An eco-warrior's romance at sea

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The sun was rising as the captain of one of the world's most famous ships changed course, drawn magnetically to a mysterious orange glow in the west. Skip related content
Related photos / videosMike Fincken Enlarge photo A member of the crew of Greenpeace's environmental campaigning ship Rainbow Warrior, …More Enlarge photo Mike Fincken, captain of Greenpeace's ship Rainbow Warrior, stands in the control room Enlarge photo VIDEO: An eco-warrior's romance at sea. Enlarge photo Mike Fincken Enlarge photo Mike Fincken, captain of Greenpeace's renowned environmental campaigning ship Rainbow …More Enlarge photo Mike Fincken realised the glow was not a reflection of the sunrise, but lava from an erupting volcano, and if careful he and his crew could sail close and watch nature put on a spectacular show.

"We went right up to it and it was popping, you could hear it," Fincken said as he recalled one of his favourite moments sailing around the world as captain of environment group Greenpeace's campaigning ship the Rainbow Warrior.

"You could smell it, because of the sulphur... and there were these huge red flowing boulders bouncing and then thundering into the sea. And there were hisses and splashes. And that was an island in the process of creation."

In an interview with AFP aboard the Rainbow Warrior during a recent stopover in Manila Bay, Fincken recounted a series of other exhilarating experiences but emphasised every day on the ocean conjured something wondrous.

"Seldom will a day go by where something remarkable hasn't happened. I don't know whether it is the magic of the Rainbow Warrior that shapes the world around us, but we do seem to have exceptional moments every day," he said.

Life for Fincken, 43, has not always been filled with an awe of nature.

He grew up in a small village in apartheid-era South Africa as the son of a bacon factory manager, the squeals of pigs being slaughtered echoed throughout his childhood as he earned pocket money working for his father.

Fincken confessed to being an ordinary student with no major career ambitions, and who began his career as a sailor with a South African merchant cargo shipping company as an 18-year-old just to avoid military conscription.

His drive to protect nature also lay dormant in his first few years at sea, although he loved the ocean and the team spirit with his fellow crew members.

"I did coal trips, lumber trips. I've carried uranium and chloride," Fincken said, describing some of the "nasty" cargo he helped to transport around the world as a merchant seaman.

Fincken's transformation into an environmentalist occurred when, in his mid 20s, his wife arranged for him to do an organic gardening course during a holiday back home in South Africa.

"I was taught at night school that chemicals and pesticides killed the earthworms," said the wispy-thin Fincken, who speaks in soft, peaceful tones.

"And it made so much sense I became an overnight avid environmentalist."

Fincken returned to sea set on a new personal course, and at each port would visit any local environment group he could find to pick up brochures and meet like-minded people.

Eventually Fincken came across Greenpeace and began his new career as a volunteer second mate with one of the organisation's smaller vessels.

"It was just such a lot of freedom and it was so exciting," Fincken said as he recalled his initiation with Greenpeace helping to carry out a protest to protect forests in Canada in the mid-1990s.

"I remember it was just so empowering to stand up and actually, sadly, have to break a law in order to prevent a greater crime."

It is a philosophy that Fincken has held firm throughout his years with Greenpeace, the last four of which have been as one of the Rainbow Warrior's captains as it has traversed the globe to protest for environmental causes.

"Everyone should involve themselves in direct actions. It's scary at first. You are breaking all sorts of moulds. You are conditioned to toeing the line and just thinking the world is contained by laws," he said.

"And then you realise, no actually, it's not. Those laws are man made. They are false. And a lot of them are there to protect dirty industry."

Greenpeace's determination to challenge authorities over perceived environmental crimes has long frustrated and angered those in power.

The most striking example occurred 25 years ago when French agents bombed and sank the original version of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand, killing one Greenpeace campaigner on board.

The French government carried out the attack to stop the Rainbow Warrior from protesting against France's nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean.

The episode turned into a public relations disaster for the French, while ensuring the new Rainbow Warrior -- the one now skippered by Fincken -- became a powerful symbol of resistance for the global environmental movement.

While no-one has employed such extreme tactics as the French since, Fincken said governments and industry leaders continued to work extremely hard to stop the Rainbow Warrior and Greenpeace's other vessels from campaigning.

"It is getting more and more difficult to take the ship into peaceful protest because what we are facing now are tremendous legal battles afterwards that are just draining the lifeblood of the organisation with costs," he said.

"Industry is realising that the way to sink the Rainbow Warrior is to just fight (Greenpeace) in court because those costs are tremendous."

Fincken has himself been detained on a number of occasions and convicted by the Dutch government for a sailing infringement, while a prosecution effort by British authorities over a protest near a coal-fired power station is ongoing.

In another example of authorities wanting to mute Greenpeace, the Rainbow Warrior was barred from entering Indonesia on its just-ended tour of Southeast Asia.

Fincken once wavered in his commitment to Greenpeace, but not because of the battles against authorities.

His first wife, Christine, died of cancer in 1998, just a couple of years after he joined Greenpeace.

Fincken left Greenpeace and lived in the Rocky Mountains after she passed away, stepping out of normal life, working as a tanner of animal skins and trying to understand why he was on this planet.

"I was on a journey from the moment I heard my wife had cancer. My whole life changed. Everything changes," he said.

"What are we? Who are we? All these questions that I needed to answer and I went in search of the answers."

Throughout his time on the land, Fincken kept with him a remarkable memento from his wife in the form of a short message.

Part of it read: "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces towards change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable".

Christine wrote those words on a piece of paper that the pair had recycled together using nearly 10 years of love letters they had written to each other when he was at sea.

"It's more than just a saying. It's how its come and who its come from. It wasn't long after (she wrote the message) that she died," he said quietly, revealing it was the first time he had spoken publicly about his wife's gift.

The message now forms his life's "mission statement", which he posts on his personal blogsite.

Fincken emerged from his period of disillusionment in Canada with another philosophy that he also still seeks to live by: "It is not what a person wants, but what a person can give, that shapes their destiny".

With his reason for living distilled into that one sentence, Fincken returned to Greenpeace and his life of activism more certain than ever that he should use his skills as a sailor to help protect the environment.

That certainty builds each time he watches a volcano erupt across a small island in Southeast Asia, a blue whale swim off the coast of northern Iceland or pristine ice blocks float through Antarctic waters.

"The earth shows off to me for some reason," he said with a smile.

"I think those remarkable moments are put out there for us just to show how incredibly lucky we are to be on this planet. It gives us the motivation for the campaign work we do."

Fincken records his journeys aboard the Rainbow Warrior on his blogsite: http://mikemate.wordpress.com/