Captain Paul Watson is a Canadian environmental activist and co-founder of Greenpeace who later founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Known for his direct-action tactics against illegal whaling, overfishing, and ocean exploitation, Watson has spent decades at sea, leading controversial but influential campaigns to defend marine life. He joined Current Affairs to explain why he has spent his career ramming and sinking whaling ships.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about your efforts to stop whaling? How have you attempted to intervene in order to save whales?
Watson: I began my opposition to whaling in 1974 as a cofounder of the Greenpeace Foundation. I served as first officer on all the early Greenpeace anti-whaling voyages, and in 1977 I established the Sea Shepherd movement to intervene against illegal whaling operations by using a strategy that I called “aggressive nonviolence”—meaning intervention without causing any injury.
In 1979, I hunted down and rammed the pirate whaler Sierra and later sank it. After it was repaired in 1980, we sank it dockside, along with two of the four Spanish whaling ships. We then worked with the South African government to have the pirate whalers Susan and Theresa seized, and they were later sunk by the South African Navy. We also shut down the pirate whaler Astrid in the Canary Islands by posting reward posters all over the island offering $25,000 to anybody who could sink it.As a result they couldn’t trust their crew, so the vessel was sold and never killed another whale. So, within one year we had shut down all pirate whaling operations in the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1981 my crew and I invaded Soviet Siberia to document illegal whaling activities. We escaped from a confrontation with the Soviet Navy and delivered the evidence to the International Whaling Commission.
In 1982 we shut down the dolphin killing in Iki Island, Japan and later we set up the Cove Guardian program to intervene against the killing of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. Since 1983 we have been intervening against the killing of pilot whales and dolphins in the Danish Faroe Islands. In 1986, we sank two of the four Icelandic whaling vessels and destroyed the whale processing plant. I turned myself in to face charges, but Iceland didn’t charge me because they knew that to put me on trial would be to put themselves on trial.
Between 1992 and 2006 we sank four Norwegian whaling vessels in order to make them pay higher insurance premiums for their illegal whaling activities. In 2005 we set out to chase the Japanese whaling fleet out of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary—which we succeeded in doing by 2016.
Recently, we shut down Icelandic whaling activities for three years beginning in 2023.
Q: Is there a legal double standard applied to what you do versus what the whalers do?
A: The legality is very clear. Beginning in 1986 the International Whaling Commission imposed a global moratorium on commercial whaling. The whaling ships that we sank in Iceland that year were in violation of that moratorium, as were the whaling ships of Norway and later Japan. I established Sea Shepherd as a means to oppose illegal whaling operations. For this purpose, I created the strategy of aggressive nonviolence, and after 50 years of operations I can truthfully state that not a single person was ever injured—nor have I ever been convicted of a felony crime, nor have I lost a commercial lawsuit. It is my position that we uphold the laws, we don’t break the law. We operate within the boundaries of the law and of practicality. There is a double standard in that our upholding international conservation law results in our persecution and the accusation that we’re “pirates” or “eco terrorists.”
The whalers that we oppose are clearly in violation of the law, but because they have the support of their national governments they get away with what they’re doing. They abuse the law in order to prevent our interventions.
Q: Do you think direct action like this is effective? Why?
Watson: When it comes to whaling, I believe that direct action is the most effective approach. There is no argument to say otherwise. Our actions speak for themselves. In the Southern Ocean we saved the lives of 6,500 whales. Overall, through the decades, I believe that we’ve saved the lives of tens of thousands of whales that would have been killed illegally if not for our intervention.
I am unconcerned if people do not approve of this approach, but my position is: find a whale that disapproves of our actions and we might reconsider. We didn’t ram and sink those whaling ships for people. We did so for the whales. They are our clients.
This Q&A, along with dozens more, is published in the special "Animals Issue" of Current Affairs.
