At Sea, South of Ascension Island

Today we continued our way north toward Ascension Island. We are sailing in the southeast trades, the weather is nice and warm, and the breeze makes life on deck very pleasant. As we approached Ascension, and were well within the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone of the island, we noticed a radar contact nearly straight ahead, directly on our course. As we approached closer, we saw that it was a long-line fishing vessel and by the shape of her hull, she was likely Asian in origin. She appeared to be engaged in illegal fishing within Britain’s EEZ around the island. As we approached ever closer we could see that she was a Taiwanese vessel. Those of us who had sailed aboard National Geographic Endeavour on this voyage in 2008 immediately had a strong feeling of déjà vu because then we had encountered another Taiwanese vessel fishing in almost exactly the same spot on the ocean. In checking further, and looking at the Daily Expedition Report (DER) from that voyage we discovered that we had encountered that vessel on the same day of the year, 30 March, as today. I looked at the DER that I wrote 3 years ago and it related an experience almost identical to what we had just seen. Even the hull identifications numbers of the two ships differed in only the last digit (BH3337 vs. BH3336) so the ships were probably owned by the same company in Taiwan.

At the time, in 2008, we had reported the illegal ship to the authorities on Ascension Island and we know that they relayed our report to London, but we do not know what became of it. Apparently there has been little disincentive for the Taiwanese fishermen from fishing illegally in British waters. There is no enforcement vessel at Ascension to confront these ships, which continue the practice of finning sharks reported in my DER of 2011. Today the rigging was again full of shark fins, the main ingredient in shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy. Finning is generally regarded as mutilation and an unacceptable fishing practice.

After the fishing vessel made a hasty retreat, we sailed over to a nearby seamount, Gratten
Seamount, and deployed the ROV to see what sort of fauna we could find at 70 meters on its summit. David Cothran, our undersea specialist reported a wonderful variety of sea life on the seamount. While the ROV was sampling the seamount, our galley staff took another Zodiac in search of fish in the waters nearby. They succeeded in catching a 40-kilo wahoo and a yellowfin tuna of comparable size and they hooked another even larger fish which they were unable to land, for after a long and valiant struggle the line parted and the fish escaped. We all watched from the bow as this monumental struggle played itself out, and later at dinner, enjoyed the fish that they had landed while enjoying stories of the one that got away.