Paul Watson is the founder, lord, and master of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Credit: Photo: AP
AFP - Agence France Presse
Paul Watson: Eco-warrior on the high seas
Veteran anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, released from detention in Greenland after Denmark refused an extradition request from Japan, has spent decades fighting harpooners and seal hunters in confrontations on the high seas.
For years, a bete noire of Japan, one of the last three countries, along with Iceland and Norway, to practice commercial whaling, Watson was arrested on July 21 in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
His first comment upon his release was that his five-month detention had drawn attention to Japan's “illegal” whaling.
Watson was arrested on a Japanese international “red notice” warrant when his ship was on its way to “intercept” a new Japanese whaling factory ship in the North Pacific, according to the CPWF.
Japan accuses Watson of injuring a Japanese crew member with a stink bomb intended to disrupt the whalers' activities during a Sea Shepherd confrontation with the ship Shonan Maru 2 in 2010.
Jean Tamalet, Watson's lawyer, told AFP that “the fight is not over yet.”
“We will now have to contest the red notice and the Japanese arrest warrant to ensure that Captain Paul Watson can go back to traveling the world with complete peace of mind and never experience a similar episode again,” said Tamalet.
The 74-year-old American-Canadian received the support of Brigitte Bardot, the French film legend turned animal rights activist, who accused the Japanese government of launching “a global manhunt” against Watson.
French President Emmanuel Macron has also pressured the Danish authorities not to extradite the activist, who has applied for French nationality.
Watson dedicated himself to saving marine life in 1977, forming what would become the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He was dismissed from the group in 2022 after internal squabbles, which, according to him, left a bitter taste. Some branches of the association, including in France, continue to support him.
Before that, he spent time in the Canadian Coast Guard and on Norwegian and Swedish merchant navy ships.
Over the years, he became a media personality, appearing in the TV series “Whale Wars” and gaining notoriety for his direct action tactics: chasing, harassing, sinking, and ramming illegal fishing and whaling vessels.
“We are pirates of compassion hunting and destroying pirates of profit,” says Sea Shepherd's website.
He uses acoustic weapons, water cannons, and stink bombs against the whalers.
Using these methods, he has sunk more than a dozen boats and raided many more.
As an activist, he built on a degree in communications, garnering support and funding from stars including longtime patron Bardot, Sean Penn, Pierce Brosnan, and Pamela Anderson.
Born in Toronto in 1950, the eldest of seven children, Watson grew up in a fishing village in New Brunswick, eastern Canada.
His mother died when he was 13, and two years later, he left home after falling out with his father.
His passion for whales was sparked in 1975, he says, when he was caught in a standoff with Soviet whalers and looked into the eyes of a dying whale.
“If we can't save the whales, the turtles, the sharks, the tuna, and the complex marine biodiversity, the oceans won't survive,” he said in an interview in 2017.
“And if the oceans die, humanity will die because we cannot survive on this planet with a dead ocean.”
Over 45 years, the intrepid Watson has carried out spectacular operations from Siberia to Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, and Japan.
With his crews, he has saved thousands of whales and exposed the illegal activities of whalers.
In 2010, Sea Shepherd clashed with Japanese ships, which led to the sinking of the organization's high-tech super boat, Ady Gil, in the remote Southern Ocean. In interviews, you regularly say that “we never hurt anyone.”
At the time, Japanese ships hunted whales in Antarctica and the North Pacific for what they claimed were scientific purposes.
The white-bearded father of three claims in his biography to have co-founded Greenpeace in 1972 but said he split from the group over arguments about protest tactics.
His former allies and the Japanese government label him an “eco-terrorist” because of his radical tactics.
He was detained for several months in the Netherlands in 1997 and lived in exile on the high seas from 2012 to 2014.
bur/jmy-lam/tw
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