Paul Watson: Shepherd of the Seas

Sea Shepherd: the saviour of the seas
 


Paul Watson: Shepherd of the Seas.

Discovering Sea Shepherd


In 2009, I happened upon an article about a marine conservation group who were recruiting volunteers for a mission in the south Antarctic seas to stop Japanese whalers from illegal fishing. I was tempted to apply but without nautical experience – bar a few minutes at the wheel of a catamaran in the Whitsunday islands – I was not really in a position to do anything productive. My time steering the cat was short-lived as the skipper was not happy that my directional skills meant the cat was veering off course and likely to go backwards if it was at all possible.

I couldn’t help but keep the idea of helping Sea Shepherd at the fore of my mind and futilely discussed how good it would be to volunteer with various friends. I imagined a twinkle in my eye as I shared my passion for saving whales from illegal catches with people who had a spare few minutes to listen. Each time I looked at the sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean in Tanzania, I thought about Sea Shepherd: every boat trip I took whilst there, my mind floated back over articles I had read; posts I had seen; creatures that had been barbarically killed, leaving incarnadine seas for the world to mourn over.

Years later, and after several years of following Sea Shepherd projects in Taiji, Scotland, Canada, South America and the Faroe Islands, I decided it was time to do more than just posts and add sad or angry emojis to their posts on Facebook. This blog gives the reader insight into the  founder of Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson: a man I have the utmost admiration for due to his dedication and beliefs.

A tempestuous career


Paul Watson is an environmental and a marine wildlife conservation activist, who founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-poaching and direct action group, in 1977. His career has seen him become a fugitive with two Interpol red notices and he served time in jail for extradition requests. Known for being something of a vigilante, Watson has spent almost 50 years saving countless endangered species from slaughter, making him a hero in marine conservation.

Watson’s career has always been a little stormy – something he is more than familiar, and comfortable, with.  In 1969 he co-founded Greenpeace and left eight years later having decided protesting was too submissive. Using the mantra “aggressive non-violence” to protect marine life, the inception of Sea Shepherd began the same year.

Yet, despite his leviathan efforts in eradicating poaching and conserving the oceans, he has met with much controversy and was forced to reside in Paris from 2014 until his return to the US to settle in Vermont last year. This is due to an extradition order from Japan and Costa Rica should he attempt to return to his home in Canada. In 2012, two Interpol red notices were issued in separate incidents by Costa Rica and Japan. Both claimed Watson was involved in sabotage to whaling vessels.  Both have been dogged by controversial claims, charges being changed or dropped and maladministration. Now, CEO of Sea Shepherd USA, he is also advisor to Sea Shepherd global and helps coordinate the movement and operations of Sea Shepherd ships. He is under court order to not be involved with Southern Ocean campaigns against illegal Japanese whaling operations but involved in all other campaigns.

 France’s justification for allowing him to be a fugitive lays in their belief the Interpol red list notices were politically motivated. The United States have now given Watson his American passport back and told him it has no plans to arrest or deport him based on the Japanese warrant. 

Read about his life and you can’t help but be titillated. Whether you venerate or vilify him, his influence and passionate perseverance to protect marine life is laudable. He can be forgiven, nay commended, for putting that passion into the apparent sabotaging of vessels whose crew are catalysts to gruesome crimes against marine life.

I, for one, would gladly join one of his nine vessels and go to great lengths to continue the preservation of our oceans before irreparable damage is done to the life that resides that we know so little about yet continue to devastate.

Accomplishments


Throughout his career on the high seas, Watson has not just seen controversy.  His accomplishments include being a recipient of the Jules Verne Award, dedicated to environmentalists and adventurers (2012) as well as several other awards and in 2000 he was named one of Time Magazine's Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th Century. 

He is also the author several works and has a hit TV reality show Whale Wars that has been airing on the Discovery Channel since 2008. Alongside this, Watson was involved in the the award-winning Sharkwater  – a documentary film – with Rob Stewart which conservationists say resulted in shark finning being banned worldwide. However, international waters remain unregulated. The film focused on helping to protect sharks and changing government policy, inspiring the foundations of shark conservation groups. It is now considered one of conservation's success stories. Sadly, Rob lost his life in a scuba diving incident in Florida in January 2017 whilst filming the Sharkwater sequel.

It was Rob’s sad passing that led me to write about Paul Watson in a blog. Whilst I had been familiar with Watson for some years, I had been a follower of Sea Shepherd more than I had its founder. When Rob died, I saw Watson’s post that he was prevented from attending Rob’s funeral due to the Interpol red list demand for Watson’s extradition to Japan for conspiracy to trespass on a whaling boat. He was also prevented from attending his brother, Stephen’s, funeral for the same reason.  Despite having evidence that exonerates him from this charge, Japan will not rescind it.

It seems a travesty he is now prevented from attending such events when much of his work is for humanity as well as marine life. This merely highlights a sempiternal trinity of greed, power and gross disrespect by countries who would rather strip our planet of its natural resources than protect them for their future generations. It seems only when there is nothing left, we will comprehend the damage we are doing. Paul Watson is unyielding in his fight to prevent this.

Conservation efforts


Sea Shepherd has long since been involved in operations around the world. Annually, they are based in Taiji, Japan – the setting of the documentary film The The Cove, 2009, which explored dolphin hunting practices. Unfortunately, they are restricted only to documenting the goings on of the Japanese fisherman who slaughter and capture cetaceans for monetary gain. With men like Ted Hammond  brokering deals for dolphins sold to amusement parks, it is likely this barbaric and amoral practice will continue - despite the efforts of activists - as the fisherman are protected by regimental laws. Frustratingly, this means Sea Shepherd’s cove guardians can only film and record events without taking preventative measures.

Watson currently has his eyes fixed on the tragic demise of vaquitas: a porpoise endemic only in the Gulf of California which now hovers precariously above extinction with only an estimated 30 left in the wild. This is mainly due to their deaths in gill nets and various organisations are calling for a full ban on gill nets in an attempt to secure their survival. Milagro III currently sails the Sea of Cortez providing support with the Mexican Navy, arresting poachers and confiscating gill nets.

                       

Vaquitas fall victim to the                                                                   The rarest marine mammal is found
gill nets of totoaba fisherman                                                                   only in the Gulf of Mexico
                            

Elsewhere, Sea Shepherd are active in Liberia, Gabon, the Southern Ocean, the Mediterranean, Gulf of St Lawrence, Australia and Hong Kong, the Eastern Tropical Pacific and British Columbia.

With so many ecological problems to fight against, it is hard to imagine how someone, like Paul Watson, has time to be a family man but he manages it. Watson became a father on September 29th 2016 to Tiger, his second child. He currently works from home and when travelling, takes his wife and young son with him.

Oceanic concerns


Lucky for me, I have been privileged with communicating with Paul about his current operations and what marine concerns he has. They are perpetual, covering the diminishment of biodiversity threatening all life in the sea; phytoplankton diminishment as it produces 70% of our oxygen; the diminishment of fish, sharks, sea-turtles, marine mammals and sea birds; the amount of plastic, seismic, radiation and chemical pollution of the sea and illegal and over-fishing.

His message to the world is simple: “If biodiversity in the sea is diminished, we are diminished. If the ocean dies, we die.”

We can’t ignore these problems anymore. If you want to preserve our oceans, take action today.

#StopIllegalFishing
#JusticefortheSea
#ReduceMarinePollution
#SaveMarineWildlife


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