Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out temperate zones and tropic climbs and thriving seas winds blowing through breathing trees strong ozone sunshine good planets are hard to find.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello, Case Good listeners. It's every other Sunday again, and you're listening to Sustainability Now, a bi weekly Case Good radio show focused on environment, sustainability, and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. For uncounted millennia, the creatures of the world's ocean have been hunted, captured, and killed by human beings. For most of that history, however, this was done for subsistence purposes. Only over the last few centuries was the slaughter of whales, seals, otters, turtles, sharks, and other marine species justified in the name of capitalism and industry. Beginning in the late 1960s, exposing and preventing this continued decimation became the mission of individuals and groups dedicated to direct action meant to disrupt those who continue to hunt, capture, and kill. One of the best known of these activists has been Captain Paul Watson, my guest today on Sustainability Now. Watson has founded several well known environmental organizations, committed numerous ships and campaigns, and fought against the murder of marine species for more than half a century.
Earlier this year, he published Hitman for The Kindness Club high Seas Escapades and Heroic Adventures of an Eco Activist, a memoir that recounts how, since the early 1970s, he's been on the forefront and front line of direct action to protect the biodiversity of Earth's marine environments.
Captain Paul Watson. Welcome to Sustainability. Now.
[00:02:07] Speaker C: Paul. Thank you.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: I don't want to begin by asking who you are and what you do, since that should become apparent during our conversation, but you've just published hitman for The Kindness Club a Memoir of your Adventures and Activities over the last 50 Odd years. And I'm wondering what motivated you to write the memoir now, and could you explain the title?
[00:02:29] Speaker C: Well, I've actually written quite a few books like Her Autobiographies, but this one is a collection of short stories that goes back to when I was very young and up to the modern time. So it's like 60 years of experiences that are in this book. And what motivated the title was when I was ten years old, I was a member of the Kindness Club, which was a group that was set up by IDA Fleming. She was the wife of the conservative premier of New Brunswick at the time, but she set this group up for children, to teach children to be kind to animals. Albert Schweitzer was the honorary president of this, and so I was a member of that club. And that year, actually, I spent the summer swimming with a family of beavers and had a great time, wonderful time, particularly this one beaver that I got to know very well. And the next summer when I returned, I couldn't find them, and I found out that trappers had killed them all during the winter. And that made me quite angry. So that winter, I began to walk the trap lines and free animals from the traps and destroy the traps. And I guess I've been doing the same thing for the last 60 years.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Is that what motivated you to become such an ardent defender of marine species?
[00:03:39] Speaker C: I think so. I was raised in an Eastern Canadian fishing village, so I was very close to marine animals whales, seabirds seals. I witnessed the seal hunt when I was nine years old.
When I came back from leading the campaign to protect seals for a greenpeace back in 1976, I stopped by to meet a C, IDA Fleming, who I hadn't seen for many years in Frederickton, New Brunswick. And as I left, she called me the hitman for the Kindness Club, which I took as a compliment.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Well, you're Captain Paul Watson, but in reading the memoir, I see that you began as a lowly member of a crew on a merchant vessel, so maybe you can tell it. Yeah, go on.
[00:04:26] Speaker C: I ran off to sea when I was 17, and I joined the Norwegian Merchant Marine. I spent a year with them. I was with the Swedish Merchant Marine. Then I worked with the Canadian Coast Guard. So that's where I got my sea experience. But it was in 1969 when I had just come back from a trip across the Pacific with the Norwegian Merchant Marine, and there was a demonstration at the Canadian Washington border, and it was against the testing of nuclear weapons at Amchika Island up in the Aleutians. And it was a protest that was organized by two groups, the Sierra Club and the other one was the Quakers. And I was a supporter of the Sierra Club at the time. And out of that protest, we formed a group called the Don't Make a Wave Committee because people still remember the tsunami that hit Vancouver Island and the Big Island of Hawaii back after the 64 earthquake in Anchorage. So we wanted to put that idea into people's head that nuclear testing could cause a tsunami coming out from the Aleutians. And so we came up with this idea let's sail a boat up there like the Quakers did in 1956 at Bikini Atoll and protest the bomb. And so we put this all together, and in November of 71, I sailed on the Greenpeace Two. There was two boats. The greenpeace and the greenpeace two. The Greenpeace went up first, but they had to come back, and we were the ones that replaced them. And the Atomic Energy Commission blew the bomb up two days ahead of schedule when we were still a few hundred miles away. And so we thought at first it was a failure, but all subsequent tests were actually canceled after that because of the publicity that was generated because of our voyage into the bomb.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Maybe it is worth mentioning why the AEC was blowing up nuclear bombs in Alaska what was the logic?
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Well, they needed to blow it up on us territory. I think they were using nevada, but they thought that the illusions was remote enough, and they drilled a big hole in amchika. It was an underground explosion, but the first test actually killed quite a few sea otters and seals because of the shockwaves that went through the ocean. Now, everybody had their reason to be going up there. The sierra club, because it was an environmental issue, the quakers because it was a peace issue.
I had a completely different motivation because amchika was a wildlife preserve and you couldn't take a gun onto the island. But here we are blowing up a five megaton bomb, which was actually killing animals. So that was my motivation to go up there. And then after that, we then opposed french atmospheric testing down in maharoa toll in the south pacific. And in 1974, bob hunter, paul spong, and I said, well, let's go do something to save the whales. And so we organized the first whale campaigns.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: The reason I asked that question was, as I recall, there was this idea of using nuclear bombs to build harbors and for mining purposes. I think it was edward teller's notion was and was called Plowshare's project, I think. Right. It was peaceful uses for nuclear weapons. It was a little bit unconvincing, but I'm just saying that for our listeners.
[00:07:42] Speaker C: I'm not surprised it came from edward teller, who was a bit of a fanatic when it came to nuclear bombs and nuclear power.
But of course, it wasn't as bad as donald trump wanting to use them to stop hurricanes.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Well, yeah, well, we won't go there. All right.
So you went to being captain of various ships, right? To being the skipper.
Yes. I was just wondering how that happened, the progress there.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: Well, I worked my way up from ordinary seamen to able seamen in the merchant marine, and then rescue officer in the canadian coast guard. So when I joined greenpeace, I served as first officer from 71 until 77. And then when I left, I set up my own organization, got my own ships, and then I was captaining my own vessels from 77 till the present day.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Well, so direct action and monkey wrenching were central to your strategies and tactics. And I don't know how many of our listeners have heard of edward abbey's monkey wrench gang, but I was wondering how influential that might have been in terms of your tactics.
[00:08:57] Speaker C: Well, I was doing things well before that book came out, but edward abbey was an early advisor to my organization, and I had a lot of correspondence with him. And in fact, when he did the sequel to the monkey wrench gang, which was hey duke lives, in the last few pages of the book, I rescue george washington hey duke, with my ship in the sea of cortez. So he actually put my real name and the name of the organization in the ship in that fictional book called hey, Duke Lives.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't remember that. I mean, I've read it, but that was a long time ago.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: You can look it up. It's there.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: I don't doubt it for a moment.
So, going back to particularly the French nuclear test, what did you do actually?
What were your activities there?
[00:09:47] Speaker C: My primary involvement in that was to counter the Jean Dark, which was a helicopter carrier that was coming into Vancouver. And I put this small little boat called the Astral on a collision course with the Jean Dark as it came under the Lionsgate Bridge. Meanwhile, we had a crew up on the Lionsgate Bridge that dropped this gigantic banner made out of bedsheets saying Muharroa Monamur.
And they also dropped buckets of mushrooms and marshmallows onto the ship as it went under to symbolize hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs. But I put my ship on a collision course with the John Dark, forced it to change course a couple of times, and meanwhile, I had the Canadian Coast Guard trying to intercept me, but it worked. And in fact, it was such a daring confrontation that a couple of the French sailors actually threw their hats down to us.
But I think we made our point on that. But meanwhile, we had other vessels that were going to the south, to Maheroa, to the South Pacific, to actually intervene.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: And they were trying to sail into the blast zone to stop the test. Was that the idea?
[00:10:57] Speaker C: They were. But they were intercepted by the French Navy and severely beaten and had their films taken away from them. But again, it focused a lot of international attention on what was going on, and it culminated in 1986 with the French government sinking the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor, which France was very much committed or complicit in. And they actually ended up having to answer to that in the International Court.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Maybe you could tell us more about that. What actually happened?
[00:11:30] Speaker C: The French commandos put mines on the bottom of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor, blew it up, sunk it, killed one person, a photographer, Francisco Pereira, and then they escaped. Two of them were caught by the New Zealand police, and that's when they unveiled this whole thing, this plan to stop the Greenpeace from sailing to Mahoroy at all.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Well, whales figure prominently in your book, and you took on Russian, Japanese, and Norwegian whalers. And tell us about one or more of those episodes and what happened.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: Well, in 1981, that was a good example. We wanted to get evidence on illegal wheeling activities by the Soviet Union, so I organized a voyage to Soviet Siberia, and we landed on the beach in Loreno, Siberia. I think we're the first people to invade Russia since World War II, really. And as we landed on the beach, there were two Soviet soldiers that were patrolling the beach, armed Soviet soldiers. And we got out of the boat and started documenting everything. And we got away with it because these Soviet soldiers assumed we had to be Russians and they weren't going to ask questions because we were looking they were in these Mustang suits and looking rather official and everything. And so for 45 minutes, we documented everything. And then we went back to the boat. And as I was pushing the boat out, the small inflatable boat, I had a photographer in there and another crew member, one of the Soviet soldiers approached, and they pointed at the boat, and he said to me, stoeta, what is that? And I said, oh, it's zodiac. It's a zodiac. And he looked at the motor and he said, Et the Mercury. And that's when I realized that we're probably in trouble. And I continued to push the boat out. And I said to the two guys in the boat, I said, what's he doing? He says, well, he's taking down his rifle. I said, well, laugh and wave and smile at him. And that's what they did. And I think that caused him to be confused enough that instead we saw him running back up the hill to get help. And we got back to the ship with our documentation, and we were feeling pretty good about that for about a half hour. Then suddenly two helicopter gunships came out of nowhere and started circling us and started firing flares across our bow, but I ignored them. And then about another 20 minutes later, this Soviet frigate came up real fast behind us, pulled up alongside of us, and I attempted to ignore him too. And at one point, finally, he gets on the radio and he said, sea shepherd stole up your ship and prepared to be by the Soviet Union. And I said, well, we don't have room for the Soviet Union, so we're not stopping for you. And we didn't. And the thing with Navies is they don't know how to deal with know. It's really confusing to them. And by the time he finally got his orders from Moscow because he wasn't going to make the decision himself, by the time he finally got those orders, we crossed the line back into US. Waters.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now? I'm your host, Ronnie Lipstick, and my guest today is Captain Paul Watson, who is well known for his various activities as an eco activist out at sea. We're just talking about one of his confrontations and campaigns against Soviet whalers. And let's go on.
As I recall from reading the book, which was a few weeks ago, my memory isn't what it used to be that you had other campaigns against Soviet whaling ships. Is that correct?
[00:15:02] Speaker C: Well, our very first campaign when I was with Greenpeace and First Officer of Greenpeace was to go and track down the Soviet whaling fleet, which we found 60 miles off the coast of California. This was before the 200 miles limit and they were just off of Cape Mendocino. So the idea at the time, we're reading a lot of Gandhi and we felt all we had to do was put our bodies between the harpoons and the whales and then they would stop whaling. And Bob Hunter and I put ourself in a small inflatable boat in front of a Soviet harpoon vessel. It was bearing down at full speed upon eight sperm whales that were fleeing for their life. And every time the harpooner tried to take a shot, I would maneuver the boat and block his path. And this worked for about 20 minutes until the captain on the Soviet vessel came running down the catwalk, screamed into the ear of the harpooner and then looked down at us, smiled and brought his finger across his throat. And that's when we realized gandhi wasn't going to really work for us that day. And a few moments later, there's horrendous explosion and the harpoon flew over our head, slammed into the backside of one of the whales in the pod and it was a female and she rolled on her side and blood everywhere. And the largest whale in the pod suddenly rose up, slammed the water with his tail and dove and swam right underneath of us and threw himself at the bow of the harpoon vessel to protect his pod, which is what they expected. They knew he would do that. So they were there with an unattached harpoon and the harpooner pulled the trigger and hit that whale point blank in the head. And he fell back in the water, rolling in agony, blood everywhere. And as this happened, as he rolled about it, I caught his eye. He looked straight at me and he dove. And now I saw a trail of bloody bubbles coming at us real fast and he came up and out of the water right beside us. So the next move was to come down and crack on top of us. And as he rose out of the water and his eye was right there in front of me, so close I could see my own reflection in that eye, I saw something that really changed my life. And that was understanding that Whale understood what we were trying to do, because I could see the effort he made to pull himself back, and his head began to slide back into the sea. As I disappeared beneath the surface, and he died. And he could have killed us and chose not to do so. So I personally owe my life to that whale. But I also saw something else in that eye pity. And not for himself, but for us, that we could take life so thoughtlessly, so mercilessly, and for what? They didn't eat sperm whale meat. They weren't killed for meat. They were killed for oil, sperm whale oil. And spermaceti oil, which is highly prized for high heat resistant lubricating oils and one of the things that it was mostly prized for was the construction and maintenance of intercontinental ballistic missiles. And that's when it just hit me. I was sitting there in the middle of the Russian whaling fleet, the sun's going down, and it just hit me. We are insane. I mean, we're killing these beautiful, intelligent, wonderful, self aware creatures for a weapon made for the mass extermination of human beings. And it was just insanity to me. And so I said at the time, I'm going to dedicate the rest of my life to protecting them and the other citizens of the sea. I don't do this for people. I do it for them.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
More recently, I guess, you've also challenged Japanese and Norwegian whalers. And maybe you can tell our listeners about why the Japanese were hunting whales and then why the Norwegians have been going after them.
[00:18:19] Speaker C: In 1986, the International Whaling Commission called a global moratorium on all commercial whaling. All whaling as of 1986 to now is illegal. But Japan, Norway and Iceland continued to kill whales. Japan's argument was, okay, we're not doing this for commercial reasons. We're doing it for scientific research reasons. But of course, we're going to not don't want the meat to go to waste, so we're going to be selling it on the market in Japan. And it was a completely bogus sort of thing, and it was totally illegal. So we went down in 2005, and every year after that, I was able to organize a television show, Whale Wars, that began in 2007. And the object was to block them, block their operations, prevent them from killing whales. And it was hugely successful. We saved 6500 whales. We cut into their quota every year. In fact, in 2012, 2013, the last year I was down there, they only took 10% of their quota. And so we've become very good at preventing them refueling operations and also preventing them from loading dead whales. And they can't load dead whales because we're blocking the slipway. They can't kill whales. So it was hugely successful. We cost them about $200 million in losses, and they were extremely angry about it. But in 2014, it was taken to the International Court of justice in The Hague, and the International Court ruled that it was illegal. Japan stopped for one year and then resumed completely ignoring the verdict of the International Court. And we finally were able to stop them in 2017. Now, the great thing about 2018 is that it's the first year and probably hundreds of years that there were no whaling activities in international waters. In Plagic. Whaling just stopped. All whaling is now restricted to the waters of Norway, japan and Iceland and Denmark. So my lifelong ambition is to eradicate whaling, and I think we've achieved 90% of that since I began. Australia, Chile, Peru, south Korea, south Africa, Spain. All these countries have ended whaling. And we have confronted the Norwegians, the Danes, the icelanders and the Japanese in that process. And, in fact, this last summer, I showed up in Iceland, and within hours of our arrival, the Icelandic government put a temporary ban on whaling. It resumed again in September 1, although we were surprised because we thought that the Icelandic government would rise to it since the majority of Icelanders are against whaling. But the person who's killing the whales, christian Lawson, is the wealthiest, most influential man in Iceland, and he gets what he wants usually. And now what he wants is a four year permit. So we're preparing our ships to go back in June of 2024 to make sure he doesn't kill any whales. In 2024?
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe you can tell us more about that in a little while.
My recollection is that the Japanese didn't eat whale meat until after World War II. Is that correct? I thought it was Douglas MacArthur who might have encouraged them to take it up, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
[00:21:18] Speaker C: No, you're absolutely right. Japan did do some whaling prior to that. The Norwegians introduced whaling to Japan in 1912. But it wasn't until after the war that Douglas MacArthur actually gave Japan some Liberty ships to refit as whalers and sent them down to the Southern Ocean. His argument being that it was a way of providing cheap protein for the Japanese people after the war. And so when Japan argues now that it's part of their tradition to go whaling, it really isn't.
And I always say to them, if this is part of your tradition, then American occupation should be part of your tradition.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Good point. Good point. Why are the Norwegians and other Scandinavian countries still engaged in whaling? What do they capture whales for?
[00:22:06] Speaker C: Well, Norway has always been one of the worst whaling nations in the world. I mean, they invented the explosive harpoon. It was a guy named Swen Foyne who invented that in the 1860s. But they killed minky whales. They ship a lot of it to Japan. They eat some of it in Norway. Iceland is the most egregious to us right now because they're targeting endangered fin whales, the second largest whale on the planet. And they sell 90% of the meat is sold to Japan, 10% is sold to tourists in Reykjavik, in restaurants in Reykjavik. So Americans and Europeans think that they're good at getting away with something by going and eating whale meat, which they can't eat in their own country. So that's the motivation behind that. But when we first got involved with Iceland, everybody was on the side of the whalers, and now less than 50% are. And I first hit Iceland in 1986. We sank half the whaling fleet in Reykjavik, harbor two of the four vessels we sent to the bottom, and they are never recovered. So now he only has two vessels, and we destroyed the whale processing plant. And I remember I was confronted by a former colleague from Greenpeace at the International Whaling Commission in 87. And he said, what you did in Iceland was despicable, reprehensible and unforgivable. And I said yes. So and he says, Well, I think you should know what people think about you. And I said, I don't really care, John. We sank those whales. We didn't sink those whaling ships for you or Greenpeace or anybody else. We sank them for the whales. You find me a whale that disagreed with it, and I promise we won't do it.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Oh, how did you do that? How did you sink the ships?
[00:23:41] Speaker C: Boarded them in the middle of the night, went into the engine room, opened up the saltwater cooling systems, flooded the engines and scuttled them dockside.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Did you get in trouble for that?
[00:23:53] Speaker C: Well, actually, no. They didn't say anything about it. I inquired. I said, Are you going to have any charges? And finally, in January of 88, I flew to Reykjavik and demanded to be arrested. And I was met at the airport by quite a number of police officers and the immigration chief Immigration officer. And he said to me, how long do you intend to stay in Iceland? I said, I don't know. Five minutes, five days? Five years? You tell me. And he said, well, we have to go to interrogation. I said great. Let's go to interrogation. At the interrogation, he says, Are you admitting to sinking these two ships? I said, yes, and we're going to sink the other two at the first opportunity.
Well, they then escorted me to the airport, put me on a plane and send me home. And the Minister of justice said the next morning, he says, who the hell does he think he is? He comes into our country, demands to be arrested, get him out of here. And the reason for this is they knew that to put me on trial would be to put themselves on trial for their illegal activities. Icelandic whaling was illegal, still is illegal. And that's the last thing they.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Mean. Is it a very important employment sector in Iceland. There are only two ships.
Is it just because this is done by a billionaire with political influence? I mean, is that what's going on.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Here, or that is the reason it's not economically significant in any way. In fact, whale watching in Iceland is extremely significant. And so that's where they should be going. But Christian Loftson, he's 80 years old. He's a modern day captain. Ahab. He loves killing whales. He's obsessed with killing whales. And he doesn't have to.
The whaling company owns loses two to $3 million a year.
There's no profit in it.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: That's peanuts for him, I suppose.
[00:25:40] Speaker C: But when you look at it, whaling is subsidized by Norway, is subsidized by Japan. Whaling has not made a profit in 40 years. It only exists through massive subsidies, the same as sealing in Canada. The seal hunt in Canada only survives because of a $20 million subsidy given to the sealers every year. Otherwise, there's no market for seal felts. We knocked out that market in 2008. They can't sell them, but it continues to go because of subsidies. But that's also the same for worldwide fishing, industrialized fishing. Industrialized fishing is substituted to almost $100 billion a year because there's simply so little fish to catch that they have to have these highly mechanized technological vessels and satellites and fish finders. To find the fish, they invest $150,000,000 in one ship. That means they're now in debt to the banks for an a terrific amount of money, which means you got to catch even more fish. But since there's less and less fish, you have to have more and more technology to find those fish. And it's a vicious circle. I call it the economics of extinction.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, now I've lost track of what I was going to ask you. Oh, yeah, you mentioned the harp seals, the baby harp seals. So tell us about that.
[00:26:59] Speaker C: Well, I began to go against the Canadian seal hunt in 1975, and going out onto the ice and confronting the sealers in 1977, we got international attention because I brought Bridget Bardot out to the ice blows, and that gave us the COVID of every major magazine in the world. And that's where I learned a valuable lesson that the media only understands four things. There's four elements of media sex, scandal, violence, and celebrity. And if you want a story, you have to incorporate those elements into it. And so that's what we've done over the years. We work with a lot of celebrities, and because people listen to celebrities, we live in a media culture where celebrities are basically people believe celebrities no matter what they say. So it's good to get them on side.
We worked year after year to oppose the seal hunt. And finally, in 2008, the European Parliament had a bill to ban Canadian seal pelts. So to attract attention to that, I sent a ship with a Dutch flag and an all European crew into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the intention of getting that vessel arrested and seized and the crew arrested. And that's exactly what happened. And it gave us incredible coverage in Europe. Now, I was going to retire that ship, the Farley Moet, anyway, so I figured, now there's a way to retire it. I'll have the government seize it, which they did. So after all that, the government said, well, they fined me $75,000. And I said, Well, I'm not going to pay it. They said, well, then you don't get your ship back. I said, okay, you can have it.
And they kept the ship. Now, they spent a million dollars keeping it locked up for a year until they decided what to do it. And they sold it at auction for $5,000 to this guy who then took it to Lunenburg and Nova Scotia. He ran up a dockage bill of $65,000, abandoned the. Ship. And then they sold it at auction for another $5,000 to this other guy, who then took it to Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where while it was under his control, he was trying to cut it up for scrap. It caught fire, had to be put out, it sank at dockside, had to be raised by the Canadian Coast Guard, a cost of a million dollars. And finally they had to haul it away and scrap it at another million their I called it the Tar Baby Farley because I sent it in there with the same you don't dare arrest me. You don't dare seize my ship. And they did. And that's exactly what we wanted.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: What sort of tactics were you using to try and obstruct the baby? Seal clubbings, I guess. I don't know what to call it.
[00:29:31] Speaker C: Over the years, the first thing I did was to paint the seals with an indelible organic dye to destroy the commercial value of the pelt. In practice, it wasn't that effective, except that the sealers hated it and the government just overly reacted. They passed this thing called the Seal Protection Act very orwellian set of regulations. Under the Seal Protection Act, it's illegal to witness, document, or see a seal being killed. If you witness a seal being killed, you've just broken the Seal Protection Act. And in 1983, when I went in, I blocked St. John's harbor in Newfoundland for two weeks to keep the ceiling ships from leaving, went into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and chased the ceiling boats out of the ice. And I was arrested for that and charged with conspiracy to break the Seal Protection Act and breaking the Seal Protection Act. Now, my strategy for dealing with that is before we were before what, judge Yvonne Mercier, we called him the hanging judge of the seal hunt because he hated anybody who was opposed to the seal hunt. We knew we were going to be found guilty. So my strategy was, let's really piss him off.
Let's be so hostile to this guy that he's going to throw the book at us, which is what he did. So I got 15 months in prison for conspiracy to break the Seal Protection Act, six months for breaking the Seal Protection Act, the seizure of my ship, a fine of $100,000. Every crew member was fined $3,000. And I was forbidden to speak with any journalist anywhere in the world on any subject for three years. And I was forbidden to go into half of my own country. And so that was great. He sentenced us a couple of days before Christmas. I spent nine days in prison in Quebec City. Then I was released pending appeal. And when this came before the Quebec Appeal Court and they said 21 months, they just threw the whole thing out. They said they just dismissed it all. That's ridiculous. To get 15 months for conspiracy and another six months for break, for approaching a seal without permission of the Minister of Fisheries.
Basically, how you deal with this is you just have to go right into their face and say and challenge them.
In 93, I chased Cuban and Spanish drag trawlers off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and I was a hero to the Newfoundlanders for doing that because all the fishermen were very upset with these porn draggers. But Canada arrested me and charged me with three counts of criminal mischief, which doesn't sound like much, except that it's two times life plus ten. Mischief endangering. Life is life and mischief endangering. Property is ten years. Now, I didn't hurt anybody and I didn't damage any property, but I could have. That's what mischief is all about. So they put me on trial in Newfoundland, and it was an amusing trial. My lawyer, I got the best lawyer I could find, Newfoundland, and he was an artist. He went before the jury and he said, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we're not going to say we didn't do what we're charged with. We're going to say that we did exactly what we're charged with. We're proud to have done it, we intend to do it again, and we won the case. And we won the case because my defense was the United Nations World Charter for Nature, ratified by the UN General Assembly in 1986, which allows for individuals and non government organizations to uphold international conservation law, and especially in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
[00:32:44] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now? I'm your host, Ronie Lipschitz. My guest today is Captain Paul Watson of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, who's well known for his 50 years of or 50 plus years of eco activism and direct action. And we're just talking about harp seals and court cases. That raises one of the things you talk about in your book. You've been described variously as an environmental hero and a pirate by various governments and courts, and you were arrested and charged at various times, but there was one episode in the book where you had to stay at sea for an extended period of time in order to, I think, avoid arrest and incarceration. Can you tell us about that?
[00:33:33] Speaker C: I've never been convicted of a felony anywhere in the world. But in 2012, when I landed in Germany, I was detained on extradition request by Costa Rica for interfering with a shark penning operation in Guatemala, which I did at the request of the Guatemalan government. And then they also got an extradition request from Japan for conspiracy to board a whaling ship, which was a silly charge, but anyway, the German Ministry of justice, they were pretty sympathetic. The judge was sympathetic, the prosecutor was sympathetic, but the Minister of justice said, nope, you're going to be deported to Japan, and there's no way I was going to have that happen. So I left Germany and got on a small boat and sailed across the Atlantic, landed in Nova Scotia, then crossed the border into the US. I didn't have any passport or papers. I had nothing. I had no ID at all across the United States. Picked up another one of my boats off Catalina Island, took that down to American Samoa, and then transferred to my ship to Steve Irwin, and then we went down to the Southern Ocean to interfere against Japanese whaling. And then after the whaling campaign, I spent the next seven months on deserted islands, really, in the South Pacific, Atongo Vanuatu, the Great Barrier Reef, and American Samoa. And until John Kerry was secretary of State, took a look at this notice. It was a red notice issued by Interpol. And he said, well, this doesn't make any sense at all, because it was based on the accusation of somebody who boarded a Japanese whaling ship. And the deal they made with the Japanese prosecutor is, if you say Watson ordered you to board, we'll give you a suspended sentence. So that's what he did, and he got a suspended sentence. And I was charged with conspiracy to board a whaling ship. A year later, he actually signed an affidavit for the US. Government saying he lied to get that suspended sentence. And that's why John Kerry allowed me to come back to the US. But Japan refused to accept that, so they still had that red notice out for me. So for the last ten years, I've had an interval full red notice on me. And in 2017, Costa Rica actually dropped their demand because they had a change of government. And I actually got the Minister of the Environment to call me up and apologize for the fact that it happened. But in 2017, the European Union, a parliamentary committee, said that my case was representative of the abuse of Interpol for using politics as a means to put people on this list. So even though I've been on it for ten years, japan's made no effort to apply in the United States to extradite me, and certainly not in France. And I've also gone to Ireland without any problems at all. But, see, the problem is that, I don't know, I could go to a country, I could be detained, I could be sent to Japan. So at some point, I'm going to go to the Interpol headquarters and challenge them directly, because it's all politically motivated.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: Where is Interpol headquarters? Somewhere in Europe, isn't it?
[00:36:30] Speaker C: In Lyon, France?
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's a risk of going to France and then being well, no, that's right.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: You live in Paris.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: What am I saying? Right, of course you're in Paris. So there's no problem there.
[00:36:46] Speaker C: No. In 2014, the French government said that I was free to come to France and stay as long as I wanted, anytime I wanted.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Well, it's a lovely place to have to live, I must say.
Well, maybe we can talk. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. So what we see here is more or less a conflict, a struggle between the domestic law of various countries and international law. And I think it's interesting. You're not only hitman, but also, in a way, enforcer of international law. And I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, but one of the topics that keeps coming up in these radio shows and interviews is this struggle to implement international law at the domestic level. Have you thought about that? You have any thoughts about that?
[00:37:39] Speaker C: Well, we primarily oppose illegal operations, and we use the UN World Charter for nature as their defense on that. And I've won every civil case brought against us, and I've been acquitted on any criminal case that was brought against us. In 2011, I was invited by the FBI to give a lecture in Quantico, and they paid me to come give a lecture. And after the lecture, one of the FBI agents, you know, you're walking a pretty fine line when it comes to the law. And I said, well, does it really matter how fine the line is, as long as you don't actually cross the line? We operate within the boundaries of the law and the boundaries of practicality. I devised this approach called aggressive nonviolence in 1977, and what that means is we're going to aggressively intervene, but we're not going to hurt anybody. And I've never caused a single injury to a single person in my entire career, and I don't intend to. And so that keeps the governments that oppose us, the corporations that oppose us, that puts them in a difficult spot because they really can't come after us. Because if you injure somebody, if you kill somebody now, you can be attacked, you can be taken out and everything, but if you don't, it gets really very difficult for them. And what we do is nonviolent. Now, people say by sinking whaling ships or doing this and that, that's violent. I disagree.
If a person is about to shoot an elephant and you knock the gun out of its hand and destroy that gun, that's an act of nonviolence. You save the life by destroying a non sentient object. I don't think you can commit an act of violence against a non sentient object like a whaling ship or a rifle or a gun, only against a living thing. So when it's a choice between property and life, I always side with life over property.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: Well, I will observe that most of our laws treat property as a near sentient thing, right? I mean, it symbolizes the owner in many ways, but never mind.
So as you report in the book, you've been rather unceremoniously ousted from leadership roles in two well known marine protection nonprofits.
You can name them, I won't name david Brower experienced the same sort of thing. Right. And maybe you can tell us about the stories about that and why they asked you to leave.
[00:39:59] Speaker C: Yeah, david Brower did.
David Foreman did. And Rickleberry did all the same things happened to them. The problem is, I think, that the people who have the vision to set up these organizations and to make them what they are spend all of their time, as I did, doing the campaigns, doing the strategies, doing the tactics, doing all of those things. And we sort of neglected the administration side of it, leaving it into the hands of people we thought we could trust. And people have other alternatives. They're not in it for the same reason. And with Sea Shepherd Global, which they dismissed me from, they dismissed me because it was called the Watson Problem. I was too controversial. I was too confrontational, and it was interfering with their jobs, really, because of the success of Whale Wars. They now had brought in a lot of money. They had a merchandising program, and they were paying themselves quite well. And I was a threat to that. I was a threat to their comfort and their security because I don't really care about money. And so that was a problem. And so they maneuvered me out of the organization.
But having been maneuvered out of Greenpeace and then again, I'll just start again. It's not a big deal. I set it up as the Captain Paul Watson Foundation because I figured it's going to be pretty hard to take my name away from me. So that's why I put it that way. But we actually also calling ourselves Neptune's Pirates because the one thing I do know is that nobody wants to really who's in mainstream wants to take on the name pirate? And I'm actually officially a pirate, which is strange. I'm probably the only actual official pirate on the planet, outside of poor fishermen, off of Somalia and everything. But in 2014, Alex Kaczynski of the 9th Federal Court in the US labeled me a pirate. He says he's a pirate. Didn't charge me with anything, but I had a 9th Circuit Federal Court officially call me a pirate, so that makes me a pirate, which I don't know what Judge Kaczynski's motivation was, but I'm actually quite proud of the fact that he did that.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I wonder what perks it gets you.
[00:42:12] Speaker C: Well, what it does is it gives you notoriety. Right. And also it's a chance to really, you know, pirates get things know, they cut through the red tape and they get things done. And if you look at the romantic golden age of piracy, these people were way ahead of their know. They were democracies. They elected their captains. People were part of the crew no matter what their gender or their race was. Blackbeard went around freeing slaves from slave ships and giving them the freedom and allowing them to join the crew and rise to the level of their confidence. That was unheard of in the 18th century.
What's the worst thing you can say about them? Well, they were thieves. Yeah. They stole gold from the Spaniards and where did they get their gold from? So we're doing the exact same thing.
They were going after the Spaniards who were thieves. We're going after people who are breaking the law also. So we're acting in the same spirit, really.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Capitalism is a system of thieves stealing from thieves. I guess one of the things that I've observed in looking at large nonprofits is that as they become bigger and tend to institutionalize, they also have what I call the payroll problem. They have to make payroll every month, which pushes them to start making alliances with corporate funders.
And then they have to be very careful about who they offend. I mean, is this what happened with both Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd?
[00:43:45] Speaker C: I was dismissed from the board of directors of Sea Shepherd Australia for asking this question. Why are you in partnership with a fishing company?
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:53] Speaker C: Sea Shepherd Australia partnered with Austral Fisheries, a tooth fishing company, which is 50% owned by the Marua Dachiro Company of Japan, one of the most notorious fishing companies in Japan. Now, why did they do this? Because the CEO of Austral Fisheries secured a tax deductible status for them because of his connections with the Australian government. So they basically sold out to the fishing company in return for that tax deductible status. Then Austral Fisheries sold them one of their boats and gave them a big, big donation to go along with it. And now Sea Shepherd Australia supports so called sustainable fishing.
Our policy has always been against fishing because there is no such thing as sustainable fishing on this planet right now. Every single commercial fishery is in a state of collapse. There's no such thing. So it's a lie for them to support sustainable fishing.
Austral fisheries, targets patagonia and Antarctic toothfish. This is an endangered species. How can you have a sustainable fishery on an endangered species? And so that's why I was dismissed from the Australian board, because I was asking those questions. And on the global board, Lami Asamlami, the president of Sea Shepherd France, she was dismissed for asking questions of the board she was on, which is these vessels that you're arresting in West Africa in partnership with West African governments, how long are they detained? Are they fined? What happens to them after you arrest them? And they refuse to answer those questions because basically, they're just given a slap on the wrist and sent back out to sea again. But it looks really good. The opics are really good. We're out there. We're boarding these vessels. We're arresting these vessels. We've arrested 78 of these poaching vessels. Okay, well, what happens after you arrest them? Well, that's a part of the story they don't tell.
[00:45:39] Speaker B: What's the legal basis for doing that, for arresting vessels authorized by the nearby governments? Is that the basis?
[00:45:48] Speaker C: They've made partnerships with the government of Liberia. Gabon, the Gambia. MENA Nibbia. And what they do is they take enforcement officers out on the ships and intercept foreign ships in their waters. The problem is that it sounded like a good idea at the beginning, but then the government said, oh, you can't fly that pirate flag of yours, so we had to take that. Oh, you can't paint your ships the way you got to paint them gray, so now they're dictating what color the ships are. Oh, you can't put out a media release unless we approve it. So now the tail's wagging the dog here and I don't really know what the point of it all is.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: You're listening to Sustainability now? I'm your host, Ronie Lipschitz, and my guest today is Captain Paul Watson, who was involved now with the eponymous Captain Paul Watson Foundation, which he founded just a couple of years ago. Right?
[00:46:38] Speaker C: Just one year ago.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: Just one year ago. So tell us something about the foundation, what it does, how it's funded. How are you going to avoid the so called payroll dilemma?
[00:46:51] Speaker C: By not getting paid. I don't get paid.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Well, no, I mean, I don't get.
[00:46:54] Speaker C: Paid either, but how are we going to do fortunately, it was a lot easier than when I left Greenpeace because I was able to bring a lot of our supporters over, a lot of our veteran crew members over, so I have no problem getting crew. John Paul de Joria was one of our big supporters for the last 30 years. He's been a good friend of mine and he said, I'll get you a ship, he got me a ship. And so that's our first ship. And we're partnered actually with Sea Shepherd France and Sea Shepherd Brazil, who are true to the original objective. So I'm working closely with them. But the Captain Paul Watson Foundation is really to continue what we've been doing for the last 50 years. That's all it is. We haven't changed. The people who took it away from us have changed, but we haven't changed. And France and Brazil are with me on that. Sea Shepherd UK. Just changed their name to the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK. And we now have the foundation in Italy and Spain, in Germany, Australia and New Zealand, and it's growing.
The fortunate thing about it is I have a big following and all of those Sea Shepherd groups of people who support me and support the original objectives and aims of what we're all about.
[00:48:04] Speaker B: So you're not reliant on any kind of corporate or government funding at this point?
[00:48:11] Speaker C: No, we have individual donors, some of who are wealthy, but not corporations, and certainly no government funding, that's for sure, but we don't have a big budget.
You think that ships are really expensive to buy, but they're not. The bigger the ship is, the cheaper it is. We bought the John Paul de Joria because of the funds given to us by and we, you know, we got the whole thing done for a million dollars and we did our first campaign to Iceland this summer, also to the well and Seashell. France has their boat called the Walrus and Seashell UK, which is now the Paul Watson Foundation has two boats of their own. So we're building up our navy again and we've done it in less than a year. Really.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: How big are these boats? These ships? I mean, what were they used for before you bought them?
[00:49:01] Speaker C: Well, the Jean Paul de Jor is 70 meters. It used to be a Scottish fisheries patrol vessel.
Very fast, very strong, very long range.
The other three vessels are smaller but very fast and can accompany that other one. And we're looking at getting a second, larger vessel. So we're sort of in the market for that. But we have to find the right one because we need a ship that's long range, fast and strong, preferably that can break through ice.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: Okay, you just mentioned that you went to the Pharaohs and to Iceland.
[00:49:36] Speaker C: Is that this summer?
[00:49:37] Speaker B: Yeah. What were you doing there?
[00:49:39] Speaker C: Well, we arrived in Iceland on June 9 and within hours of our arrival the Icelandic government put a temporary ban on whaling. So we then moved on to Farrow Islands. And in the Faroe Islands we were prohibited. Before we arrived, we were ordered you are not to enter the twelve mile limit. And I said, okay, well, we'll respect that unless you start to kill whales. So on July 9 there was a grin that was called that's what they call their drive of the pilot whales and dolphins. So I went inside the territory pursued by the Farewees Coast Guard, which we were faster than they were. And unfortunately we were as a race against time and distance because it was two and a half hours away and by the time we got there they'd already killed the whales. But we did film everything after that and they also killed those whales in front of a cruise ship. And hundreds and hundreds passengers saw that, which was really bad PR on their part. But then again on June 19 we heard of another drive and so again I entered, this time pursued by two faraways Coast Guard vessels, which we outran. And this time the pot of pilot whales were able to escape.
But the problem was the faraways then charged us with entering their restricted area, took us into court, fined us $23,000 plus $600 for every one of the 27 crew members. But we're just not paying it, so we're not too concerned about it. But then Denmark leaned on Jamaica to take our flag away. So Jamaica struck our flag, so we had to reflag the vessel. So that was the reason we were hoping to get back to Iceland by the end of August. But we are in the process of reflagging the vessel and you can't go to sea without a flag. So we now have reflagged the vessel. So we're ready to go when it's okay to go.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Why not a pirate flag?
[00:51:22] Speaker C: Well, because you can't really.
I've actually been given the flag of the five nations of the Urukua to fly. I've been given the Maori flag and the aboriginal flag, and I'd love to fly them, but they're not recognized. They're not recognized, and certainly the Jolly Roger isn't. So I have to go with flags know state flags. You have to have a state flag.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: Do you have any plans for next summer, or do you not want to divulge them?
[00:51:50] Speaker C: No. We'll be back in Iceland in June of 2024. If Lawson gets his four year permit that he's demanding, hopefully the Icelandic government will shut it down before then. But if they don't, we'll be ready to be there. It's not too far from where we are. And then we'll also be returning to the Faroe Islands next summer also. Plus, this November, we have a campaign to confront super trawlers off the coast of France that are killing everything on their bycatch dolphins and whatever these gigantic super trawlers $200 million ships just pull in. Each one of their nets pulls in the equivalent of about four school buses full of fish. Last year, we were able to document them dumping 100,000 blue whiting because it wasn't a target species. They're all dead, so they just threw them overboard, and we were able to use drones to film that and raft of dead fish that stretched for a kilometer across the sea.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: Wow. Well, we're approaching the end of our time together, and I was wondering if there's anything else you'd like to tell us about.
[00:52:54] Speaker C: Well, I would certainly would promote Hitman for a kindness club. I think it's an easy read because it's a collection of short stories, each one based on campaigns or activities that I've done from the age of ten until now. And so it shows the progression of, I guess, myself being audacious, more and more audacious over the years.
And not just marine mammals. It's everything from stopping the killing of bison to stopping the killing of wolves, to rescuing laboratory animals to opposing the fur industry.
So many campaigns over the years that have done that, including in 1982, bombing a Soviet spy ship with paintballs or paint bombs, light balls full of paint in order to protest in order to protest whaling by Russia. That was why we were doing it. But this spy ship was at the mouth of Cape Flattery spying on submarines, and it had two American warships, one Canadian warship on either side. And so we came in, and my friend was American airline pilot, so he had this Cessna 187. We came right in across the bow, straight out of the wheelhouse, pulled it up, dropped 19 of these paintballs, bang, bang, bang. Attached to each one was a message in Russian about whaling. Then we pulled up, and all of a sudden there was this big bang, and we lost altitude, and we're heading towards the water, but Al pulled it up off of the water, about 8ft off the water, and went straight up. And now we notice there's two F 16 starfighters being scrambled from Woodby Island coming after us. And Al is a former fighter pilot, so he kept going straight up, straight up, straight up. And I said, what are you doing? Because these guys are getting closer, and I don't know what their intentions are. And then suddenly he went into a big dive and flew back into Canadian airspace, and they had to cut off their pursuit. And we got back and we got our message delivered and a lot of publicity on it and everything. And Elle didn't lose his job as an American Airline captain.
[00:54:51] Speaker B: So where can our listeners find hitman for the Kindness Club? Oh.
[00:54:55] Speaker C: From the captain. Paul Watson. Shop online or from Amazon or in bookstores.
[00:55:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:55:02] Speaker C: If it's not in the bookstore, people can request it.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: Well, Captain Paul Watson, thank you for being my guest on Sustainability Now, and good luck with the foundation.
[00:55:12] Speaker C: Well, thank you.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: Thanks for listening, and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make K Squid your community radio station and keep it going. And so until every other Sunday sustainability now.
[00:55:33] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find out temperate zones and tropic climbs and thriving seas winds blowing through breathing trees strong ozone shine good planets are hard to find yeah, good.
