Captain Paul Watson Interview: "You can't destroy a movement""

By Paul Watson, Sarah Schuster, Michele Sciurba and Archiv der Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

"You can take down an individual, you can take down an organization, but you can't destroy a movement." Paul Watson

Captain Paul Watson, honored with the Jules Verne Award for his environmental activism in 2012, is a fighter with a clear mission: to protect the world's oceans from illegal exploitation and environmental destruction.
"If the oceans die, we die." For decades, Paul Watson has risked his life for the conservation and well-being of marine life. At the age of 27, he founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. In 1978, the Sea Shepherd became the first ship of the now world-famous fleet with the Jolly Roger flag, modified with a trident and shepherd's crook. In a new expanded edition, including a second interview and numerous extraordinary images from the Sea Shepherd archives, Watson vividly recounts the exciting stages of his unique life, opening up an exclusive insight into his highly politicized arrest in Frankfurt in 2012 and his adventurous escape that sent him on a nerve-wracking journey filled with storms and obstacles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edition Faust
• Release date: Dec 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9783949774010

Book preview

Paul Watson at Scott Island, Anti-Whaling Campaign in the Southern Ocean 2012.

Captain Paul Watson, Antarctica, Sea Shepherd Operation Waltzing Matilda. © Anna Wloch

YOU CAN’T DESTROY

A MOVEMENT

All photos unless otherwise stated:

© Archive of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Updated and expanded new edition 2021

© Edition Faust, Frankfurt/Main 2021

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, beyond the copying permitted by the Copyright Law without written permission from the publisher.

Designed by Bayerl & Ost, Frankfurt/Main

TZ-Verlag & Print GmbH, Roßdorf

Printed climate-neutrally on paper from sustainable forestry.

www.editionfaust.de

ISBN 978-3-945400-94-4

eISBN 978-3-949774-01-0

Content

Preface

Paul Watson Interview (2021):

The Right Thing to Do

By Sarah Schuster and Michele Sciurba

The Sea Shepherd Movement

By Michael G. Parker, Ph.D.

Paul Watson Interview (2016):

You Can’t Destroy a Movement

By Sarah Schuster and Michele Sciurba

If the Oceans Die, We Die:

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

By Sarah Schuster and Michele Sciurba

Glossary

About Sea Shepherd

Campaigns

Addresses

Donate

The Authors

Dolphin stuck in illegal driftnet. During Sea Shepherd’s Operation Driftnet, the STEVE IRWIN was able to confiscate four kilometers of gear of the Fu Yuan Fu fleet, in which the bodies of 321 animals were recorded, and eventually to shut down the entire illegal driftnet fleet.

Preface

Species in the sea are currently disappearing twice as fast as on land, while the world is on fire. Under Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, at least 2,739,840 acres of rainforest has been cut down between August 2019 and July 2020, the highest number since 2008. Australian bushfires from August 2019 to March 2020, triggered by prolonged drought and extreme temperatures of 115 °F, destroyed 12 million hectares of land, according to WWF, and some three billion animals have either died or been driven out of their habitats by the destruction. Biodiversity in the oceans is also dwindling due to advancing climate change and its effects on salinity and water temperature, not to mention the large-scale destruction of habitats through industrial fishing, poaching and marine pollution.

This volume is based on two conversations with Captain Paul Watson in 2016 and 2021. We first met Paul Watson at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015 and quickly understood that without healthy oceans life on this planet cannot be sustained and that preserving biodiversity is a matter of political will, or rather a question of the unwillingness to change modern society’s destructive ways. Since 2016, the situation has only become more urgent. We met Captain Paul Watson, whose words can bridge any distance with insight and urgency, on Zoom this year because of the coronavirus. While the world has come to a standstill and people have had to isolate themselves, poaching has increased again, but fortunately Sea Shepherd has nonetheless seen many successes and progress.

Whale caught in net

No matter where we are, the loss of biodiversity and the impact on our ecosystems affects us all. The oceans regulate the weather and climate, provide much of our vital oxygen, and store a significant amount of CO2 emissions. We must understand Paul Watson’s message: If the oceans die, we all die. With this volume, we hope to make a small contribution to making known the magnificent efforts of Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd, and that with each reader, the global awareness of the urgency of Sea Shepherd’s message will increase. We hope that the Sea Shepherd movement will become as great as the oceans it protects, because, as Paul Watson has shown us: We are the oceans.

Michele Sciurba, Sarah Schuster

September 2021

Paul Watson Interview:

The Right Thing to Do

By Sarah Schuster

and Michele Sciurba

Humpback Whales © Scott Portelli

PART ONE

Netflix, Biostitutes & Covid 19

Humpback Whale jumps out of water. © Michael May

We are curious how you have been. The last time we met was in Paris.

It was 2016 and you were living in France. We met with you and your wife Yana, who was pregnant at the time. Can you tell us how you were allowed to return to the US?

Well, I was able to return to the U.S. because Secretary of State John Kerry intervened on my behalf. In 2012, I couldn’t return because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made it quite clear that she would extradite me to Japan. So, thanks to John Kerry I was able to return.

We are amazed that Hillary Clinton made such a statement.

It’s not surprising.

You were still considered a fugitive from the law in Japan and Costa Rica. Why did it take quite a while before Costa Rica finally dropped all charges against you?

Well, they dropped the charges because they had a change of government, which goes to prove how political it was. The new judiciary was able to do that. I did receive a phone call from the new minister of the environment after the government had changed who virtually apologized for what had happened. So, that’s behind me, but Japan refuses to drop the issue. They haven’t filed for extradition in France or in the U.S., and I don’t think they really want me in Japan. They just want to keep me from traveling. We sent Interpol a statement of our position and they agreed with everything we claimed but they said: Yeah, but it ultimately comes down to whether Japan has the power to do this. This illustrates how a large economic superpower can use its power for political purposes.

An adult and sub-adult Minke whale are dragged aboard the Japanese whaling vessel NISSHIN MARU. The wound that is visible on the calf's side was reportedly caused by an explosive-packed harpoon. This image was taken by Australian customs agents in 2008, under a surveillance effort to collect evidence of indiscriminate harvesting, which is contrary to Japan’s claim that they are collecting the whales for the purpose of scientific research.

We worked on many cases where there were similar situations with red notices. It’s clear that Japan’s politically motivated red notices are unacceptable because they are not in line with Interpol’s own statues. Such abuse is also present in the fishing industry, when, for example, Japan falsely declares its whaling fleet to be research vessels.

It’s even more absurd when you consider that Sea Shepherd works closely with Interpol to stop poaching in African waters. So, on one side we are working with them and one the other side … (laughs) When one of the guys at Interpol had a retirement party, I called into to congratulate him, he said: "Well, this is probably the only time in history when somebody here has been congratulated by somebody on