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Position on board: From: Mike's Greenpeace Story: This is the story of Michael James Ian Fincken, matured nicely at the age of 37. He is a South African sailor who loves the Earth. So it was with great sadness that he oversaw the loading of 36 thousand metric tones of pristine temperate rain forest from the Saw Mills of British Columbia in 1994. One day in Vancouver he took time from the loading of the great big cargo ship. He went ashore looking for help and found Greenpeace in Canada. There was little Greenpeace could do for the poor trees that where being piled up high on the decks of his ship, but a door was opened through which letters started to flow between Mike the Mate and a group of people who shared similar feelings to him. Two years later, when Mike had completed all of his required sea time to sit his Masters exams, he quit the world of the great big cargo ships. He took his Captains ticket and flew to Amsterdam, to meet Greenpeace. The very nice people in the International office could see his dedication and they welcomed him on board. They sent him to the smallest boat they had, the Moby Dick. They sent him to Vancouver to help bring the people of this planets attention to the plight of our falling trees… Mikes Greenpeace Memory: The ancient blue captured in the icebergs off Antarctica haunts me to this day. In 1999 I was on board the Greenpeace icebreaker, Arctic Sunrise, we left from Hobart in Tasmania and headed south. Along the way we where followed by wandering albatross, we saw Orcas and humpback whales and when we finally arrived at the ice we surprised a sleeping seal. It had been resting contently on a pancake of floating ice in a world that was only white when we splashed a brilliant red into the picture. This in a time before the Sunrise turned green. The southern lights flared in the twilight sky. But we where in the Southern ocean for another reason, we had come looking for pirates. There is a vast expanse of Ocean between Africa and Australia, to find an illegal fisherman requires a miracle. We surprised the Salvador and ourselves in our fifth week of searching at sea. The Salvador cut her long lines and bolted as soon as she realized who we where. She had been caught before, a ship with a record for poaching Patagonian toothfish. We launched our inflatables to take a closer look and where greeted from her decks by hooded fisherman brandishing gaffs and boat hooks. They where throwing rocks at us too, one of which landed inches from me in the inflatable I was driving. Needless to say they provided us with the picture that Pirates should. The encounter quickly escalated into a dramatic chase as she turned and ran into the roaring forties. We followed and the Sunrise shipped oceans of green seas over the bow, the boats where shaking in their cradles and the helicopter seemed about to take off on her own. Needless to say, we took a tremendous pounding but kept up the pace for three days until the Salvador was broken and she turned for refuge toward the Pirate port of Mauritius. Two weeks later we handed over the chase to the French authorities and the Salvador came under arrest. Mikes feelings, thoughts and impressions of Iceland? Iceland to me is a mystery, just the name alone inspires my imagination. We have had our arrival greeted by a Humpback whale lobtailing (repeatedly slapping its flukes in the sea), by a pod of disinterested Orcas and an angry young fisherman yelling at us to go home. I feel anxious about our presence and a bit of nervous excitement. But I am overawed by the intense splendor of the cliffs as they are illuminated by the midnight sun. To the government of Iceland from Mike: We come in Peace.
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