Many years ago my friend Mike Long was feeling a bit lost as a late teenager living in the mountains of North Carolina. One fateful night he was sitting in front of the television watching Tom Brokaw interview a man who had dedicated his life to saving whales from the countries who continued to hunt them. The very next day, young Mike was on a plane to Seattle to meet the man who had given this twenty-two-year old the passion to do something meaningful with his life. He made his way to Lake Union where the Ocean Warrior was dry docked and found Captain Paul Watson below deck. Standing in front of the man who he'd only known for less than twenty-four hours, Mike volunteered as a crew member and sailed with Watson for the next ten years of his life.
Captain Paul Watson is a marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist who describes himself as an interventionist. Protesting is too passive for this Canadian-American ocean vigilante who favors action and disruption to enforce the marine laws that government and law enforcement is either unwilling or unable to enforce. His direct approach has defined his character and created controversy among other conservationists. Watson was arrested in Greenland in late July and is awaiting trial and potential extradition to Japan where he'll face certain life imprisonment if the Danish government agrees to hand him over.
Watson believes strongly that the ocean is the life support system for the planet. "Seventy percent of the oxygen we breath is produced by phytoplankton", says Watson. "Since 1950 the phytoplankton population has diminished by 40% due to decreased levels of nitrogen and iron in their food supply. These nutrients come from the excrement of whales, other mammals, and sea birds. One blue whale defecates 3 tonnes of manure every day which floats on the surface providing nutrients to the phytoplankton. As whales perform deep dives, they bring additional nutrients from the depths back to the surface in a process called 'the whale pump' fertilizing the ocean and stimulating phytoplankton growth." Watson has referred to the whales in this process as the farmers of the oceans producing oxygen as their crop. This is a man who truly believes in the interdependency of the ocean to life on the planet exclaiming famously that "if the ocean dies, we die."
In 1975, Watson was the youngest founder of Greenpeace, the NGO that came out of the anti-nuclear movement favoring diplomacy and protesting over direct engagement. Watson left the organization two years later after being criticized by his colleagues for his "militant modes of action". Shortly after his departure, he founded The Sea Shepard Conservation Society dedicated to protecting the oceans and preserving it's ecological biodiversity of plants and animals. Watson and his crew were often criticized for their contentious methods to disrupt illegal fishing operations by boarding ships at sea or sabotaging and often scuttling them at port.
Watson took credit for sinking half of Iceland's whaling fleet in 1986 while the ships were at port. "The whales are our clients", said Watson to a former Greenpeace colleague who denounced the action calling it reprehensible and an embarrassment to the movement. Watson responded by saying "We didn't sink those ships for any movement, or for any human being on the planet. We sank those ships for the whales." Watson says he created Sea Shepard to be an anti-poaching organization. "There are four million fishing vessels out there and 40% of them are illegal. My ultimate goal is to protect the ocean and that's going to require some really radical intervention."
In 1982, The International Whaling Commission (IWC) put a moratorium on the commercial hunting operations of all whale species and populations which remains in effect today. The countries of Norway, Iceland, and Japan have each renounced their direct participation in the IWC and continue to hunt whales today. Norway and Iceland justify their actions citing a right to preserve their country's heritage as historic whaling nations while Japan uses the guise of research as the veil for their operations. As such, each country is restricted to hunt within their own respective waters and must declare their catches to the IWC on an annual basis. According to those records, over 800 whales were killed last year alone by these three countries combined. Hunting in international waters, however, is completely off limits and unsanctioned by the IWC although those regulations are difficult to enforce in the expansiveness of the world's oceans. "If governments can't do it, then we have to", says Watson.
Watson and the Sea Shepard Society was the subject of the popular television series "Whale Wars" which aired on Animal Planet from 2008 to 2012. Watson launched the series to bring awareness to the illegal whale hunting activities practiced by Japan in the international waters off the coast of Antarctica. Watson believed strongly that the camera was his most effective weapon in the fight against illegal fishing operations. The Sea Shepard crew routinely put themselves between the whales they set out to protect and the harpoons aimed to slaughter them. The tactics practiced by Watson and his crew successfully saved countless numbers of whales in the southern ocean while exposing the illegal whaling operations of their Japanese poachers. The Sea Shepard strategy was simple, block the slip way from loading dead whales. "If they can't load the carcasses of the whales they've taken, they can't kill more whales," said Watson. "Everything else we did from water fights to paint balls was for show. Blocking the slip way was the goal". The "Whale Wars" series publicly humiliated the Japanese on worldwide television putting Paul Watson high on the country's list of personas non grata. In 2012 Japan took action calling for Watson's arrest after an alleged incident involving the boarding of a ship by a Sea Shepard crewman and the detonation of a stink bomb that was reported to have injured a Japanese crew member.
The arrest warrant came in the form of a Red Notice issued through the Interpol - an organization made up of member countries that work together to fight international crime. A Red Notice is a request to law enforcement within the Interpol to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. Watson was apprehended by Danish police soon after the John Paul DeJoria stopped in Nuuk, Greenland to re-fuel before continuing to the North Pacific to intercept Japan's new whaling factory ship, the Kangei Maru. "This is about revenge for a television show that extremely embarrassed Japan in the eyes of the world," said Watson to a Danish courtroom.
Watson grew up in a small fishing village on the eastern shores of Canada and fell in love with the ocean and all of it's creatures at a young age. He believes in the practice of aggressive non-violent action to put an end to commercial whaling. To this day Watson claims that neither he nor any of his crew have ever injured another human being in any of the campaigns they've launched. The country of Japan has a slightly different view claiming that three members of the Shonen Maru crew were exposed to butyric acid from a stink bomb that was fired at the hull of the vessel in 2010 by Sea Shepard Captain Peter Bethune. The debate over whether these crewmen were injured by the projectile is the very reason Watson has been incarcerated since late July on the grounds of being a conspirator in the crimes.
Bethune boarded the Shonen Maru to issue an invoice in the amount of $2 million to to the ship's captain for the ramming and sinking of his ship the Adi Gil five weeks prior. Bethune was detained by the captain and brought back to Japan to face trial for trespassing, destruction of property, and the alleged injury of the three crewmen in question. After numerous court appearances Bethune signed an affidavit naming Watson as the conspirator for his actions. After returning to the States, Bethune signed a second affidavit stating that he was forced to accuse Watson for the crimes or face jail time.
According to Watson's defense lawyer, Jonas Christoffersen, he and his legal team have video evidence showing that the crew members in question were not on the deck of the Shonen Maru when the stink bomb was fired by Bethune. Instead Christoffersen claims to have video evidence of the same men shooting what he believes to be pepper spray at the rubber dingy of the Sea Shepard "Delta" which blew back into their faces creating the skin and eye irritation and facial blistering reported by the Japanese crewmen. "You can see on one of the video clips shot from the dingy that after [the crewmen] have shot this substance into the air, they wave their hands in front of their faces and bend over as if something is hurting their eyes," says Christoffersen. This video footage has not been allowed to be submitted to the Danish courts as defensible evidence for unknown reasons according to Christoffersen and his team.
CEO of the Paul Watson Foundation, Omar Todd, has his own thoughts as to why this evidence has been ignored. According to Todd, the crux of the issue centers around the Faroe Islands and their relationship to whaling. This small cluster of islands sits in the north Atlantic just north of England as an independent country under Danish rule. The Faroese routinely engage in a bizarre and utterly violent past time they call a "grindle up" where according to Todd the community herds pilot whales into shallow fjords and slaughter them for sport. It seems obvious to Todd that the Faroese see Watson as a nuisance and are sympathetic to Japan's request for extradition. "We think [the Faroese] are the ones that notified the Danish authorities that Paul was on his way to the north Pacific via Greenland. Based on that information, the Japanese basically reignited their old Interpol Red Notice, but only to the Danish government," said Todd. "If you go in there to defend the whales, the Danish navy shows up", says Todd. "The navy is defending whale killers that under Danish law is illegal."
As of today, Watson has spent more than 100 days incarcerated in Greenland for offenses that would be fineable in any other jurisdiction. "The optics are very bad for Denmark," says Todd. "The best thing they can do to make this go away is to release him. I'm stunned they haven't done so yet". Watson's incarceration has become a campaign in and of itself. Countless signatures have been collected demanding for his release. The leaders of various countries are putting pressure on Denmark to do the right thing. President Macron of France is one such leader pushing for Watson's release as he contemplates Watson's request for political asylum. Among the many celebrities supporting Watson, filmmaker James Cameron came out publicly stating "the people who defend our life support system should be celebrated, not arrested". According to Todd who has had contact with Watson from prison, Watson believes the attention created from his arrest has brought more awareness to whaling than the campaign he was launching when he set sail for the north Pacific. "You know he's holding this entire campaign on his shoulders. Everything. So the least we can do is try to get him out. And that's what we're going to continue to do."
The question everyone is struggling to answer is why the Danish government is seemingly siding with Japan. The act of issuing a Red Notice is simply a request, not a demand. Denmark's minister of justice ultimately has the authority to accept or reject the request for extradition based on the evidence of the case and the severity of the accusations. Greenland is an autonomous territory governed under the Kingdom of Denmark. The fact that Watson has been incarcerated for months for charges that would normally result in a fine suggests bigger political motives are at play. Omar Todd believes there may be mutually aligned economic interests between Japan and Greenland citing a visit by Japan in 2023 and the development of a new airport in Nuuk. "We believe the Japanese went to Greenland in 2023 and perhaps there were trade arrangements done there", says Todd.
What may seem like insurmountable odds doesn't deter Watson who in 1973 joined the American Indian Movement's occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Realizing they were grossly outnumbered against federal officials and other law enforcement agencies who had cordoned off the area, Watson looked to the leader of the movement, Russell Means for a plan. "We're not concerned about winning or losing", said Means. "We're here because this is the right place to be, the right time to do it, and the right thing to do. And what you do today will define what the future will be."
Watson has been through five adjournments since his arrest in July. His next court date is set for November 15th. Please visit paulwatsonfoundation.org to learn more and show your support.
"When people think of the ocean, they think of the sea. And the sea is just one part of the ocean. The ocean is a planet. It is water in constant circulation. Sometimes it's in the sea, sometimes it's locked in ice, sometimes it's underground, sometimes it's in the clouds, sometimes it's in the cells of every living plant and animal on the planet."
- Paul Watson
