| Name | Paul Watson |
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| Caption | Paul Watson, in front of the "Steve Irwin" docked in Hobart. January 2009 |
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| Birth date | |
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| Birth place | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
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| Nationality | Canadian |
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| Occupation | Activist |
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| Spouse | Starlet Lum
Lisa DiStefano
Allison Lance |
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| Website | SeaShepherd.org |
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Paul Franklin Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian
animal rights and
environmental activist, who founded and is president of the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a
direct action group devoted to
marine conservation.
The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was an early and influential member of Greenpeace, crewed and skippered for it, and later was a board member. Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, was ousted from the board in 1977, and subsequently left the organization. That same year, he formed Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group is the subject of a reality show, Whale Wars.
He also promotes a veganism voluntary human population control, and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.
Early and personal life
Paul Watson was born in Toronto 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.
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. (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum,
Activism
Early years
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. Watson sailed as a crewmember aboard the
Greenpeace Too! ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat
Astral in 1972.
Greenpeace states that Watson "...was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Paul Watson maintains he was indeed a founding member.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the
Sea Shepherd, was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from Fund for Animals. and the
scuttling of two ships in an
Icelandic harbor. 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.
Although currently unaffiliated with it, Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.
In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. 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.
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.
In January 2008 Paul Watson was named by The Guardian as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Writings on activism
Watson published
Earthforce!, a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "
monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and
Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in
Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching, these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.
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.
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.” 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.”
Controversy
Removal from Greenpeace Board
Paul Watson continued as a crewmember, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of
Greenpeace and
Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes. Friends noted that his personality, his liking to "push himself front and centre", was to blame in addition to his espousing
direct actions that Greenpeace did not agree with. (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. 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. 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. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted in absentia and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail 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. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released. 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. 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, a documentary about sharks and activism.
, 1998.]]
Watson was also told to leave Iceland after disabling two ships in harbor and turning himself in to the Icelandic police . Kristjan Loftsson of Iceland's largest whaling company told The New Yorker that Watson is persona non grata in that country. and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The blue notice asks national police forces to provide information on Watson's whereabouts and activities, but does not seek an arrest.
Sierra Club immigration stance
After his election to the national
Sierra Club Board of Directors 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." 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." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.
Anti-sealing activities
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. Watson replied that Mr. Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st Century. 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." Due to the operations against Canadian seal hunters, Danny Williams called Watson a terrorist and said that the Sea Shepherds were not welcome in the province.
Australian visa issues
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 was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010
Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the
MV Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were 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 Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway.
Anti-whaling activities and alleged shooting
crew in 2005.]]
On March 17, 2008 Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the Whale Wars TV reality show, 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. Butyric acid was used for its foul odor and sticky properties. The Japanese respond by throwing flashbang devices. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.
The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has dismissed Sea Shepherd's statements as lies. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven flashbang devices designed to flash and make noise in the air without causing harm.
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" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".
Watson has been called an eco terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and have repeated their position after conflicts during the 2009-10 whaling season.
Leadership style
His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center"," which was cited as being one of the reasons he and Greenpeace parted ways. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God". Recently,
Fox News commentator
Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting
Gerald Seymour's "One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”
Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.
The 2009 documentary At the Edge of the World chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica.
Watson, Whale Wars, and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the South Park episode "Whale Whores". Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility".
Watson responded to the South Park episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese prime minister was not amused, and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That’s music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank-rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that’s all I need to applaud it."
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
Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, by David B. Morris (1995) (ISBN 1-55591-203-6)
Eco-Warriors, by Rik Scarce (2006) (ISBN 1-59874-028-8)
External links
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society official website
Category:1950 births
Category:Canadian environmentalists
Category:Canadian vegans
Category:Green Party of British Columbia politicians
Category:Greenpeace
Category:Sierra Club
Category:Living people
Category:Green thinkers
Category:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Category:Sustainability advocates
Category:People from Charlotte County, New Brunswick
Category:People from Toronto
Category:Animal rights advocates
