‘Legally Pirate’ Paul Watson and his strategy of aggressive non-violence

Captain Paul Watson has been a hero for marine life for many decades now. He was back in the news this month when he announced a mission to thwart Japan’s plan to resume whaling near the continent of Antarctica, and Operation Ice Storm, his plan to prevent the hunting of fin whales by an Icelandic multi-millionaire.

One of the founding members and directors of Greenpeace, Watson left the organization in 1977 after a disagreement and started the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He received the Genesis Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1998, was named one of the Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th century by Time magazine in 2000, and was inducted into the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame in Washington D.C. in 2002. He was awarded the Amazon Peace Prize by the president of Ecuador in 2007 and the Jules Verne Adventures Pole Star Medal in 2012, the only time the medal was given and the last year the awards were announced.

Watson now continues his fight for marine wildlife conservation with the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. In a conversation on Zoom with TheSnout.in, he spoke about his journey, why he is such a controversial figure, and his love for the ocean and nature. Excerpts:

How did your journey of compassion towards marine life begin?

It goes a long way back. When I was 10 years old, I spent a summer swimming with a family of beavers in Canada where I was raised, and I had a great time. The next summer when I went back to find the beavers, they were gone. I found that trappers had taken them during the winter. So the next winter, when I was 11, I walked the traplines to free the animals and destroy the traps and, well, I guess I’ve been doing the same thing for the last 60 years.

Would it be wrong to call you a sea hero like Captain Jack Sparrow?

Well, I’m legally a pirate because the Ninth Circuit Court of the United States said I was a pirate even though they didn’t charge me with anything. I have never been convicted of anything, but some federal judge labelled me a pirate! So, I guess that’s true.

There have been a number of documentary films like Pirate for the Sea (2008), Eco-Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson (2011), so the pirate theme is sort of run through it. Although what I have done over my life really is interfere against illegal activities, so we are actually intervening against those illegal activities. It’s through a strategy that I developed in 1977, which I call aggressive non-violence, so we are going to non-violently intervene, but we are going to do it aggressively. It also means we certainly can justify destroying equipment which is being used to kill life for illegal activities. Sinking a whaling ship, for example.

I guess the best definition of aggressive non-violence is if a man’s about to shoot a tiger and he is a poacher and you knock that rifle out of his hand and break it, then to me that’s an act of non-violence. You saved a life, but you have destroyed an inanimate object.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where property takes precedence over life many times. People view destruction of property, even when that property is being used illegally, to be a violent act.

Recently, you have been working to halt Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary. Any updates on the situation since it first came to light?

I have led 10 expeditions to the Southern Ocean to interfere against illegal Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Finally, in 2019, they went back and gave up, or seemingly surrendered their whaling operations. That was in response to a 2014 ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, that their activities were illegal. They haven’t killed any whales in the Southern Ocean since 2019, but they just finished the construction of a new factory ship, and there is only one reason why they have a factory ship that big with that long a range, and that’s to go back to the Southern Ocean. Plus they have been down there for the last two summers doing research on whale numbers and so I’m convinced they are going to return to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary at the end of this year, so we are being prepared to meet them if they do.

Could you shed some light on Operation Ice Storm?

We have been opposed to Iceland whaling for many years and we shut them down in 2007, 2019. Last year, when we arrived in Icelandic waters, the government shut it down. But this year, a man named Kristjan Loftsson—who doesn’t do it for the money, he is the richest man in Iceland, but he likes killing whales and it costs him about a million dollars to do this, this is more of a hobby than anything else—he says he is going to go out even no matter what the government says, and he has a lot of influence with them, and so he is planning to go whaling on June 17 and we plan to be there to stop his operations if he does.

This man is 80 years old, but he is obsessed with killing whales. We can call him a modern-day Captain Ahab. It has to be kept in mind that fin whales are an endangered species and killing whales for commercial purposes has been illegal since 1986. That year itself I sank half of his whaling fleet. I sent two of his ships to the bottom in Reykjavík harbour and that might sound like it’s illegal, but I then went to Iceland to demand that they lay charges against me, which they refused to do. The then minister of justice said, “Who does he think he is? He comes into our country and demands to be arrested? Get him out of here!”

The reason they wouldn’t charge me is that they knew that to put me on trial for sinking those ships would be to put themselves on trial for their illegal whaling, and they didn’t want that kind of exposure. So, you know, I’ve never been convicted of a felony crime in my entire history and the reason for that is that people we oppose are pretty much outlaws.

Why do you think so many humans like to kill or destroy whales in particular?

Whaling is a long and old industry and it has decimated whale populations worldwide. It has led to many a problem. Since 1950, there has been a 40% diminishment in phytoplankton in the sea. These aquatic plants provide up to 70% oxygen in the air we breathe. The reason for this diminishment has been the diminishment of whales, dolphins, seabirds, sea turtles and other creatures in the sea, because they provide the nutrient base for phytoplankton—iron, magnesium and nitrogen. So the diminishment of these species leads to the diminishment of the phytoplankton.

This is why I always say, ‘If phytoplankton dies, the ocean dies, and if the ocean dies, we die!’ The whales are literally the farmers of the ocean, providing the nutrient base for phytoplankton.

Whales have been killed for many reasons over the years. Up until the 1870s they were killed for oil, until the development of petroleum replaced whale oil. After that they were killed for everything from the building of ignitions like in World War I explosives and everything was made out of whale fat. In the 1970s, we found out that the Russians were killing sperm whales for spermaceti oil, which is a very high heat-resistant lubricating oil. One of the things that was used for is in the construction and maintenance of intercontinental ballistic missiles. So here we are, killing this beautiful, intelligent creature for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings! So it really reflects on what I refer to as the ecological insanity of humanity.

From Portugal to Germany and many more… why do you think you are met with so much resistance in so many countries?

Anybody who is going to oppose any operations that are making a lot of money, you are going to create a lot of enemies.

We get called names. Pirates… I get called an “eco-terrorist”, but I have never worked for Monsanto or Exxon. Those are the real eco-terrorists. We have never injured anybody. I actually gave a lecture to the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] 10 years ago and they paid me to give that lecture. One of the FBI agents says, “You know, uh, you are walking a pretty fine line when it comes to the law.” And I said, “Well, it doesn’t matter how fine the line is as long as you don’t cross the line.”

We continue to do what we do as we have all the rules and regulations and treaties we need to protect life in the ocean, but there is a complete lack of economic and political motivation to uphold those laws. What’s the point of having laws without enforcement?

Let’s go back in time. I read that Cleveland Amory, founder of The Fund for Animals and an early pioneer in animal rights activism in America, helped you in your initial days. Tell us about it.

I was a co-founder at Greenpeace in 1971 and I left Greenpeace in 1977 and Cleveland Amory was a man who supported my appeal to go after the killers of seals and whales. He provided me with the funds to buy the first Sea Shepherd vessel and the funds for the operation came from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the U.K. I always found it sort of interesting that we are considered such a radical organization, but we were initially funded by two very conservative organizations—The Fund for Animals and the RSPCA. Cleveland died in 1998, but up until then, I was working very closely with The Fund for Animals. After he died, it got taken over by The Humane Society of the United States and it doesn’t exist anymore.

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Greenpeace and CPWF are quite aggressive in their approach and that often puts a lot of people off, particularly if they don’t agree with some of their campaigns. How do you see this and what are your thoughts?

We are quite different from Greenpeace. It addresses issues ranging from pollution to nuclear power. We don’t do that. We are exclusively about marine wildlife and we are about animal rights. All our ships are vegan, for example, which is quite different from Greenpeace. The other thing is our philosophy of aggressive non-violence, to intervene aggressively but non-violently. So, we are a different group. I was with Sea Shepherd, but I was forced out by a hostile takeover because the people who took over wanted to become more mainstream. They didn’t like my confrontational and controversial approach. So, I simply reorganized under the Captain Paul Watson Foundation and we now have two ships and we are carrying on doing what we have always done since 1977. Sea Shepherd, the group that I established, are now actually suing me saying I have no right to use the name or the logos, which I’m not doing, so I don’t know why they are doing that. It doesn’t really matter because what I took from Sea Shepherd were the three most important things—the passion,  courage and imagination of our crew. Hundreds and hundreds of our former crew have joined the Captain Paul Watson Foundation and they are the people that are crewing the two ships that we have.

What makes you so controversial? Especially given that what you are doing is actually a good thing…

It’s because we take direct action to intervene. A lot of people just want to sign petitions or write letters, take pictures and hang banners. We don’t do that. We go in and stop these illegal activities.

We shut down whaling, sealing, and poaching operations. We are more like a law enforcement thing, although self-appointed, but we are entitled to do what we do under the United Nations World Charter for Nature which was ratified by the U.N. General Assembly in 1986. It says in the U.N. Charter for Nature that every individual, nation, organization, NGO [non-governmental organization] has a responsibility to uphold international conservation law. I have used the Charter when I was taken to court in Canada for interfering with trawling on the Grand Banks and I won the case. I used it again when we interfered against illegal tuna fishing in the Mediterranean and we were sued and we won the case because we have every right to intervene.

As a child you were a member of The Kindness Club. Tell us what you learnt there and how that affected little Paul.

When I was rescuing beavers from traps, Aida Flemming, wife of Hugh John Flemming, the New Brunswick premier, set up a group called The Kindness Club. Albert Schweitzer was the honorary president, if I remember. I was a member as a child. It was basically to educate children to be kind to animals. When I was 20, I was coming back from saving seals on the east coast of Canada and I stopped by to visit their home, and as I left Aida called me the Hitman for The Kindness Club. I thought that was pretty good. She said what I had done was taken The Kindness Club and turned it into action. So yeah, that’s what I recall. I actually wrote a book last year called Hitman for The Kindness Club.

Read: Paul Watson’s team to stop hunting of fin whales in Iceland

How did you feel when you first saw a whale?

I was probably five years old. I lived in an East Coast fishing village, so I had seen whales and seals and wild animals from the time I was a young child. There wasn’t anything overwhelmingly surprising, but I do remember that there were more whales, more sea birds and wildlife back then in the 1950s and early 1960s, than there is now.

One of the things I tell younger people, especially because they say, “Nothing’s changed”, I say, “Everything has changed.” Thirty years ago if you were driving a car, I don’t know about India, but if you were driving a car in North America, after every long trip, you had to get out and wash your windows of all the dead insects that hit your windshield. That doesn’t happen anymore, and the reason it doesn’t happen anymore is there’s fewer insects than there were back then. The population of insects is diminishing at an alarming rate, and without insects we are in serious trouble.

A few years ago I got a call from a reporter from the Fox Network. He said, “Did you say that whales, worms, trees and bees were more important than people?” And I said, “Yes.” So he said, “How could you say something so outrageous. It is anti-Christian!” I replied, “The reason for that is that they can live here without us, but we can’t live here without them.”

We don’t live in a world without worms, bees, trees and whales. There are three basic laws in ecology. The first is the law of diversity: the strength of an ecosystem is in diversity. The second is the law of interdependence: that all the species within an ecosystem are interdependent with each other; and the third is the law of finite resources. There is a limit to growth because there is a limit to carrying capacity, and when one species diminishes the carrying capacity of other species, that leads directly to diminishment of both diversity and interdependence, which leads to ecological collapse.

The problem is that for thousands of years our species has developed an anthropocentric point of view: it’s all about us, it was all created for us, we are the only important species, we are the only species that matters. We forget that indigenous cultures around the world had a biocentric point of view, which is, we are part of everything. We have to live in harmony with all other species, and unless we learn to, with a little bit of humility, accept the fact that we are not the greatest species on the planet, that it was not all created for us, then we are simply not going to survive, because we have to live in harmony with all of those other species.

For that reason, three years ago, I actually established my own church called The Church of Biocentrism. It’s not a religious thing. It’s a scientific thing more than anything, but you know, people like churches. It’s based on those three laws of ecology.

A few years ago I had a debate with a whaler from Norway and he said, “But Watson, you say that whales are more intelligent than people, how can you say such a stupid thing?” And I said, “George, I measure intelligence by the ability to live in harmony with the natural world and by that criteria whales are far more intelligent than we are.” So he said, “By that criteria cockroaches are more intelligent then we are…” And I said, “George, you’re beginning to understand what I’m trying to tell you.”

Today, you are an inspiration to countless lovers of marine life and animals across the globe. What, or who, was your biggest inspiration?

Over the years, people like Farley Mowat, who was one of Canada’s great nature writers. Jacques Cousteau is another. But mainly I have been inspired by the animals I have been working with.

Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, especially because those in power strongly opposed you?

No, never. I learned a very important lesson when I was 22. I was a medic in the American Indian movement in South Dakota in 1973 during the occupation of Wounded Knee. It was over treaty rights and we were surrounded by U.S. federal agents who were shooting at us and they killed two people and wounded 46. I went to Russell Means, who was the leader of the American Indian movement, and said, “Look, we don’t have any chance of winning. We are overwhelmed, the odds are against us, so why are we here?” He told me something that stayed with me forever. He said:

“Well, we are not concerned about the odds against us and we are not concerned about winning or losing. We are here because it’s the right place to be, the right thing to do, and the right time to do it.

“Never worry about the future and don’t get pessimistic about it as you have no power in the future. All your power is in the present, but what you do in the present will define what the future will be.”

That’s why I never get pessimistic or depressed because I put all my energies into doing what I can in the present and I don’t really worry about the future. The future will be what the future will be, depending upon what we all do.

How does it feel to be a knight in shining armour for those who can’t speak for themselves?

I don’t know if I have ever been called a knight in shining armour. I have been called a pirate and an outlaw! After we sunk those ships in Iceland, a former colleague from Greenpeace said, “What you did was despicable and you are an embarrassment to the entire movement.” I said, “So?” He said, “Aren’t you concerned about what people think of you?” I replied, “No. I didn’t sink those ships for you. I sunk them for the whales. If you find me a whale that disagrees with what I did, then I promise you I won’t do it again.”

You started as one man but today have a strong team. How did you manage to get so many people involved in your mission?

When people see that you are doing something, then they want to be involved. We also did a very successful television show that ran for seven seasons called Whale Wars and that attracted a lot of people to us. My problem is not getting supporters. My problem is getting too many people wanting to participate. I only have so much room on the ships.

What message would you like to give those living in India about marine life?

Protecting the ocean is something we all have in common because, as I say, “If the ocean dies, we die!” The ocean is the foundation for all life on the planet. Last year, I wrote a children’s book called We Are the Ocean.

What that says is that we call this planet Earth, but it’s actually the planet Ocean. It’s water in continuous circulation. Sometimes it’s in the sea, in ice, underground, in the clouds. But sometimes, it’s in the cells of every living plant and animal, so the water in your body now has been in the clouds and most recently in the sea. It was also once in the body of tigers and elephants and butterflies.

It constantly is flowing through all those mediums, so the question is what is the ocean, and the answer to me is we are the ocean. This planet is the ocean and all connected by that one element called water. If people can look at it that way, whatever you do on land affects what’s in the sea and whatever you do in the sea affects what’s in the air and whatever you do in the air affects the life of every plant and animal on the planet.

Tell us about your personal life. Was it easy constantly being away from family and friends?

Yes and no. I have one daughter who is 42 and she has sailed with me on many campaigns. I have had nephews that have sailed with me, and right now I have a seven-year-old and a two-year-old, so they are a little young to do that. This hasn’t interfered with my family at all. My daughter once said, “All my friends’ fathers are bankers or carpenters or teachers, but I’m the only child whose father is actually a genuine pirate!” So, she was quite proud of that.

What gives you the strength to keep going on? 

I don’t really know. I never thought about what gives me the strength to go. I just do what I have to do. I like doing what I’m doing. There is a lot of satisfaction in saving the lives of endangered species and protecting threatened habitats.

 

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