>> larry: joining us is lawrence degrute, after two campaigns aboard the flag ship steve irwin he joined the crew, the ship described by some as a batmobile on water. it was destroyed in a collision with a japanese whaling ship in january. here is a look at some of the drama on "whale wars." >> it will be our harpoon interceptor vessel, twice as fast as the harpoon vessels. it is a wave piercer. it goes right through the water. it has a kevlar fiber hull. so the vessel is pretty much bulletproof. >> its mission, to cut the whalers harpoon lines. >> wow. wow. >> he hit it? >> i can't see. >> they hit him. >> get some binoculars. >> do you see people? >> i don't see any people. >> larry: thank you for joining us. you were on the ship when it went down, what happened? >> well we were drifting at the point that, when we got around, we actually had been going after the boat to slow it down, the bob barker could catch it up. and block the slipways so they couldn't kill any more whales. we were running very low on fuel. we were actually about to head back to refuel. and we were drifting, lettin