Interviews

Paul Watson Interview

Sea Shepherd founder and Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson has been making headlines as an activist for more than 30 years.

The colourful Canadian’s clashes with the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean are the subject of the Discovery Channel’s TV series Whale Wars, which premiered in Australia on August 11.

Watson talks to Seanna Cronin about Whale Wars, the label eco-pirate and his first direct intervention with whalers in the 1970s.

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Q: Why you decided to let Animal Planet’s cameras come on board with you during your anti-whaling campaigns?

A: Well, Whale Wars gives us the opportunity to bring literally millions of people down to one of the most remote and hostile areas of the world to see what’s going on down there, the illegal taking of whales by Japan and our efforts to stop that.

Q: And are there certain additional precautions you have to take when you have a camera crew on board?

A: No, I think that we have the same safety precautions. We have a doctor on board. We have medical equipment. We can actually perform surgery if need be. We have all the lifesaving equipment. So there’s not much more additional that we would need to do.

Q: The 2007/2008 campaign featured in series one of Whale Wars was one of your most controversial trips. Do you see it as a positive thing that you can have the cameras there to record some of those things that happened?

A: Well, yes. I mean, we have nothing to hide with what we’re doing. We’re not even protesting, and we’re certainly not doing anything illegal. What we’re doing is going down there to uphold international conservation law against an illegal activity. The Japanese are targeting endangered whales in an established whale sanctuary, in violation of a global moratorium on whaling and in contempt of an Australian federal court.

Q: Your ships that go down to the Antartic are based in Melbourne. What do you think about the Australian government’s stance in how they’re dealing with Japan in regards to the Japanese whaling in Antarctic waters?

A: Well, I was quite hopeful when Peter Garrett was in the opposition. He said that Rudd government would do everything it could to stop whaling, including taking Japan to court, sending vessels down there. They promised to stop whaling. I remember him saying to the liberal government that it was all smoke and mirrors, all talk about saving whales and doing nothing. Well, two years later he may as well be talking to himself. They’ve done absolutely nothing, except to harass us. In fact, we were treated far better by the former government than by this government. In fact, the former minister of environment, Ian Campbell, is on our advisory board now.

Q: That is a surprise to hear. Have they been hassling you more or making things more difficult for you?

A: Yes, they’ve been making it more difficult for me, difficult – I get hassled coming into the country. We were raided by the federal police and had all our videos taken from us when we came in. That was based on a Japanese complaint. I mean, Australia acknowledges that Japan is whaling illegally, but then when Japan makes the complaint about us, the Australian government takes action against us. Really what it all comes down to is that trade trumps conservation, and the Australian government is more concerned about trade relations with Japan than in upholding conservation laws.

Q: And how do you stay so motivated to keep doing all of the activities that you’re doing in the face of such a large-scale problem and such fierce opposition from Japan?

A: Well, I’ve always felt, for many years, and I’ve been doing this for many years, that the key to success is persistence, and we don’t give up. We just keep banging away at the problem, and we’ll solve it. And I’m quite confident that we’ll drive the Japanese out of the area. In fact, our objective is to sink the Japanese whaling fleet economically, to bankrupt them, and we’re well on the way to doing that. They haven’t made a profit for three years, so we’ve cut their quotas in half. We’ve hurt them economically quite bad. And this is the only language that they really understand, is profit and loss. So we have to make sure that their losses continue to exceed their profits.

Q: Why do you think the Japanese government is still so passionately driving the issue when it seems a lot of younger Japanese people don’t really seem to support whaling or eating whale meat?

A: Well, I agree that most Japanese aren’t very passionate in one way or the other, but if they don’t know anything about it - less than five percent of the people in Japan eat whale meat. But that certainly represents a market for somebody.

We were able to get attention in Japan when two of our people boarded a Japanese vessel, and for the first time we got news coverage in Japan which, for the first time, made a lot of people aware of what was going on down there. And as a result, we’re actually getting support from Japanese people. And I’ve had Japanese volunteers.

So it’s hard getting through that media veil in Japan because they pretty much report what the government wants them to report unless it’s super dramatic. And so that’s why we have to make our campaigns as dramatic as possible.

Q: I’ve read some varying accounts about when it was that you first put yourself in between a whale and its hunters. Can you describe the first time that you actually used that tactic?

A: Well, I came up with that tactic in 1974, and we first put it into effect in June of 1975 when we confronted the Soviet whaling fleet in the North Pacific, so that was the very first time that anybody had actually put themselves between a harpoon and a whale.

And it was actually an occasion that changed my life quite dramatically, because they fired the harpoon over our head and struck one of the females in a pod, and she screamed. And then suddenly the large male dove and swam underneath of us, and we expected that he would attack us, but in fact he threw himself at the harpooner. And they were waiting for him and they, at point-blank range, shot a harpoon into his head, and he screamed and fell back into the water. And it’s very human-like screams. And as he was rolling about in agony on the surface, I caught his eye, and he saw me, and then he dove, and I saw a trail of bloody bubbles coming straight at us. And he came up and out of the water at an angle so that the next move was to fall right down on top of us. And as his head rose up out of the water, and I looked into this eye, an eye the size of my fist, what I saw there actually changed my life forever, because I really saw that that whale understood what we were trying to do. And I could see the effort that he made to pull himself back, and I saw his eye disappear beneath the surface, and he died. So the whale could have killed me, and he chose not to do so. So personally I feel indebted to that whale that - for the fact I’m still alive.

I mean, the whale could have killed me. And I could see the effort it made to not do so. And I began to think why? Why were we killing these whales? The Russians were killing whales, sperm whales, for spermicetti oil, which is used for lubricating machinery. And one of the things that it was prized for was the manufacture of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and I said here we are destroying this beautiful, intelligent creature for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings, and that’s when it just struck me, we must be insane. So ever since I’ve worked for the whales and the other creatures of the sea, not people. So when people criticise me, I say, well, too bad. My clients are whales. Find me one whale that disagrees with what we do, and I’ll change my mind.

Q: So did you have a fascination with whales before that experience with the harpooning of the whales right in front of you?

A: Yes. I was raised in a fishing village in Eastern Canada, so I had a very close relationship to a lot of wild animals. And, in fact, it was beavers that first got me involved, because trappers started taking all the beavers around the ponds where I lived, and one of those beavers was -- I considered a friend. I used to swim with him. And the next summer when I went back, he was gone.

I began to walk the trap lines in winter and freeing the animals from the traps and destroying the traps. So I’ve been doing that ever since I was ten years old.

Q: So using these tactics is kind of ingrained in you?

A: Yes. The tactics are direct interventions. But one big difference between us and like a lot of other organizations, not only do we directly intervene, but we make sure that we do inside, within the boundaries of the law. Now, there might be a perception that what we do is illegal. But we’ve never been convicted of a felony in our entire 33 years of operations here.

And the reason for that is an understanding of the law and an understanding that we’re upholding the law. We’ve gone to court a few times, but we’ve always won in the court, in the courts.

And that’s a very important thing. We get called an eco-terrorist organization, but if I was an eco-terrorist I would be in jail.

Q: I’ve read about people calling you an eco-pirate. Do you feel comfortable with that label either? Or do you think it’s inaccurate?

A: I don’t mind that so much because when people began to call us pirates, I simply just took the Jolly Roger and said, okay, if you want to call us pirates, we’ll be pirates. But if you go back to the 17th century, you’ll find that it wasn’t the British Navy that cleaned out the pirates out of the Caribbean, and the reason for that is that all the politicians and the merchants were on the take. Not much has changed over the years. But the piracy was finally shut down in the Caribbean because of the actions of one man, Henry Morgan, who was a pirate. So pirates get things done. I mean, the founder of the United States Navy, John Paul Jones, was a pirate. I mean, pirates get things done because they’re not encumbered by bureaucracy and corruption.

Q: You are obviously trying to reach out to people and gain awareness for the causes Sea Shepherd supports. Do you ever worry about offending people?

A: I’ve offended people all my life. That’s my job. I’ve always felt that being a conservationist means you have to rock the boat and make people think, and sometimes we think of feelings. We have to say things people don’t want to hear, and we do things people don’t want to be seeing done, but we get things done. Quite frankly, I’m not convinced that adults can be changed, anyway, so I don’t really tend to change people’s awareness.

What’s most gratifying to me about the Whale Wars program is the reaction to children that I meet. And every single day now, because of the show, I’m being recognized, and primarily by children. And so they understand, and they’re getting the message.

Q: Have you begun preparations for this upcoming whaling season in the Antarctic summer?

A: Right now we’re preparing. The Steve Irwin just got out of dry-dock. We’re looking for a second vessel. We’ve secured a faster vessel, the Earthrace, which actually set the world record last year for going around the world, does 50 knots, and it’ll be our interceptor vessel.

But we’re also trying to get another ship. But we’re all ready to go down. We’ll be leaving on December 7. And this will be our sixth campaign. And this year we’re calling it Operation Waltzing Matilda, and the reason being is that we have enjoyed the support of the Australian people, an overwhelming support of the Australian people, although the Australian government has been, ever since the Rudd government’s come in, has been quite hostile.

So we want to make it quite clear that this is an effort coming out of Australia and fully backed by the Australian people. About a third of our crew will be Australian.

Q: What do you think that scuba divers, whether it’s their hobby or their profession, can do to help marine conservation?

A: Well, the two groups that we’ve been appealing to closely over the years have been scuba divers and surfers, and we do go to the conferences, like the DEMA conference, and we talk to dive clubs. And, for instance, a bunch of divers, we helped them to get together in the Santa Monica Bay area, and we helped them get a boat. And what they do is they go out every weekend and collect old, discarded nets and traps and long lines, and I had them pull them up, and cleaning up the bottom.

So we’re trying to organize and get scuba divers and surfers around the world to actively participate.
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