A chat with Captain Paul Watson

By Andy Summons. First published in Paper Sea Quarterly Vol. 2, Iss. 3.

Paper Sea Quarterly spoke with the founder of Sea Shepherd, Captain Paul Watson, one day after the International Court of Justice handed down its ruling that stated Japan’s whaling practice contravened international law. It was an exciting moment in a long battle and one that will slow down Japan’s whaling practices but Captain Watson doesn’t think it will be for long. 

‘We thought that we’d win but we never thought the verdict would be so incredible. Importantly, the verdict handed down by the International Court of Justice in the Hague vindicates the work that Sea Shepherd has been doing for the past twelve years. We have been campaigning and protesting whaling, saying that it is an illegal operation, and we were widely criticised and accused of being the criminals. The verdict shows otherwise. 

I’m not so confident that the Japanese whalers will abide by the decision. They have a history of agreeing and then finding ways to continue whaling. I hope that they won’t return to the Southern Ocean but if they do, our three largest ships will be ready. If they do not come then we will move either to the North Pacific Ocean to challenge Japanese whaling up there, or we will sail to the North Atlantic to challenge the whaling practices of Iceland, Norway, and the Faroe Islands. We are going to the Faroe Islands with other vessels and hundreds of volunteers to try to shut down a pilot whale kill. Last time we were there in 2011 it was a very successful campaign and not a single whale was killed.’ 

Paul started his life of activism when he was ten years old. He spent his spare time rescuing animals from snares and then destroying the hunting traps in Eastern Canada where he grew up. The passion for saving animals continued throughout high school and in 1969, one year before Paul started a communications degree, he was the youngest founding member of the Greenpeace Foundation. 

‘While I was studying communications I was active in Greenpeace campaigns and I went from one campaign to the next all the time. In 1977 I left Greenpeace and set up Sea Shepherd because I wanted to pursue activism in a different way. I’ve never considered myself a protester; it seems like such a submissive thing to do. You sit there saying please, please, please don’t do it, and they do it anyway. I felt that there were all these laws, regulations, and treaties that we had in place to protect our oceans but nobody seemed to be enforcing them.’ 

Paul holds up two truths that he has learned in his past that fuel his determination to protect ocean wildlife; the first is that any day is a good day to die for what you believe in; and the second is fight for those who cannot protect themselves. 

‘I was involved in the American Indian Movement occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973. We were surrounded by1500 military personnel basically trying to kill us. They were shooting 20,000 rounds a night into the village, which the American Indian Movement had taken to protest the fact that the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868 was being violated. The treaty promised all the lands surrounding the village to the Lakota people for eternity and a few years later when they found gold in the area they took the land away from them. From that conflict I learned that you don’t fight for what you believe in because you’re going to win and you certainly don’t worry about losing, you fight because it’s the right thing to do, the only thing to do and you live in the moment and pursue that. As the Lakota say “Hoka he” – it’s a good day to die. 

The second lesson I learned was in the June of 1975 during a Greenpeace campaign in which we tried to stop a Soviet whaling fleet off the coast of California after they had harpooned a whale. That whale was dying slowly and thrashing about in the water and it swam straight towards our little boat with two of us in it. It came up out of the water and was about ready to fall down on top of us. As this whale rose up I saw an eye the size of my fist emerge from the sea and I looked into it and it struck me that this whale knew that we were trying to help because it made a great effort to fall backwards away from us. As it slid back into the sea I saw its eye go back beneath the surface and he died. He could’ve killed us but he chose not to and from that moment on I decided that I would fight for the whales not for people.’ 

Sea Shepherd is a pro-active conservation organisation, their campaigns often capture the attention of news outlets and the ire of some who believe their tactics are aggressive and unnecessarily dangerous.

‘We consider the whales, sharks, the turtles, and the fish to be our clients and we fight in their interest. When people criticise us I ask them to find me a whale or a shark that disagrees with what we’re doing and we might reconsider but they are our clients not people. During the campaign against the Soviet whaling fleet, the whales were not being killed for food, they were being killed for their oil and one of the purposes of that Spermaceti oil was to lubricate parts in intercontinental ballistic missiles. I thought here we are as humans, destroying this beautiful, intelligent socially complex creature for the purpose of making a weapon expressly designed for the mass extermination of humanity. That’s when it struck me that, as a species, we are insane, we are ecologically insane. 

A few years later we sunk half of Iceland’s whaling fleet while it was docked - there were no people on board. One of my former colleagues from Greenpeace called me and said I want you to know that what you did was despicable, deplorable, criminal, and unforgiveable. Then he said I just want to let you know that Greenpeace is condemning your actions. I said listen, we didn’t sink those ships for ourselves or you or Greenpeace, we did it for the whales and if you can find me one whale that disagrees then we’ll reconsider.’ 

Sea Shepherd claims a record of never having caused injury or having any of their crew injured. When looking at footage of their campaigns, it is an impressive record indeed. 

‘The Southern Ocean is one of the most remote and hostile areas on the planet. Over the years we have learned to navigate our way through those seas. We have never had anybody injured, there have been no accidents with our vessels, we have never been trapped in the ice. Our vessels are navigated professionally, our crews are trained professionally, and it’s true that we take on volunteers instead of professionals but they are very well trained. The reason I prefer taking on volunteers instead of professionals is because professionals lack something – they lack passion. When Shackleton sailed down to Antarctica he was criticised for not having a professional crew. He said that he didn’t want professionals he wanted men of passion who would get him where he needed to go – I feel the same way. Sea Shepherd needs women and men of passion and I am extremely proud of the thousands of volunteers who have participated in the Southern Ocean campaigns over the years. They have performed incredibly well in terrible conditions for very long hours.’ 

Paul described the result from the International Court of Justice on Japan’s illegal whaling practice as ‘an uplifting and inspiring day’ and although celebratory moments like those are rare he says that he does enjoy them. Paul has been working hard to accomplish one particular goal that he believes he has now achieved; Sea Shepherd has progressed beyond simply being a conservation organisation, it is a movement and you cannot prosecute a movement. 

‘I have some influence but Sea Shepherd is active in forty different countries and each organisation is an independent entity in control of what they do. What I really enjoy now is that I can wake up and discover that there is a Sea Shepherd campaign going on in Chile or France that I had no part in planning. It’s something that makes me really happy.’ 

I asked Paul what we could do as individuals to help conserve the oceans and its wildlife, to help Sea Shepherd. 

‘The one thing that guides me in my work with Sea Shepherd is the truism that if the oceans die then we die. We need to protect the oceans or else we have no future and trying to get that message across is the single most important message to disseminate. It doesn’t matter if you live in the Himalayas, Paris or by the sea we are all dependent on diversity in the sea in order to survive. 

I think that everyone can help simply by being mindful of their consumption and personal behaviours. One of the reasons that I promote Sea Shepherd as a vegan organisation is because almost half of all the fish pulled from the sea are fed to livestock, we are literally eating the oceans alive beyond what they can sustain. There are simply not enough fish remaining in the ocean to continue fishing at the rates we are. We need to be more mindful of our consumption, especially food harvested from the oceans.’ 

Captain Paul Watson has been championing the plight of our ocean wildlife for the large majority of his sixty- three years on earth and has no plans to slow down yet, or ever. 

‘I believe in what I’m doing, I love what I’m doing and I think that it is one of the most important ways to live, it keeps me alive really.’ 

www.seashepherd.org