Tribute by Captain Peter Hammarstedt

Sea Shepherd leader, Byron Bay icon and master of whale conservation in the Byron Shire, Australia, Adam Shostak passed away last Wednesday.

Adam embraced the hippie lifestyle, embodying the counterculture ethos while establishing Sea Shepherd as a dominant cultural force in Byron Bay and the hinterland.

There is no place in the world where the Sea Shepherd logo is as ubiquitous as in the Byron Shire, where Sea Shepherd flags and stickers adorn cars and storefronts like battle banners for the anti-whaling cause, and where Sea Shepherd shirts are a regimental of sorts.

It was Adam who personally tie-dyed by hand many of those Sea Shepherd shirts in the back of his Upper Main Arm valley home.

If the Byron Shire were a ship in the Sea Shepherd movement, it would have been a flagship, and Adam would have been its captain.

For the whales who frequent the shores of New South Wales, Adam was their ambassador.

There are dozens and dozens of places in the world—from Australia to Europe to the United States—where I’ve been stopped wearing a Sea Shepherd shirt and, upon asking where the supporter first heard about our work for the ocean, been told that while they were travelling through Byron Bay on holiday, a hippie handed them a sticker and talked to them about whaling.

I’d show them a photograph of Adam and they’d light up, and then, somewhat surprised, exclaim, “that was the guy”.

Adam was our guy; he was a whale guy; and he was a Sea Shepherd guy, through and through.

While the Sea Shepherd ships were out at sea, Adam was shaking a tin and collecting one- and two-dollar gold coin donations to fund the next Sea Shepherd mission, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for whale conservation on the streets of Byron Bay and in the markets of Mullum.

He did so almost every day of the week for fifteen years.

The other day, Jeff Hansen reminded me of a time at the Mullum markets when Adam, seeing a young child walking toward the Sea Shepherd stall that he manned, grabbed one of the signature whale tail necklaces that he’d pioneered and then, kneeling down to her level, presented her with the gift after telling her the story of the whales that migrate annually past the Shire.

The Byron Shire sailed with Sea Shepherd on every campaign because Adam was at the helm.

Earlier this year, Adam and I stood underneath the trusty lantern of the Cape Byron Lighthouse and watched as the Sea Shepherd ship Allankay motored past the easternmost point on the Australian mainland heading north.

Adam had seen many Sea Shepherd ships pass by his home. The captain of each ship would navigate close to the shore so that Adam could see it.

Oftentimes, the ships were heading south to defend whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Now, with whaling ended in the Antarctic, they were heading north to confront poachers in the South Pacific. The battlefronts changed but, on the headland, Adam remained a sentinel. His light, never dim, was the constant that kept the ships out at sea.

Adam was my constant, a dear, dear friend who I loved, who was a perpetual reminder of the passion on land that allowed Sea Shepherd crews to save over 6,000 whales through fifteen years of campaigning down in the Antarctic.

On the 22nd of December, the Shostak family is honoring Adam’s life and legacy through hosting a celebration of his life at Kohinur Hall that is also a fundraiser for Sea Shepherd. The dress code? Sea Shepherd and/or colorful.

How wondrous, beautiful and rare that the words chosen to describe the dress code for the celebration of Adam’s life would also have been used to describe Adam Shostak, by those lucky enough to have known him.