Paul Watson

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Paul Watson
Paul Watson, in front of the "Steve Irwin" docked in Hobart. January 2009
Born	December 2, 1950 (1950-12-02) (age 58) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Activist
Spouse(s)	Starlet Lum Lisa DiStefano Allison Lance
Website http://www.seashepherd.org

Paul Franklin Watson, (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian animal rights and environmental activist.^[1] He is the founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a direct action group devoted to marine conservation.

Early and personal life

Watson was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson "rode the rails" in boxcars west to Vancouver.^[2]

In 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 35,000 ton bulk carrier Bris as a deck hand. The Bris was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade.^[2]

Watson, currently single, has one child (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa DiStefano, a former Playboy model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor.^[1] His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of the Sea Shepherd.^[3][4][5]

Activism

In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace.^[6] Watson sailed as a crewmember aboard the Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971^[7] and skippered the Greenpeace boat Astral in 1972.^[2] Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. According to Watson, in June 1975 during a Greenpeace campaign to confront Soviet whaling, an incident occurred which changed his life.^[8]

Greenpeace states that while Watson "was an influential early member", he was not a founding member.^[9] Paul Watson has characterized the Greenpeace position as "revisionism".^[10]

Paul Watson and actress Daryl Hannah stand in front of the MV Steve Irwin in Brisbane before departing for Antarctica in Sea Shepherd's Operation Musashi 2008-2009 campaign

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from Fund for Animals.^[7] Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels,^[11] and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor.^[12] Watson remains the leader of Sea Shepherd today and uses the title "Captain" in reference to his role in the organization, although he has never been licensed as a ship's captain.^[1] The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, Whale Wars, airing on Animal Planet.

Other environmental activities

Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981.^[7] Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.^[7]

During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! Watson has claimed to have invented the tactic of tree spiking.^[13]

Although currently unaffiliated with it, Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s.^[14] He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.^[15]

In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term.^[16] In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.^[17]

Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus, the biosphere needs to get cured from with a "radical and invasive approach," as from cancer.^[18]

In January 2008 Paul Watson was named by the The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.^[19]

Strategy and tactics

Watson published Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993.^[20] In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of “monkeywrenching” previously described by Dave Foreman^[21] and Edward Abbey:^[22]

“Field tactics: For environmental activists, these tactics are known as “monkey-wrenching. These are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. The recommended manual for the study of field tactics in the environmental movement is Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching by Dave Foreman.”^[23]

Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.^[24]

Media relations

In Earthforce! An Earth Warrior’s Guide to Strategy, Watson also expresses disdain for truthfulness in the pursuit of environmental protection goals:

“The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was “old news.” A headline comment on Monday’s newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.”^[25]

Watson was explicit on this score: “If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation.”^[26] This has been noted and reported by the news media.^[27] In a subsequent book, Ocean Warrior, Watson reiterated this view, saying: “Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives.”^[28]

Controversy

Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland.^[29] In 1997, Watson and his then fiancée Lisa Distefano was convicted in absentia by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel Nybrænna on 26 December 1992, and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail^[30][31] but Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands before being released.^[30]

There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson himself defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers.^[32] Watson caught a Costa Rican fishing boat poaching in Guatemalan waters while he was on a journey to Costa Rica, having been invited by its president to help in the fight against shark poaching there. The authorities in Costa Rica later filed seven charges of attempted murder against Watson and a colleague, Rob Stewart, in what Watson and Stewart have described as an effort to cover up mafia-funded illegal shark finning operations.^[33] They eventually fled to international waters to escape arrest by Costa Rican coast guards after they had filmed what they attest was mafia-funded shark-finning in private docks. These events are featured in Sharkwater,^[34] a documentary about sharks and activism.

Paul Watson leads protest against Makah whaling, Port Angeles, Washington, 1998.

Watson was also told to leave Iceland after having turned himself in to the Icelandic police after disabling two ships in harbor. Kristjan Loftsson of Iceland's largest whaling company told The New Yorker that Watson is persona non grata in that country.^[1]

After his election to the national Sierra Club Steering Committee in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists."^[35] Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy."^[36]

In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers.^[37] Watson replied that Mr. Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st Century.^[38] Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist."^[39] In response, Watson said that calling him a 'terrorist' might be cute, but it had no foundation in reality, as he had never injured anyone, or been convicted of a crime.^[40]

In October 2009 Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government is attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates will also not be able to join the MV Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they are able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by the Sea Shepherds of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway.^{[41][42][43][44]}

Removal from Greenpeace Board

Paul Watson continued as a crewmember, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s.

In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1^[45][46] (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive.^[47] Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns.^[48] Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.^[48]

Alleged shooting

On March 17, 2008 Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the campaign. The incident is heavily documented during the show in the final episode, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The footage in Whale Wars shows Watson standing on the deck of the Steve Irwin while Sea Shepherd crew throws glass bottles filled with butyric acid at the Nisshin Maru whaling vessel.^[49] The Japanese respond by throwing flashbang devices. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and bullet-proof vest and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.^[50]

The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has dismissed Sea Shepherd's statements as lies. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they utilized seven flashbang devices designed to flash and make noise in the air without causing harm.^[51]

Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots"^[52] while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".^[53]

In popular culture

Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores".^[54][55][56]

Works

• Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1981) (ISBN 0-393-01499-1)
• Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy (1993) (ISBN 0-9616019-5-7)
• Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas (1994) (ISBN 1-55013-599-6)
• Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals (2002) (ISBN 1-55297-751-X)
• Contributor to Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals (2004) (ISBN 1-59056-054-X)

References

Further reading

Wikinews has related news: Protester says Japanese whalers shot him

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Paul Watson

• Sea Shepherd Conservation Society official website
• The Politics of Extinction
• Animal Planet - Whale Wars 'Meet the Crew'
• Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) (ISBN 1-55591-203-6)
• Scarce, Rik. Eco-Warriors (2006) (ISBN 1-59874-028-8)