Also by Ludvig

Follow the crew of the Arctic Sunrise on their campaign for Marine Reserves in our North Sea Tour blog

From Portia: As deck hand, I am on watch with the captain from 4 to 8 morning and evening, which means I enjoy both the sunset and the sunrise. My day begins with a wake up call at 3.45am. I grab a cup of tea and banana and hope the caffeine and fruit will sustain me for an hour before I do a safety round, checking that no water is flooding onto the Arctic Sunrise, there are no signs of fire and that everything is generally in ship shape.

Follow the crew of the Arctic Sunrise on their campaign for Marine Reserves in our North Sea Tour blog

Martin getting the message across to the skipper of a Danish trawler

After a productive stay in the small fishing town of Hanstholm we set sail and headed out to sea again only to find – fog! Yes today the North Sea is full of it and the fog horn has had to work on overtime, giving everyone working on deck a slight case of tinnitus. Although it did make our job a bit trickier the fog couldn't stop us from finding or engaging the fishing vessels out here.

Follow the crew of the Arctic Sunrise on their campaign for Marine Reserves in our North Sea Tour blog

That's more like it! Everything turned around this morning and a weather window opened up giving us perfect sailing conditions - calm and sundrenched glittering waters. It didn’t take us long to locate a cluster of trawlers and we have spent most of the day document their operations. We managed to get ourselves invited to go onboard a couple of Danish middle sized vessels trawling for Norwegian lobster.

Looking back at the Sunrise from a Danish Trawler

Personally I haven't had the pleasure of meeting that many fishermen in the flesh and I have never been onboard a trawler before. The fishermen were surprisingly nice and open about their doings, and even gave us full access to document them hoisting their trawls and sorting their catch.

Being on one of the trawlers it hit me how much these tattooed, chain smoking, slightly overweight, middle-aged men in sweat pants sitting in their plush looking command bridges looking at their monitors and digital 3D GPS integrated sonograms resembled truck drivers. Isn't that basically what they are, driving their boats slowly across the highways of the ocean dragging the bottom and hauling their cargo back to land?

Last night we had to turn the ship around because we were heading into some seriously bad weather (you know it's bad when even the captain says so). But I think everyone has gotten both of their sea legs working by now because even though the ship was rolling more today and we have had shelves, doors, and dishes broken, everyone seemed less affected than yesterday. We are now anchored closer to land and are, together with a small fleet of freighters and oil tankers all around us, waiting for calmer seas.