed if they meet us," explains Bob Hunter, one of the founders and president of the Greenpeace Foundation and chief strategist for the present enterprise. "They're going to have to show what hunting whales is like today or run away whenever they see us. Retreat, however, is unlikely before a strictly spiritual presence."

Hunter was a member of the first Greenpeace voyage, an attempt to sail into the waters around the Aleutian island Amchitka in order to stop underground atomic tests by the U. S. in that region. It was an ill-starred venture from the first, with squabbling and rough seas. It ended when, thinking they had obtained permission from U. S. Immigration officials to go ashore while in a small Alaskan port, they found they had been misled. Subsequently, members of the U. S. Coast Guard boarded the Cormack and announced that should the expedition continue toward the testing site, the boat would be impounded and the captain heavily fined.

The Cormack was replaced by Greenpeace Too (sic), the Edgewater Fortune, a converted mine sweeper dispatched by the foundation from Vancouver when it heard that the first boat might be impounded. But the Edgewater Fortune arrived too late to enter the testing area.

The third and fourth Greenpeace expeditions were more successful. In 1972, the Vega, a sailing vessel, was dispatched to prevent, again through a passive presence, the French from conducting atmospheric tests near the Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific. This time, having committed no breach of international law, the Greenpeace boat's captain, David McTaggart, claimed the right of freedom of the seas when he was ordered to remove the Vega from the testing area. The French, being in no mood to debate international law in the middle of their scientific rituals, brought the case to a quick close by having a destroyer ram the Vega and tow it from the area.

The following year, the French and the Vega met again in the same waters and for the same reason. This time, McTaggart came prepared with evasive maneuvers should the French again base their legal argument on their ramming technique. He was not prepared, however, for an unabashed piratical seizure, for the boarding of his ship by French commandos and for an indiscriminate attack on his crew and equipment. While defending his vessel, McTaggart received a blow that may yet cost him the use of his left eye. Due to the ingenuity of a female member of the crew, who hid in her vagina the film on which this moment in French naval history was recorded, French antiwar groups protested loudly, and in the trials that followed in Paris, the courts decided in favor of the foundation in the matter of the 1972 collision, and Greenpeace lawyers are still pressing for a court judgment against the exuberant French commandos.

And now, leaning against a bulkhead of the Cormack, Hunter explains the philosophy of the new expedition: "Besides the masculine principle of active interference, there should be a feminine principle also--a passive imprecation."

The crew questions him respectfully for details and he goes on to explain that he intends to mount the back of a slain whale and sit, cross-legged, in an attitude of prayer in order to impress upon the whalers that they are blaspheming life itself by turning its most magnificent creature into a commercial item.

The crew smiles and appreciates the image, but a few inquire about practical tactics. Hunter's expression loses its visionary blankness and takes on a soft look of amusement while he ponders the question.

"Ah, it would be nice," he says finally, "if I could sit naked on the whale, radiant in a rainbow, with dolphins rising up from the water singing hosannas. However, I'll be in a wet suit, with two of you guys standing by in a boat to pull my ass off in case the sharks or the whalers get too excited by my beatific presence."

This mixture of the realistic and the visionary has, from the start, infused the Greenpeace V project. When the campaign to protect the whale began, support expectedly came in from the usual professional sources of ecological concern. However, the farewell gathering in Jericho proves that the fate of the whale has also become a symbol to the workaday Canadian fishing communities.

As Patrick Moore, a young man with a Ph.D. in environmental studies and a member of the Greenpeace expedition, puts it, the whale has become a "common denominator of threatened existence, a symbol capable of inspiring a disinterested allegiance to all forms of life."

"When we were taking on atomic tests," Moore reflects, "a lot of people saw it as something political rather than ecological. But the whale seems to get a deep-level response, whether I'm talking to school kids or Rotarians. It sort of frightens everyone that something so large, so awesome could be wiped out and never be seen again. You don't even have to convince them with balance-of-nature arguments. It's enough that something beautiful is being turned into fertilizer and industrial lubricants."

When Moore talks of the Greenpeace program, his tone is that of someone who has learned that moral difficulties abound in even the most obviously righteous enterprises.

"You know," he says one day, as the Cormack moves through fiordlike inlets of Vancouver Island, past mountains that have been scarred by lumber and mining enterprises, "it was hard to understand so much hostile input when one was just trying to keep beauty like this all together. But I guess I didn't appreciate the problems of lumbermen and mine owners. I didn't know how to relate to them without sounding morally superior. I mean, I used to give speeches and I'd try to turn them on with lines like 'A flower is your brother.' Then one day someone threw back at me 'Does that mean a weed's our enemy?' and I started to realize it was time to add a little logic to the vision."

Now, however, the vision has come to seem self-evident to the crew of the Cormack as it sails out of the harbor of Vancouver and begins its mission to track down the hunters of whales. The main task, of course, is first to find a whaling fleet, not an easy assignment, since the Cormack is not equipped with sophisticated tracking devices and the area to be covered is some 3000 square miles of ocean. Besides making radio contact and establishing from the frequency a rough estimate of the location of the whaling ships, there is little Greenpeace V can expect from its ship's technical devices. The radio will give them a vague direction, but after that it will be left to the chance of a visual sighting, which at sea means that the Cormack and the whalers will have to come within 15 miles of each other on a clear day and in waters calm enough to keep a long, unbroken horizon.

At the early strategy meetings, various proposals were made as to how the probability of an encounter might be increased. John Cormack, the 63-year-old captain of the boat that bears his wife's name, listens with the bemused wonder of a practical sailor as Hunter leads the discussion of plans and strategies that include everything from demanding that the Canadian government supply reconnaissance planes to consultation of the I Ching. In his years of association with the Greenpeace movement, Cormack had learned how to suffer such suggestions with patience and good humor, waiting until the proper moment to temper their stratagems with crude nautical facts. He finally summons them abruptly out of the realm of mystical portents with a thump on the galley table and a gruff reminder that a course must be set in the prosaic terms of latitude and longitude before he will commit himself and his boat to following it.

"You don't trust the I Ching?" Hunter asks, aghast, and he and other members of the crew chide Captain John about his old-fashioned navigational methods.

"I don't care buggerall about what that book says or what some guru in Vancouver told you," Cormack grumps. Then he laughs with the rest of them. However, along with the laughter there is a wary expression on his face, a look of uncertainty as to how serious his crew is about these peculiar beliefs and rituals. After some more good-natured banter, he gives in to their demand that he toss the I Ching disks to see if the voyage's life-force direction coincides with the course he recommends. Hunter fiercely studies the coins, and then begins reading the judgment: " 'Thunder stirs the water of the lake, which follows in shimmering waves. This symbolizes the girl who follows the man of her choice.' "

"I wanted to know where to find whales and whalers," Cormack moans, shaking his head sadly, "and you come up with a lovesick girl."

"It's a parable, John," Hunter says, and continues reading: " 'But every relationship between individuals bears within it the danger that wrong turns may be taken--'"

"Well, we're going to sure take a queer turn if we follow this advice," Cormack interrupts.

"The I Ching is a map for the spirit," Hunter answers gravely, but his face adds a qualifying smile to this heavy definition. When he finishes reading, he listens to the members of the crew interpret the passage. Most are flattering and optimistic, but Walrus Oakenbough, who serves as the cook on the voyage, takes the view that the I Ching has ferreted out a lack of unity and resolve in their venture and is warning them not to think that they can drift on good intention to success.

•

Only two countries, Russia and Japan, are at present seriously involved in commercial whaling. However, their influence is such that they have managed to keep the International Whaling Commission from putting any meaningful restrictions on the number of whales that can be killed annually. Certain species, such as the giant blue whale, have been so depleted that they are termed commercially extinct and are no longer hunted, simply because it would be unprofitable to do so. Such species enjoy international protection. However, the sei, fin, minke and sperm are still being regularly turned into pet food, oil, bone and fertilizer at the rate of at least 35,000 a year, which is the quota established by the I.W.C. Moreover, since the enforcement of this limit is left to the countries that do the whaling--there is a Japanese observer on a Russian boat, a Russian on a Japanese--one can imagine that a certain laxity exists in the count and measurement of kills.

"A moratorium is the only way," Moore says. "Otherwise, they'll just play a game with statistics until another and then another species dies off. And the moratorium will have to include everyone. Some of us thought the Eskimos should be exempt, since they kill only a few whales and the uses they put them to are heavy into their cultural tradition. But the Japanese can say the same thing and can argue that their culture has more people in it and therefore needs a greater number of whales. No, the ban has to be total, but it's not easy to take anything away from the Eskimos."

The Eskimos have not yet responded to the Greenpeace interdiction. However, Japanese and Russian spokesmen for the whaling industries, on hearing about the purpose and philosophy of Greenpeace V, have dismissed the undertaking as the act of a group of fanatics. Nevertheless, the issue is sensitive enough for the Japanese government to have ordered its whaling fleets to avoid any incident should they encounter the Phyllis Cormack, even if such avoidance should mean abandoning the pursuit of a vulnerable herd or the harvesting of earlier kills.

"Which leaves the Russians, and they're mean sons of bitches. They see Hunter praying naked on one of their goddamn whales and they're liable to think he fits right into their quota, too."

This blunt estimation of the Russian character is spoken by George Korotva as he lies stretched out, sunning himself in one of the rubber Zodiac boats lashed to the rear deck of the Cormack. These boats, shaped like a horseshoe and powered by outboard motors, are capable of speeds that can pass a moving whale pod and literally run circles around a catcher boat traveling at full steam. Korotva, a professional fisherman, is an expert at handling these craft. Because of their lightness, the boats zip and bound across the water like a stone scaled across a pond, and in choppy seas it is a major feat just to keep from being abruptly ejected between waves.

Besides instructing other members of the crew in the use of the Zodiac, Korotva has another important function aboard the Cormack: Since he speaks Russian, he spends hours each day listening to the ship's radio, translating any communications that are picked up between Soviet ships and deciding whether they come from inshore trawlers or whaling boats. If they come from the latter, he and Captain Jack then determine from the strength and frequency of the transmission the approximate position of the signaling ship. And, of course, if a confrontation occurs, it will be up to Korotva to deliver the Greenpeace message on the brotherhood of life to the Russian whalers in a way that won't affront their proletarian principles.

"That is going to be some crazy moment," he says, chuckling and slapping the sides of his Zodiac. "They won't know what the hell to do when I tell them that the whales are their brothers. No Russian is going to be overjoyed about being called the cousin of a humpback or a sperm."

Korotva, in his early 30s, is large, heavy-shouldered and looks and sounds like the strong, easygoing, simple Swede who is always among the stock characters of shipboard dramas. But Korotva is neither simple nor Swedish. He is Czechoslovakian, a former student of psychology at the University of Prague and an escapee from a labor camp in Siberia to which he'd been shipped for his involvement in some student protests in the early Sixties. He therefore understandably feels little affection for Russians.

"These are wonderful bunch of people," he says, looking at the crew scattered about the boat, some singing folk songs, others scanning the horizon for whales and their pursuers. "But they're crazy sons of bitches. They don't know how mean Russians can be when they think they are being made fools of. I wouldn't be surprised if they just go ahead and blow up this damn fishing boat."

Besides the confrontations with whaling flotillas, Greenpeace V intends to carry out various experiments involving musical communications with whales, for the purpose of which the Cormack has on board hydrophones, amplifiers, a synthesizer and a 6000-watt generator to keep all this electronic gadgetry operating. Two musicians, Will Jackson and Mel Gregory, are in charge of finding the tones, melodies and harmonies that will cause appreciative responses from the whales. Thus, during the weeks that the Cormack searches the waters of the North Pacific, the tedium of shipboard life is relieved by tonal tests that include everything from the most sophisticated electronic beeps and gurgles of the synthesizer to the simple sounds of a one-octave flute. Gregory, a short, bearded, pixyish guitarist and composer, is certain that some sort of intelligible counterpoint can be established between whale and man and has spent hundreds of hours listening to recordings of the humpback whale's long, dolorous songs that seem to echo and reverberate in distinguishable patterns.

The intelligence, musical and otherwise, of the order Cetacea, a designation that includes all wholly aquatic mammals, has long been the subject of various scientific studies. Most of these attempts to gauge the order's cognitive abilities have taken place in conditions of captivity and have proved only that certain species are docile to the extent that they can recognize and imitate a limited number of human sounds and remember patterns of prescribed behavior that allow them to be turned into aquatic performers. And it has been only the smaller (continued on page 192)Great Whale Battle(continued from page 102) species, such as the dolphin, porpoise and orca ("killer whale"), that have been investigated. Cetologists, while encouraged by such experiments, feel that the true test of the whale's intellect can be made only in its natural surroundings and must involve sufficient numbers so that the modes of communal behavior can be observed.

"Teaching a killer whale to jump through a hoop," says Moore sourly, "only shows the limits of the teacher's imagination. We have to let the whales teach us, which means listening, watching and trying to understand what sort of life they have among one another."

The study of a pod of whales in the open sea is, of course, a difficult undertaking. Nevertheless, even the casual observations of whalers over the years have led to certain general conclusions about the whale's ability to transmit intelligence among members of its group and to show forms of complex social behavior, ranging from play to elaborate patterns of defense against attack. The sperm whale, whose brain is the largest of any animal's on earth, is especially noted for all sorts of apparent intelligent actions, some of which seemed quite malevolent to those who hunted it in the last century. Readers of Moby Dick know how palpable Melville felt the emanations of intelligence from this particular whale to be yet how deep a mystery its workings were to man:

Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it.

Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite of hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every ... being's face ... how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I put that brow before you. Read it if you can.

The whale's intelligence has become a major element in the promulgation of the Greenpeace cause. In press releases and letters, whether sent to the heads of government or to the principals of grade schools, there is always great emphasis placed on the intelligence of the endangered whales, and therefore on their closeness to the human species. So much, in fact, is made of the whale's cerebral powers that, according to the delicate ethics of the ecological movement, it has been felt by some that the campaign has been tainted with elitism.

"We've had to remind people and ourselves that it isn't all right to kill stupid animals," Rod Marining says, accompanying this remark with a soft burst of laughter and a perplexed expression. Besides being Walrus' helper in the galley, Marining is the official Greenpeace press secretary and publicist, and the mixture of bafflement and melancholy humor in his manner is most likely the result of his having sent forth thousands of pleas, proposals and ultimatums into the world only to see them disappear into silence. Of course, many of the communiqués he's dispatched on behalf of Greenpeace tend to baffle the reader into reticence. Here, for example, are two press releases sent on successive days to the wire services of the world from the Phyllis Cormack, somewhere at sea:

The Greenpeace Foundation, in its effort to protect the whale from the inhumanity of commercial exploitation and slaughter, demands that the governments of the United States and Canada protect its expedition in the event that hostile action is taken against it.

The Greenpeace Foundation categorically rejects and disassociates itself from the statement of the previous day. We will not be turned into a political or military tool.

Such radical shifts and re-evaluations of policy might be expected from the former head of the Northern Lunatic Fringe of the Yippie Party, the Canadian branch of that antic and social movement that enlivened the politics of the Sixties. Marining, however, asserts that he has become much more serious and subdued than he was in the days of the N.L.F., and though he still wears his hair tied in a ponytail and clothes that are a patchwork of Yippie fashions, he does seem, like many of the Greenpeace crew, to have been worn down by past crusades, not to the point of indifference but to that state of reasonable dedication in which one no longer needs flamboyant uniforms of rebellion.

Lying on deck curled in a sleeping bag, Marining sees Walrus begin to collect the vegetables for the evening meal from the storage bins about the boat. He twists himself slowly out of his covering and, dragging the bag behind him, sets off toward the galley. However, he pauses for a moment to scrutinize an albatross that has been a lonely follower of the Cormack for several days. The bird had been sitting quietly on the water, but as the boat passes by, it spreads its wings and begins the long, awkward, splatting run it needs on a windless day to become airborne. Looking like a nervous clergyman running through puddles in galoshes, it is hardly a beautiful study in animal grace. Nevertheless, Marining's long, doleful profile shapes itself into pleasurable wonder as he watches the awkward beginning resolve into graceful flight. That night he will send out several dispatches praising the animal world and excoriating human beings who obliterate pheasants or pose for pictures standing proudly alongside a suffocated fish.

•

It does not occur to one, until after spending a good amount of time at sea, that the tradition of keeping a ship's log is based on something deeper than the need for records. The log, with its careful entries of time and location, its carrying forth in narrative fashion the day-to-day life aboard ship, provides a linear structure to the time at sea, a sense of chronological purpose and progression that man generally feels is the proper way to keep his experience tidy. However, the usual ways of measuring and ordering the past are difficult to impose on the long, repetitious rhythms of a sea voyage, especially one without specific destination. The sameness of the daily shipboard rituals; the single, encircling horizon that makes all points of view alike; the swells and sounds of the ocean that mock the keeping of calendars--all work against the serialized existence that obtains on land, and despite logs and journals, events blend together and become a mosaic of simultaneous scenes in the mind.

During the first weeks of the voyage, there are frequent changes in the crew as some leave from boredom, others because they've been found by Hunter wanting in either the skills or the attitudes necessary for the purposes of the voyage. But there are always recruits waiting to join whenever the Phyllis Cormack enters a port. Gary Zimmerman is one. An oceanographer, he comes on board with diving equipment, underwater cameras and a large shark cage he has built himself and from which he hopes to photograph various members of the suborder Squali as they encircle and close in on a dead or wounded whale. It will also be his job, should Hunter's plan to sit in spiritual protest on the back of a whale come to pass, to escort him to the sanctuary of the underwater cage if the sharks increase in number and frenzy to the point where both the whale and its apostle become objects of a furious communal appetite.

When Zimmerman talks of blues, hammerheads, makos, grays, whites, tigers and wobbegongs, it is in the matter-of-fact rhetoric of one who has made these monsters part of the practical experience of his profession. His boyish, handsome features remain set in a look of studious respect as he imparts to the crew endless information on the mannerisms and habits of that order of animal least likely to cause any ecological concern for its safety and preservation.

As the days pass, Zimmerman takes his place in the frieze of shipboard life, as do the three photographers who, in the making of a documentary of the Greenpeace voyage, began by being everywhere at once about the ship, filming all that moved or spoke, but who now are part of the general static attitudes the crew members become as they wait and watch for some sign of good omen, some activating signal that they are not adrift in quiet illusions about their ability to effect a fateful moment in such a vast and empty area of the ocean.

And then, finally, it happens. The tableau of daily routine splinters into figures of action. Whales are sighted. A pod of a half dozen grays is seen heaving gracefully through the water a mile or so off the starboard bow. Everyone scurries into a position to observe the rise and fall of the whales' huge slate-colored backs as Cormack carefully angles the boat in order to close the distance between it and the moving pod. Carlie Trueman, the one woman aboard the Cormack, a professional diver whose affection for the whale is neither sentimental nor militant, and who, in fact, disagrees with the official Greenpeace position that all whaling need be proscribed for a ten-year period, climbs to the highest point on the mast to look and holler with delight as the grays churn the water and spout their breath into a vapor that creates, as it often does in an early-morning light, the arc of a rainbow over them. Carlie cries out in wonder and all the instruments aboard ship, from flute to synthesizer, offer their particular tribute.

The whales, however, are not indiscriminate music lovers. The more raucous tone clusters of the synthesizer and the rock song sent out through the underwater speakers do not inspire an enthusiastic response from the grays, which render their judgment by submerging and reappearing after many minutes at a location far from the source of the concert. "They are classicists," Korotva says, and, sure enough, excerpts from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony elicit a happy response; the whales draw nearer and their movements calm into an appreciative glide almost in tempo with the music. Further experiments show that the gray whales' taste runs to a clear melodic line, with or without complicated harmonic embellishment. Beethoven or a simple ballad sung, strummed or fluted will keep their interest; the percussive and fragmented modern song will always send them into a critical brood deep beneath the surface.

Once the whales are used to the sounds and sight of the Cormack, they permit themselves to be followed and observed, and occasionally they raise their large, white-spotted heads from the water, as if to return the curiosity and interest of their new acquaintances. The Zodiacs are sent out for closer contact and cautiously circle nearer and nearer the pod, practicing the maneuvers they will execute when there is a third party involved in the meeting, pretending for now that the Phyllis Cormack is a whaling attack boat and that they must keep between it and the grays so that any harpoon sent out must pass over at least one of the small rubber boats in order to strike and explode in its victim. The closer the Zodiacs can stay to the whales, the less margin for error there will be for the Russian gunner, a condition that will increase the danger to the Zodiac occupants but will also, it is hoped, increase the reluctance of the whaling captain to give an order to fire.

However, after an hour or so, the joy of sharing the sea with such marvelous creatures begins to take precedence over the grim practice of tactics. A desire to frolic asserts itself, a wish to sport and play with these great creatures, to create a mutual feeling of trust and unity. Those on the Cormack's deck watch, a little apprehensively, as a greater and greater intimacy is established between the whales and the Zodiac crews, until finally the boat driven by Hunter pulls within touching distance of a gray. Paul Watson, one of the more physically adventurous members of the crew, a stocky, bearded young man who, according to Hunter, has promised to put his body on the line for the Greenpeace cause, begins to try to climb aboard its back. He slips once, and then again. When he slides off for the third time, the whale's tail, a magnificent fanlike triangle of flukes, rises from the water and then strikes the surface with an admonishing splash that sends the Zodiac careening backward amid spray and foam. The intimacy has gone too far and a maidenly slap has signified an end to such improper advances. For a while longer, the pod is followed, but since they are gray whales, internationally protected, migrating north for the summer feeding, they will lead to no meeting with Russian whale fleets. Cormack signals that it is time to get back on course, the Zodiacs return and, pleasurably exhausted by the experience, the crew watches as the whales, still spouting their rainbow, roll on out of sight.

At night, around the galley, there are long, awed discussions and speculation about cetaceans. The less experienced ask excited questions, the more knowledgeable tell stories of sperms, humpbacks, bowheads and blues. The differences between the Mysticeti, or baleen whales, and the Odontoceti, toothed whales, are discussed: how the former strain plankton through the baleen slats in their mouths, an almost continuous process of placid feeding that keeps them always near the surface of the water; how a toothed whale, like the sperm, will dive to a depth of 600 or 700 meters in order to feed on its favorite dish, the giant sea squid.

Since it will most likely be the sperm whale that will be involved in a confrontation with whalers, there are as many stories told about it on the Cormack as Ishmael heard in those "spouting" and "gamming" sessions that took place during the Pequod's voyage--how there was, indeed, a Moby Dick, actually called Mocha Dick by 19th Century whalemen, who not only wrought havoc on the chase boats that pursued it but also rammed and caused the sinking of several mother ships as well; how when a sperm whale is wounded, others in the area, even if miles away, will become immediately sensitive to its agony and go to assist it; and how herds of this species once could be seen that numbered in the thousands, so that the water for as far as the eye scanned became one vast scape of moving whales.

•

It is now some seven weeks since the Phyllis Cormack left Vancouver, but the crew's mood is one of high-spirited anticipation. Sometimes the moments of elation take a mysteriously whimsical turn, as when Gregory, during his turn at the ship's wheel, begins following the moon, finding it a more beautiful indicator of direction than the needle heading on the ship's compass. Roaring invectives but laughing in spite of himself, Captain John drags Gregory by the beard from behind the wheel when he discovers the musician's aesthetic navigation has taken them almost five degrees off course.

However, the energies are put to hard practical uses also. A record of the Russian whaling fleet's daily position for the past two years when it was in this area of the Pacific is the one piece of practical intelligence on which Hunter and Cormack pin their hopes to reduce the odds against an encounter. How Greenpeace obtained this record is a secret, but it does add a feeling of reality to their quest, and long sessions are spent studying and transferring its information to charts and maps and then collating these markings with the Russian positions given by the last radio contacts. Everyone with nautical experience on board then contributes an opinion on the heading most likely to lead to a sighting of the whaling fleet. These are still guesses, of course, but they are looked on as becoming more and more educated with each daily addition of information.

"In a way, I wish it didn't have to be the Russians," says Moore. "You know, a lot of people are going to see us as defenders of the free world against communism."

"But if it were Japanese," Marining adds, "then we'd have the racial problem." He nods at a cartoon of the Greenpeace members guarding a submerged whale from a Japanese boat that sports an evil-looking, slant-eyed, jaundiced figure behind a harpoon gun and reminds the others how many objections from groups normally sympathetic to Greenpeace have been received about this caricature.

"If only Rhodesia were a whaling nation," Hunter sighs, "then it could all be good guys and bad guys."

Moore is the first to witness the confirmation of their faith: nine Russian catcher boats and a huge factory ship named the Vostok. It is 9:30 in the morning and the whaling vessels have appeared as though a rendezvous with the Cormack had been prearranged. The crew takes to the deck and stares at the outlines of the merchant ships, impressed and a little subdued by their size and number. But then jubilance grows over the fact that their mission has achieved at least half its purpose; and now if through persuasion or personal blockade they can press the Russian whalers into abandoning their hunt altogether....

"Well, I speak to them," says Korotva, after contacting the Vostok by radio, "and you can forget persuasion. I told them who we are, that we are not decadent bourgeois sentimentalists, that we are believers in the brotherhood of life and all that."

A silence follows as everyone waits for him to form the Russians' answer. Korotva thinks for a moment, shrugs and gives the most practical interpretation of the Vostok's response.

"They said, 'Fuck you!' "

The correctness of this succinct translation is illustrated as the Vostok and her hunting ships begin to move away at a good pace from the Cormack. Captain John, however, who does not relish being snubbed on the high seas, vows not to lose them and sets out in pursuit. For hours, the Russians try to elude him, but somehow, even though the Cormack is a slightly slower vessel, they never succeed, always finding that, no matter how they rush on or double back, an odd black-and-green halibut boat, blaring music and fraternal messages from its speakers, pops up to block their path.

Suddenly, the pattern of flight and pursuit changes. One of the chase boats begins veering toward the Cormack, an action that puzzles and excites the crew. They debate whether this new maneuver is threatening or simply means that the Russians desire a face-to-face parley. Soon, however, they realize that the Russians' interest lies in the water, a large yellow pole and buoy marking its position. It is a dead sperm whale, probably killed the previous day and left while the Russians pursued others of its pod. Now a boat is being sent to pick up the carcass and tow it to the factory ship.

For a moment, the sight of the whale causes stunned disgust and anger aboard the Cormack and there is no thought of using its mutilated back as an altar for preaching the Gospel of ecology. Nor is there any time. The chase boat fastens a towline to the body and moves off in seconds and there is nothing left to do but try to revive the crew's spirits with some tunes from the musicians.

Since harvesting the dead whale has caused the Russians to slow down, the Cormack can now follow the chase boat at close range, remaining alongside at an even pace, so that the crews of each ship can clearly see and acknowledge each other. The Russian sailors look pleasantly befuddled by the appearance of the rainbow warriors and they laugh and wave as Gregory, Jackson and others sing about whales while Korotva shouts about their mission through a megaphone. However, as they near the factory ship, an officer appears on deck, the sailors stiffen and all gregariousness disappears from their manner. The whale is hoisted on a winch onto the Vostok, where the process of its reduction into commercial commodities immediately begins.

"The smell," Moore says sadly. "It's all there in that smell."

And, indeed, the odor emitted from the floating factory makes the Cormack back away, but it soon is again dogging the Russian boats as they move on to conclude the day's business.

That conclusion, which has most likely been transmitted to them by their sonar equipment, is a group of six sperm whales, which they and the Cormack sight at almost the same time. One of the attack boats immediately begins pulling ahead from its sister ships, and this abrupt action means it is time for the crew to seriously obstruct the killing. The Zodiacs are dropped over the side; Hunter and Watson leap into one and a camera team into another. They get off in a few seconds, skimming across the water at an angle that will cross in front of the whaler. While the camera boat hangs back, Hunter's gets directly ahead of the Russian's bow and then uses its superior speed to move off in a straight line toward the whales. It gets as close to the pod as possible, for the whales are now alert to the presence of danger and are moving with erratic, thrashing movements through the water. Each time their direction shifts slightly, the Zodiac shifts with them, and the Russian chase boat, in turn, changes its course, so that the angle of pursuit and protection remains constant.

Then, with a comical breaking of the tension, the engine of Hunter's Zodiac stalls and the rubber boat, directly in the path of the oncoming ship, bobs helplessly up and down as Watson works furiously to restart the engine. Those watching from the Cormack are certain that the Russians will veer off their course at the last moment in order to avoid colliding with the Zodiac.

But Korotva thinks otherwise.

"They'll steam right over them," he says, and launches the last Zodiac with himself in it, an action he'd never intended taking, since, should he suffer an accident and capsize, he would most likely be hauled aboard the trawler and find himself back on Soviet territory, a prospect of special dangers to him.

Meanwhile, the captain of the Soviet ship is proving Korotva right. He stands solidly on the deck and observes his boat continue on a course that will bisect Hunter's Zodiac. An instant before the collision occurs, a small swell from the wake of the bow lifts the Zodiac out of the way of harm, but the miss has been a matter of inches. The Russian captain smiles down at Hunter as they pass each other. Hunter returns this sportive grin with a resigned shrug and a look that absolves the incident of its apparent callousness.

Korotva, however, is offering no absolution to anyone. Picking up Hunter in his Zodiac, he soon overtakes the Russians and is well on to approaching the whale pod when the harpoon gun is fired, sending its missile and the inch-thick steel-centered cable to which it's attached whistling over their heads. The harpoon enters and explodes in a female whale about 100 yards in front of the Zodiac, and the lethal cable comes down no more than ten feet to the right of it. The struck whale jerks, convulses and, after spouting great clotted streams of blood, rolls slowly over and dies. Korotva circles in his Zodiac back from the blood spreading through the water and the attack boat slows down almost to a stop, as though drained of its playful mood by the whale's death.

Then there is a sight that shames all that has gone before it. The male sperm of the pod, some 40 feet in length, breaches the water, lifting its entire body into the air as it twists to face the vessel that has killed its companion. It seems as if it might poise forever between water and sky, but then it re-enters its element with a sound and a turbulence that make one think the entire ocean is being cleaved. Its head raised in haughty, ferocious anger, it rushes toward its enemy, and during this charge, it seems that such mightiness of purpose and size must be capable of venting just retribution on the offending ship. But the steel hull of the ship survives its blow and a second harpoon, fired at point-blank range, ends its life.

•

That evening, the Greenpeace crew is too dazed by what it has witnessed to think it has accomplished anything at all. Only gradually does it realize that what was recorded on film might ultimately achieve what could not be done in one dramatic confrontation. And, indeed, Marining's dispatches are no longer received with indifference. Wire services pick them up and television networks request film footage and interviews. When the Phyllis Cormack docks in San Francisco, reporters and cameras are waiting at the pier, and it suddenly seems to the Greenpeace crew that it has reason, after all, to celebrate, for it has delivered on its promise, even if that deliverance has entailed a greater expense of spirit than it has reckoned on. Even Captain John is caught up in the ebullient mood and affixes a feather to the seaman's cap he has worn into stained shapelessness during the voyage. Wives, girlfriends and even a grandmother of one of the crew are at the docks to welcome the rainbow warriors, who for a few days have a well-deserved lively port of call in San Francisco.

But their voyage is not over. They know how short the media's span of attention can be and they want to take advantage of this time in which everything they say will find an outlet. When it sails out of San Francisco, the Greenpeace V expedition is teeming with practical, hardheaded strategies. But one evening a rainbow seems to form its arc solely about the length of the Phyllis Cormack and Hunter, overjoyed at the sight, jumps naked into the water. He is persuaded back on board without much trouble, but this act softens the mood of the voyage, so that it again takes on some of its human contradictions and moments of humor.

The crew of Greenpeace V will not, in fact, meet the Russians again, but they will be greeted in port after port with the respect of fishermen and the affection of old and young believers in the defense of life, and they will be offered dinners, encouragement and even, on one occasion, a bottle of celebratory champagne. They will also, early one evening, encounter a group of orcas once described in a magazine article as being "cannibals" with "teeth the size of bayonets." The Greenpeace crew will bring out their flutes and they and the orcas will keep happy company together until the long summer twilight of the North Pacific ends.