Being Pete’s twin Bethune: Oh bro, where’s the art … this time?

It’s not always easy being Pete Bethune’s brother.

It is not the first time that Invercargill man Barry Bethune has been concerned for his brother, bold, controversial and ecological warrior.

And at the same time, proud of him, defensive of him, entertained by him, and eager to give him the kind of hard times that only a twin can.

Pete has made headlines again, this time for being bitten by a snake as he made his way through a Costa Rican jungle in search of wildlife poachers and illegal miners.

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Meanwhile, Barry has been on a vacation on Nelson’s trail and has tried not to think too much about his brother’s groin.

“Yes, I was quite concerned,” he says. “Yesterday I was diving and I had a hard time concentrating. . . ”

Turns out, it’s not that easy to leave in the back of your mind the message that the poison from your brother’s alarmingly swollen leg has spread in unwanted directions.

Fortunately, a more recent update was more reassuring, the poison had stopped progressing further.

In a Day 4 Facebook post from his hospital bed, Pete’s latest report is a gleeful assurance that the swelling in his leg has subsided, the pain has subsided.

In a somewhat less reassuring way, he recognizes the changes in the size, color, and texture of his testicles, which he says leaves his doctors stumped.

Pete is not entirely uninterested in the forecast. (Going back to that introduction, it’s fair to say that being Pete Bethune isn’t always easy either.)

Back in New Zealand, Barry is used to having various shades of concern over Pete’s exploits.

The brothers were born 10 minutes apart (Pete was the aggressive one) in Hamilton in 1965.

Barry took up farm life in Southland, while Pete, who was a well-qualified bachelor of science, engineering and business administration, found his own calling only after starting a career in oil exploration, before determining that the future lay in biofuels.

Usually, he wasn’t content to write 20,000-word scholarly articles on the subject. Also, as a publicity stunt, he underwent liposuction and then, in his kitchen, turned some of his own extracted fat into fuel.

But Barry knows that his brother risks his body in more alarming ways than that.

The deadly fer-de-lance snake that has left Pete Bethune with a swollen leg hasn’t necessarily been his most venomous assailant. In his time he was also stabbed in Brazil with a large knife and, he couldn’t help but notice, rusty. They shot him in Central America, shot him with water cannons and jailed him.

Captain Pete Bethune was a central figure in the massively controversial conflicts between the Sea Shepherd group and Japanese whaling ships in the Southern Ocean. In early 2010 he was the captain of the biofuel trimaran Ady Gil, which sank after a collision with the Shonan Maru II whaling fleet security vessel.

Later, he climbed aboard that ship’s anti-collision spikes, cut the protective net, and attempted to make a citizen arrest of its captain. Arrested and arrested, he was charged in Japan, sent four lonely months to a Tokyo jail and received a two-year suspended sentence.

All of which has earned him a host of admirers and naysayers, some of whom clearly reside in New Zealand’s Ministry of Primary Industry, where he was contemptuously described in leaked emails as a clown, a lost cause, Captain Buffoon and crazy like a box of frogs

This is where Barry would like to speak.

“When I see keyboard warriors making negative comments about whatever I am doing, I want to ask you: what have you guys done? Have you ever stood up for something you believe in? ”

The public record shows that Pete Bethune has severed ties with Sea Shepherd, critical of the honesty of the older members.

Barry agrees that Pete may have made a couple of comments in the past that people might have taken as stubborn, and that part of his methodology may have been “um … kind of dubious” when judged on the basis of strict legalities. . But he defends his brother’s integrity and his passion.

“It’s just driven. Whatever he’s involved in, he does it 100%. He is not afraid, he will always lead from the front. ”

Pete was now working closely with the governments of South America and island nations, helping to train official personnel to protect resources and the environment from illegal exploitation.

“A lot of these countries don’t have a lot of money to invest in that kind of thing,” says Barry. “ It has helped them for nothing. ”

Pete Bethune has led a team on missions covered by a television show, The Operatives, and their work has resulted in prosecutions and imprisonment.

His once considerable personal wealth has been invested in ecological causes, to the point where Barry says his brother does not have a car and when he heads to the South Island he is hitchhiking.

Meanwhile, Barry tries not to worry about Pete or dwell on criticism. He also receives encouragement from the growing number of people attentive to the ecological imperatives that force his brother and will affect us all.

A man doesn’t want to be too effusive with his brother. But still. . . .

“Good for him, for standing up for what he believes in.”