Pirates of the Southern Ocean

Sea Shepherd is a radical protest group made famous — or notorious — by the American cable TV series Whale Wars and by the support of numerous Hollywood celebrities and rock stars. Having previously concentrated on obstructing whale-hunting from Japan to the Faroe Islands, it now focuses on other devastating acts of marine plunder.

In Catching Thunder, written with Sea Shepherd’s active co-operation, the Norwegian journalists Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Sæter tell the story of a 10,000-mile sea chase, lasting 110 days, in which the organisation sought to bring to justice a Spanish vessel illegally trawling for highly endangered toothfish in the Southern Ocean. The result is an uproarious adventure — one predicated on the protestors’ ferocious sense of moral rectitude.

Sea Shepherd is run with Ahab-like persistence by Paul Watson, a Canadian who left Greenpeace in 1977 when he decided they were not hardcore enough. I happened to be in Hobart, Tasmania in December 2009 when their vessel the Ady Gil — a contraption that would have looked more at home on a Batman set — was readying itself for a mission which would end in disaster the following month, when it was rammed by a Japanese whaling ship, the Shonan Maru 2.