Men's Journal

Captain Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Photo credit: Courtesy of Animal Planet

The outspoken helmsman on getting shot, being labeled an “eco-terrorist,” and why he hopes his show will be canceled.

Interviewed by Yang-Yi Goh

Captain Paul Watson may or may not be the most feared man on the seven seas. He is – without a doubt – the most controversial.

An early member of Greenpeace, the Canadian environmentalist was removed from its board of directors in 1977 after advocating “direct action” methods that were in conflict with the organization’s policy of nonviolence. Later that year, Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a Washington State–based, non-government organization that seeks to protect endangered sea life using the very direct tactics that made Greenpeace so nervous.

For the last three years, Watson’s in-your-face approach has made for consistently thrilling television as the Sea Shepherds starred on Animal Planet’s Whale Wars. The hour-long program follows Watson and his crew as they attempt to disrupt a fleet of Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean. The show’s third season is set to premiere Friday, June 4th amid yet another storm of controversy: the Sea Shepherd vessel Ady Gil was torn in half and sank during an encounter with a whaling ship in January; its captain, Pete Bethune, remains in custody in a Japanese prison.

Men’s Journal caught up with Watson aboard the MV Steve Irwin.

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Men’s Journal: How would you describe the show for someone who’s never seen it before?

Paul Watson: It’s a different kind of show. We take people down to a very remote and hostile section of the planet, in order to watch people who are very passionate about a cause, which is protecting whales.

When we were first conceptualizing the show, the biggest show on Discovery at the time was about a bunch of men going out into very rough waters in very remote areas and catching crabs. I said, “Well, you know, we can go into even more remote waters, even rougher waters with worse weather conditions, and save whales. It has to be just as compelling as catching crabs.”

MJ: What can you tell us about the upcoming season?

PW: The third season is going to be the most dramatic season yet. We went down there with three ships and came back with two. One of our vessels got rammed and cut in half by one of the Japanese harpoon vessels. The Japanese whalers have been far more intense in their defense of the whaling this year, but we were far more successful than we’ve ever been. For the first time in six campaigns, we’ve saved more whales than they killed: we saved 528, and they killed 507. So we more than cut their kill quota in half. That cost the Japanese whaling industry about $100 million, so it was quite a blow. It was our most successful campaign to date.

MJ: In a recent interview, you said this will be Whale Wars’ last season in the Antarctic.

PW: That’s what our hope is – that this is our last season. I think we’re the only television show on any network that wants to get kicked off the air – we’d like to see it over and done with. Every year we’re costing them [the whalers] tens of millions of dollars. The question is how much longer the Japanese government can afford to subsidize their losses, really. With any other country, it most likely would have been over by now, but the Japanese government has been extremely stubborn in their defense of whaling.

MJ: One of the Sea Shepherd’s vessels, the Ady Gil, was torn in half after being rammed by a Japanese whaling ship. How are they allowed to do that?

PW: Well, that’s the question we asked. The captain of the Shonan Maru, who sank our vessel, hasn’t even been questioned by anybody. So it’s a New Zealand-registered vessel with a New Zealand captain and an Australian, New Zealand, Dutch crew, and nobody’s questioned him. The captain of the Ady Gil, Captain Pete Bethune has been arrested and taken back as a prisoner to Japan, and charged with trespassing when he tried to confront the captain who sank his ship.

MJ: How is that situation playing out so far?

PW: We’re still trying to get him out of jail over there in Japan. But it’s all very highly political, and Japan has been severely embarrassed by not only Whale Wars, but also by the release of The Cove, which is a film that we also worked on. Their entire whale and dolphin killing industry has been exposed to international scrutiny and criticism.

MJ: So as the whaling fleet’s methods become more aggressive, how have you shifted your tactics?

PW: Well, we respond, but we’re really at a distinct disadvantage. We have to do what we do making sure we don’t injure any of them, but they’re trying to kill us, so it’s a very one-sided battle. But we’re managing to hold our own – we haven’t injured anybody, and we haven’t had anybody seriously injured, but we’ve been very successful at really impacting their success in their whaling operations.

MJ: How has the whaling continued? Doesn’t it violate international law?

PW: They’re targeting endangered and protected whales in an established whale sanctuary in violation of a global law targeting whaling, in violation of the Antarctic Treaty, and they’re in contempt of the Australian Federal Court ruling that prohibits whaling in the Australian/Antarctic territories.

But there’s a lack of political and economic motivation on the part of governments to uphold international conservation law. We have all the laws and the treaties we need to protect the oceans. What we don’t have is enforcement. That enforcement should be there, but it isn’t, because there’s no money in enforcement. There’s money in exploiting the oceans, but there’s no money to be made from destroying the oceans. It falls on non-governmental organizations to intervene, and we operate in accordance and under the guidelines of the United Nations World Charter for Nation, that allows for non-governmental organizations to intervene.

MJ: You’ve been hailed by Time as one of “the environmental heroes of the 20th Century,” while others have labeled you an “eco-terrorist.” How do you respond to that criticism?

PW: Well, in a world where the Dalai Lama is officially a terrorist, I don’t really care what they call me. Our clients are whales and dolphins, sharks and fish. We’re sort of immune to criticism on that level, because as long as you’re not hurting anybody – actually injuring anybody – and you’re staying within the boundaries of the law, then what is there to criticize? People might disagree with what we’re doing and the way we go about doing it, but I think that the only two criteria that we have to be respectful of is to make sure that we don’t injure anybody and that we stay within the boundaries of the law – and we’re doing that.

MJ: During the first season finale, while engaging the Nisshin Maru, you were hit by something and found a piece of metal – which you claimed to be a bullet – lodged in your vest. What exactly happened?

PW: Well there was a lot of controversy that could have been cleared up quite easily, if the Australian federal police had agreed to do a forensic examination of the bullet that struck me. They refused to do it, citing that it was out of their jurisdiction. So we never really could resolve it – it was sort of he said-he said. The Japanese say one thing, and we say one thing. But the fact is that I did get struck by this bullet, it was taken out of the bulletproof vest I had on. It was all on camera It was actually a slug from a shotgun. It had been expended and pretty much spent by the time it hit me, but still enough to go through the suit and into the vest.

MJ: As things stand, are you hopeful about the causes you advocate?

PW: I’m always hopeful. The oceans are dying right now. They’re dying in our time through diminishment of diversity. At some point, we’re going to pull one species and it’s going to cause all sorts of ecological catastrophes. But I’m always hopeful, because I feel that the answer to any problem lies in the impossible – the impossible solution, which means it simply hasn’t been found yet. When people say, “Well that’s not going to happen, it’s impossible,” I say, well look – in 1972, the very idea that Nelson Mandela would be president of South Africa was impossible, unthinkable, unimaginable, yet it happened. So I always have the hope that those impossible answers will be found.

MJ: Do you think it’ll happen in our lifetime?

PW: I hope so. It’d better happen, because the oceans are dying, and if the oceans die, we die. I don’t think people are really that aware of just how intimate our connection is with oceanic ecosystems, and how intimate our connection is with other species. This is really the planet Ocean, it’s not the planet Earth. 95% of all life on the planet exists in our oceans, so if anything happens to those oceans, our life support system on this planet ceases to exist.

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Season 3 of Whale Wars premieres on Animal Planet Friday, June 4th at 9 PM.

For more information on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, please visit: http://www.seashepherd.org/

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