Who’s Who in Green: Captain Paul Watson, Marine Activist

Captain Paul Watson is more than a little controversial. The anti-whaling activist is aggressive, tenacious and unapologetic when it comes to his goals of protecting and preserving the environment, particularly marine animals. Watson is known as a bit of a radical, having deployed dramatic tactics as founder of Sea Shepherd, an anti-whaling organization.

Born in Canada in 1950, Watson was an animal lover from an early age, reportedly going out into the forest at nine years old to find and destroy leg traps. He spent years on the sea both in the Canadian Coast Guard and as a merchant seaman with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver. At nineteen, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island, and the group he was with formed into the Don’t Make a Wave committee. From that group evolved what we know today as Greenpeace.

The incident that spurred his lifelong love for whales and ardent desire to protect them from harm occurred in 1975 while he was serving as First Officer on a Greenpeace voyage to confront Soviet whaling. His official biography (via Wikipedia) describes the incident:

In June 1975, Robert Hunter and Paul Watson were the first people to put their lives on the line to protect whales when Paul placed his inflatable Zodiac between a Russian harpoon vessel and a pod of defenseless Sperm whales. During this confrontation with the Russian whaler, a harpooned and dying sperm whale loomed over Paul’s small boat. Paul recognized a flicker of understanding in the dying whale’s eye. He felt that the whale knew what they were trying to do. He watched as the magnificent leviathan heaved its body away from his boat, slipped beneath the waves and died. A few seconds of looking into this dying whale’s eye changed his life forever. He vowed to become a lifelong defender of the whales and all creatures of the seas.

Watson’s newfound passion soon got him into trouble, though. Greenpeace found his opposition to their nonviolence policy to be divisive and kicked him out in 1977. It was then that he founded Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the organization that he still helms today.

Sea Shepherd has gotten a lot of press in recent years for their aggressive tactics. Many people may disagree with the act of ramming whaling ships, throwing butyric acid onto their decks and even jumping onboard. They’ve clashed with Greenpeace, which also protests whaling – albeit more peacefully. But many believe that Sea Shepherd’s techniques are just what is needed to stop whalers from illegally killing whales.

In an interview with Treehugger, Watson explains why whaling still continues despite the International Whaling Commission moratorium and why it’s so difficult to stop it.

One word – greed. When there is money to be made from exploiting nature, that is in and of itself enough of a powerful motivation. Unfortunately there are fortunes to be made in destroying the oceans and no profit to be found in protecting the seas and the threatened life within. Japan, Norway and Iceland are blatantly violating international conservation law in their ruthless slaughter of the whales.

We have all the laws we need to stop the slaughter of whales but we lack the political and economic will on the part of governments to enforce the laws. Sea Shepherd simply upholds the laws that exist but that are not being enforced. Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary could be ended tomorrow if nations like the United States or Australia demanded that the criminal slaughter of whales is ended.

To this day, Watson takes an active part in Sea Shepherd campaigns. He’s on the front lines of the anti-whaling efforts, earning him a reputation as a fierce and feisty eco-pirate and a spot among the world’s most notorious environmental activists.

Paul Watson’s Green Score: 58,984

Photo credit: The New Yorker + Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

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