Thoren

Photo courtesy Beth Thoren

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Have you noticed that when you live in a big city long enough, your thoughts can struggle to travel further than the building in front of you? When I was in my 20s, nature had been part of my life, and I had thrived on freedom. However, after 18 years on the corporate ladder in London, I could hardly even imagine that way of being anymore. I knew I needed a break, so I put my life on hold for three months and took on what was to me an enormous personal challenge: I joined the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s activist campaign against the whale hunt in Antarctica.

Sea Shepherd vessels use aggressive tactics to stop damage to the sea and its creatures, especially the slaughter that Japanese whalers continue under a technical “scientific research” loophole despite a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling. The research is widely seen as an excuse to sell the subsidized meat to a Japanese public increasingly turning away from it.

For what it’s worth, I hate conflict, and being in my 40s, I feel fear. I was well aware that my life could be in danger from possible rammings or collisions amid high seas, gale-force winds, and icebergs. But life demands a balance, and I needed to give and to grow. As a businessperson, I also shuddered at the thought of protesters taking matters into their own hands. But I knew that in many arenas governments regularly fail to protect their citizens’ long-term interests. So I decided to go over to the dark side and act.

I joined up as a ship’s engineer on the 200-foot vessel Steve Irwin, which set sail out of Hobart, Tasmania, toward Antarctica. On a stunning, sunny New Year’s Day 2011, we spotted two Japanese harpoon ships. Our ship-based helicopter, two Zodiac speedboats, and three Sea Shepherd vessels began pursuing the harpoon ships through the ice pack. The harpooners countered with powerful water cannons when our speedboats tried to get close enough to hurl rancid butter on their decks (which would spoil the whale meat’s taste) or to entangle and stall their propellers with chains. This kind of pursuit and harassment happened on and off for three months because as long as we kept it up, whales, especially endangered humpbacks, were not being killed.

The Japanese media label Sea Shepherd “ecoterrorists,” but the organization has a strong ethic that means it would never do anything that would injure a human being. Our objective was simply to get in the way and thus stop the killing of threatened and endangered species. In 2011 for the first time, as a direct result of Sea Shepherd’s efforts, the Japanese whaling fleet quit midway through the season, catching only 170 whales versus its much larger target catch of around 1,035.

Through it all, Antarctica was breathtakingly beautiful, with icebergs framed in turquoise and air so clean your lungs would leap to take it in. Birds would glide alongside the ship, and the sea was a lovely cacophony of light and sound. Seals barked and penguins chattered. As for the whales, they were awesome not because of their size but because they seemed so aware — so human.

Sea life is in great peril. The United Nations forecasts that in 10 years, 50 percent of fish will be extinct or not worth fishing. Most of the larger fish types we know — monkfish, swordfish, tuna, and cod — are at the point of collapse. By 2050, if nothing changes, all the fish will be gone. Gone. I had no idea. This isn’t about our children’s future; this is going to happen in our lifetime.

I have now returned to work, but not as the same person who left. As an individual, I will “take less,” in many ways. As a businessperson, what I have learned will affect every investment decision I make. Sustainability, or the lack of it, will change the very framework in which businesses operate.

We all need to look beyond the buildings in front of our eyes.

— Beth “MB” Thoren (MBA ’92), a graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy, is a marketing director based in London.

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