Steve Irwin crew ready for whale wars
Stephen Bennett thought he was done for moments after the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin collided with a Japanese whaling ship and tore a hole in its hull.
"It's dangerous, yeah," Mr Bennett said. "I thought we were going to sink . . . that was pretty hairy."
But it's now just a day in the life of the former music teacher from Stirling, who abandoned life on the land several years ago to join a crew intent on stopping whaling.
Mr Bennett, 26, now the ship's third engineer, became interested in animal rights activism as a teenager but when he met the crew of another Sea Shepherd ship docked in Fremantle several years ago he dropped everything to join their fight.
"I just went away thinking, 'yeah, this is something I want to dedicate a lot of time to and feel really strongly about'," he said. "It's just the amount of reach the Sea Shepherd has, the amount of lives they can save and the amount of trouble you can cause for the people who are basically destroying ocean life. I sold all my stuff and I've been on the ship ever since."
Mr Bennett said confrontation with the whalers had escalated each year.
"It's definitely dangerous, but as soon as I get on the ship . . . when they announce that they're going to kill 1000 whales, any fear or worries are out of my head," he said.
Members of the public can glimpse of the inner workings of the ship and meet its crew from Sunday, with the Steve Irwin scheduled to dock at C Berth in Fremantle Port and remain there for several weeks.
Daily tours will operate from 10am to 5pm, before the ship returns to the Southern Ocean to begin its next anti-whaling campaign in early December.
