Activism and Arrest: The Story of Captain Paul Watson

0:00 Big news out of conservation, Captain Paul Watson has been arrested outside, I believe it's Greenland or Iceland, I forget where. That's not really important, but we're gonna talk more about a follow-up to a story that I talked about on Friday, the last episode, where we talked about how activism can get you arrested, and you may not like the results from your activism, and will that stop you from doing any kind of activism? It's a really interesting question that I want to explore again today by talking about Captain Paul Watson. If you don't know who he is, we're going to talk about who he is, what he did in the past, and how it's haunting him in the future. And asking the question, does karma come back to kick you in the butt? We're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. This is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. Now, in today's episode, we're gonna be diving more into a story that I talked about last episode, where we talked about activism and saying, look, is it really worth the cost? For some people, it is. And for a guy like Dr., or Doctor, a guy like Captain Paul Watson, It has been the cost. It has been worth the cost. He is a guy who has, since the 70s, not only created two of sort of the most notable organizations

1:31 in conservation in the world, internationally, but he's also, you know, been notoriously vilified in the media and just law in general and in specific countries like Japan. And Japan's been after him for a long time. This is the second time that I've known that he's been arrested and trying to be extradited to Japan to be like, hey, you know what? We want him. We want to put him in trial. We want to put him on trial. We want to make sure that he goes to jail so that he doesn't interfere with whaling because he interfered with whaling for so many years. So we're going to talk a little bit about Dr. I keep calling him Dr. Captain Paul Watson.

2:12 He's kind of been a guy that, you know, people either love him or they hate him. It's a really, he's been a really interesting personality within the conservation world. It started off, I've talked about him before on this podcast, but it's been a while, so I'm gonna give you a little bit of a background on him from what I know. This is a little bit more of a, I'm gonna guess like a little bit of a rant, more of just like my opinion on uh... captain paul watson what what he's done and answer the actions that have been taken against him it's a little bit of like a back-and-forth i'm a guy who likes to see both sides of of the issue and present both sides of the issue and and of course i want to know your opinion you know this is something that you know you look at a man like him, a guy like him just being like, hey, look, I would want to do everything possible. Here are my values in terms of conservation. This is what I want to see. And then I'm going to do everything possible, including using a form of violence in a way to be able to achieve that. But over time, be a little bit successful in what he was able to do, but also offend a lot of people, ostracize a lot of people, and pretty much, he's on the wrong side of a lot of people, the bad side of a lot of people, including countries like Japan. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. He started Greenpeace, folks.

3:39 He was one of the founders of Greenpeace, and he started Greenpeace as an activism So this is, we know Greenpeace. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I saw the big protests against oil, big protests against the fossil fuel industry in the 80s and 90s, protests against hunting, protests against seal hunting that happened in Canada that I used to see on the news. I still see it. You see protests happening everywhere, all over the world. It was international and it was aggressive. you know, not violent in the way that I like that I've ever remembered, but it was also in your face. It disrupt a lot of things. And Greenpeace still does really interesting protests.

4:21 You know, right now, deep sea mining is the big issue. And we have I've covered you know, topics where, you know, episodes where we've seen, you know, Greenpeace activists and Greenpeace staff members go on deep sea mining boats, like in Normandy, not Normandy, sorry, in Norway, and just be like, hey, you know what, like, we're gonna protest and have like, against anti-sea exploration protest signs up there trying to stop people from doing deep sea mining. And they used to do it against fur, they used to do it against a lot of other things. this continues to happen. Like they're still an activism organization, but they've changed over time. They now work with governments on policy actions.

5:05 They will still do activism, but they will also go into policy. They will also look at science. They will also look at white papers and do campaigns to make you aware of what's happening in the ocean and on land, but also like the major things that are happening and what they're against. And to be honest, they still kind of follow what Paul Watson and the other founders really started in terms of like we don't want hunting, we don't want animal cruelty, we don't want you know the extraction of resources in deep sea like in the deep sea as well as other places and so we're going to do everything we can including protests but also working with governments to make sure that there are policies in place to stop this stuff from happening. So they went from an activism organization to more of a, hey, we're still gonna do the activism, we still don't love what you do, but we're also gonna wanna work with you so that you can get policy in place. Because they see that's how change is also made. It's not just getting the government's attention or a government's attention or somebody's attention in a private business, but it's also working with those stakeholders to say, hey, we need to do something about it. And whether you agree with it or not, That's fine. Paul Watson did not agree with the way they were changing. He saw the writing on the wall. I think he got ousted from Greenpeace, which he helped found. And then he started Sea Shepherd. Sea Shepherd was more of his organization. He founded it. It's based on him. His name's all over it. When

6:35 you think of Sea Shepherd, you think of Captain Paul Watson. He's been on TV shows. He's been on the news. He is Sea Shepherd. He started whale wars, there was a TV show, and essentially Sea Shepherd will go out, they will have their own boats. They will go out into the, for a while, they were going out to the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica, and they would stop the Japanese whaling fleet from whaling. Now, to go back on it, the International Whaling Commission, they put a moratorium on whale hunting back in the 80s. Japan was like, no way, a couple of other countries, like Norway and Denmark, they said, no way, we're not doing it, we're gonna continue to hunt. and they continue to hunt. So Sea Shepherd's like, we're not gonna allow you to do that, so we're gonna take our boats, we're gonna get in your way, we might bump you a little bit, and we're gonna get in your way, and we're gonna make your life a living hell. So they would battle, they literally had whale wars, and that was a TV show, it was almost like a reality show, a news reality show, documenting what the Sea Shepherd would do. They'd have boats of volunteers, not necessarily marine biologists, some of them might have been marine biologists, I don't know, There were a lot of stories that came out of those ships. There were a lot of good stories, there were a lot of bad stories as well. I'm not gonna go into it because they're all allegations. I don't know exactly what happened, but I have heard some bad things that happened on those ships.

7:58 Regardless, they put themselves in harm's way. They used some violence to bump boats, to get in the way of, I think what they would try and do is if a whaling ship was after a whale, they would try and harpoon it. What the Sea Shepherd ships would do is they would get in the way. And if they had to cut close in terms of actually bump the boat, they would actually bump the boat. And then that's what would happen. The boat could be damaged. There were a couple of Sea Shepherd boats that were sunk. I don't think anybody ever passed away from it, thank God. Or I'm sure there were some bumps and bruises and some people that were hurt, but still very dangerous. Putting people's lives in danger on both sides of the issue, which you never want to see. That's something that personally I don't agree with. but at some point when you see countries disobeying moratoriums like international agreed upon moratoriums and it's in the high seas there's no law at the time for the high seas there's now a high seas treaty that hopefully will be ratified by a lot of countries and it's slowly being ratified by different countries canada hasn't even ratified yet which i don't know why but regardless You know, they didn't have it back then. They didn't have it in the 2000s, the 90s. And so what Sea Shepherd did was go out there and make life a living hell for the Japanese whaling fleet. And year by year, they would go back out. The Japanese whaling fleet would go back out. Sea Shepherd would meet them. There'd be Sea Shepherd Australia. There'd be Sea Shepherd in the Southeast and in the US. And people would fly from all over the world to be on these boats to make sure that whaling didn't happen or they made just it was really bad. The Japanese were like, we're out,

9:31 we're done. This is not happening anymore. We don't want to have anything to do with it. And so they basically stopped. And at one point, you're just like, look, I may not agree with the way they did things, the Sea Shepherd did things, but they kind of did us a favor. They got so annoying and so in your face that finally the Japanese whaling fleet was like, we're not going to hunt in the Southern Ocean and hunt all these minke whales and other whales. We're going to hunt just within our territorial waters. And so that's what they did. That's what happened. At one point, you're just kind of like, okay, like we've been talking crap about this Sea Shepherd organization for a while, because a lot of times we didn't really like what they do. And a lot of people do, and a lot of people love what they did. And to be honest, there's a lot of supporters for Sea Shepherd were very, you know, I would say like aggressive towards like Greenpeace. There was like a beef between them because like, oh, you're not, you know, I used to see arguments all the time between, you know, Greenpeace activists and Sea Shepherd supporters and activists and be like, Sea Shepherd supporters, you're not, you know, aggressive enough and you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing. And Greenpeace was like, we're working with government. We're trying to do our change. We've been successful in a lot of places. And, and, At the time, I remember saying like I did an episode on on sort of the beef and going back and forth. And I remember saying, look, there is room for different organizations that take a different toll. And they're all needed, whether we love it or not, but they're all needed. We need the extremes. We need sort of the the people who are less extreme and working with governments and different stakeholders. And it's kind of like a balance a little bit. And it's hard. It's hard to say that because you don't want to see anybody get hurt. You don't want to see anybody ramming boats or anything like

11:03 that. But This is what happens. And because of that, the Japanese have been seeking out... you know, Captain Paul Watson a number of different times. And one time he went to Germany, he flew into Germany, he's flying somewhere, I don't know where. I think he, I think he lives in France, but he's flying to Germany to fly somewhere else. And the German authorities arrested him and said, hey, you know what, you know, there's, there's some people in Japan that want to talk to you. And there was going to be an extradition and that got fought. And eventually he came home, but it was, it was in several weeks where he was incarcerated and people like the Sea Shepherd support was like, what's going on now? At this point, Sea Shepherd has gotten in or gone international. They have TV show whale wars, they've been in the news a number of different times for their activism and what they've been able to accomplish and what they've been able to do. Some good, some bad. Most of the notorious stuff, nefarious stuff, were out in the public and that's what they were known for. Whether you liked it or not, that's what they did and they were known for it. They were either popular in their supporters' eyes or people just didn't like them. A lot of people in conservation are just like, I don't want anything to do with Sea Shepherd, we don't appreciate, we don't agree with what they do, but that was it. Like there's nothing that, you know, people in marine conservation could really do. They're an organization, they get funded, they have money, they have boats, all this kind of stuff. A lot of celebrities were endorsing them, a lot of celebrities were donating boats. Bob Barker was one of the boats. Bob Barker is a very popular game show personality. He was the host of The Price is Right for a long time, and he's very big into animal advocacy. And he was supporting Sea Shepherd. He was supporting Captain Paul Watson. And

12:35 so a lot of the supporters came to his rescue, and eventually he got released from Germany, never went to Japan. God knows what would happen if he ever went to Japan. And so he That's what he did, and he got away. And so he continued on with Sea Shepherd for a number of years. And then recently, within the last few years, Sea Shepherd has started to take a different turn. And they saw the writing on the wall. They saw that they wanted to shift from a more aggressive approach. But sorry, before I get into that, after the whale wars sort of stopped, they started to get into, and I don't know if they were still doing it at the same time, but they started to get more popular for tracking down excuse me, tracking down other ships, like fishing vessels that were fishing illegally, either in marine protected areas, or they weren't reporting their fishing activities. So they were IUU fishing. So it's illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. And so that's a big no-no, but they're in the high seas. It's very difficult to tell. They would come in. These illegal fishing vessels would come into port.

13:42 They would unload, sell all their stuff, and then they would leave before the authorities knew it. There's a lot of new research on ways to actually enforce and try and catch some of these illegal vessels or some of these vessels that are doing illegal things. And a lot of times they are up to no good and they have fishing slaves on there and it's awful, fishery slaves. It's awful, but there's that will come more in another episode, but that's what the Sea Shepherd was doing. They were following these vessels They were tracking them. They're talking to the regular authorities the country smaller countries would actually hire them to come in Mexico even Hired them to come into the Sea of Cortez To be able to monitor fishing boats and not use gill nets so that they didn't take up the total boat to try and catch total bow Total total bow. I think it's called total bow total bow Oh, I forget the name. It's an endangered species that's caught using gill nets, but they also catch a small marine mammal. And so not getting into that, but they would be called on to patrol those waters, eventually getting kicked out by the Mexican government. So there's never like a really good relationship with a lot of these.

14:57 It seems to come and go with this relationship. But the thing is, they had boats, and they were willing to patrol. They were willing to enforce any kind of laws as long as the countries would have them. And so that's what they got popular for. And I, you know, even I started like, well, they're not doing it, they're not ramming boats, they're catching boats, they're following them, and they're reporting on them. And it's like, hey, you know, it's kind of nice that people are doing this. And we're, we always talk about people need to step up, governments needs to step up, but they're not stepping up. And so you're like, We, you know, you get frustrated and that's what happens. You get, you know, organizations like She Shepard who are doing this type of work and have the money and have the vessels, have the operators and to be able to go and do this kind of work. And so they do. And you're like, okay, this is great. Like this is, this is great work. So, you know, they start doing that. And then all of a sudden, a couple of years ago, I started to read about how, like some of the supporters that I follow on, on Facebook and stuff, I start to see, I'm like, what's happened with Paul Watson and and Sea Shepherd, like Captain Paul Watson's out of the Sea Shepherd organization. And what happened is that there was a bit of a coup, and not a bit of a coup, there was a coup in the Sea Shepherd organization where the board members got together and essentially ousted Paul Watson from a lot of the organization that he was able to create and expand. And there are so many different Sea Shepherds, I guess they're all individually managed within the organizations, like within different countries, that the board members like went behind his back and was like, they got support from certain Sea Shepherd countries in different countries. And then others were very loyal to

16:30 Paul Watson. And then it got very little, the people who were the organizations in different countries that were loyal to Paul Watson. And so then Paul Watson all of a sudden is ousted from the main international Sea Shepherd. like Sea Shepherd International. And he's pissed. He's not happy. He's starting to write about it a number of different times, like all on his post, how he felt stabbed in the back, how people he brought on and he put together to be Sea Shepherd supporters and advocates and board members and staff members. All of a sudden, they betrayed him. And I guess they thought they wanted the organization to go into a different route, just like Greenpeace, to start working more with policy and do more non-aggressive things, and of course Captain Paul Watson is not for that type of way, and so he got ousted. They had a disagreement, they ousted him. behind his back, it seems, and I guess that's how it goes. And so he was looking for a new foundation. I forget the name of the new foundation, but he did start a new foundation, started to get some ships, bought some, was retrofitting some of them to fit his needs. And then I think he was starting to do a campaign on overfishing and illegal fishing. And that's, I think, how he got caught. A lot of this is assumptions. I'm just kind of ranting on this. But this is what happens when you're an advocate and your methods are more aggressive.

17:56 You start to piss people off. You start to piss countries off. And countries are like, hey, you know what? We're going to come after you. And Japan apparently still remembers what Paul Watson did and his organization did. So they have a warrant out. If he ever goes to Japan, he probably will get arrested. go to trial, get convicted, and spend a long time in jail. I don't know what the charges are, but I do know that Japan wants him. And there are certain countries that have extradition agreements with Japan. And I think one of those is either Denmark or Norway. And he flew to Greenland to go somewhere else, and he got arrested right there. and now he's being, you know, sort of, I think they're evaluating whether he needs to be extradited to Japan.

18:39 Now, my concern is if he does go to Japan, he will get convicted, he will go to jail for quite a long time, and he's older now, he's in his 70s, so any kind of long-term sentence could be the last, unfortunately, that we see, and I wouldn't want to see anybody do that. I don't know, you know, what the charges are, or, you know, whether he's guilty of that, My point of this story is, was it worth it? Was he able to get all the stuff that he wanted done, or at least some of the stuff that he wanted done, and he created Greenpeace, he created Sea Shepherd, Those are two organizations who have done some changes, who have made some significant changes and small changes in various countries around the world in terms of advocates. They're people, they've employed a lot of marine conservationists, they've employed activists, they've employed policy makers, they've worked with governments, they've been able to Hammer out agreements, and they've been able to protest certain issues Especially as they come up like seeing things like deep deep sea mining and now you know you have the guy who founded both of those Organizations who have seen some success and have gotten very popular funded like I gotta tell you it is not easy to get funded It is not easy for an organization to get funded and here He is he's also been able to you know get a lot of funding you know to get ships multiple ships donated to and by celebrities and other organizations and companies. That is a true feat

20:09 within marine conservation. Now, on the other hand, you know, not only has he pissed people off, but he's also said some pretty abhorrent things, you know, over his lifetime. you know, and a lot of it, you know, recently as I was, you know, interacting with a colleague of mine, a friend, somebody who's like sort of like an internet friend, you know, we don't really know each other offline, but we, you know, we respect the work that we do. Asking questions, I was like, you know, she, she responded, it's like, oh, you know, Captain Paul Watson is getting arrested. She's like, surprise, surprise, I hope he rots in hell for some of the things he said. And I was just like, you know, I responded being like, well, this is a lot of people think he's, I remember like, why do you think this? She said he said some pretty nasty things against indigenous people and I think I think it has to do with in 2015 2016 you know there were a lot there's a look I guess it was a bit of a controversy of indigenous people in the north whether it be Alaska or even in the Canadian north and in in the Yukon as well as Northwest Territories and Nunavut, where they were, you know, some Nuvialis were selling their quotas to, you know, rich hunters who were going up and, you know, killing, basically hunting for polar bears. And the indigenous people up there have quotas, certain quotas that they can hunt and they're allowed to sell those quotas. and allow to be a guide for those people to get, you know, those prize hunts. I guess it's similar to people in Africa who have those quotas, they can sell it to people who come over, rich, usually hunters

21:40 who come over and sort of get these major tags and these major quotas and hunt lions, tigers, wherever they are, not in Africa, obviously, but elephants and so forth. And they, you know, they take pictures out with it and they spend, you know, 50, like 50 thousands, like tens of thousands of dollars. And, you know, a lot of people don't like it, but, you know, it's a money maker for the Indigenous people who, you know, their history within Canada and the U.S. is very complex, very controversial. You know, as a Canadian in the past, we have treated and we continue sometimes to treat Indigenous people like crap. And, you know, obviously we need to do better. Selling these quotas was a way that they wanted to make money. And that's the way it was done. Captain Paul Watson did not like the way that was done and said he was they were being a traitor to nature and the way their culture and things like that, which was obviously not the right thing to say. And I think that's what this person that I was interacting with. on threads at the time was talking about. And I get it. I totally get it. There are very different sides of Captain Paul Watson. There are some things where he has said he's very true to his word in terms of he doesn't like hunting, he doesn't like anything, any harm to any kind of animals. And so people really respect him for it, but the way he goes about it, people really hate him for it as well. And so when you start to be this polarizing, And bad things happen to you, people will start to, you know, applaud it, the people who do not see eye to eye with you, and the way you've treated other people,

23:14 they will applaud the fact that you've been arrested, it's almost like karma coming back at you. And at some point, you're going to have some ups and downs. And those downs could be being arrested and, and being, you know, evaluated for extradition or being prepared for extradition. You know, we've seen a lot of people make that sacrifice for what their values are. And I feel like Captain Paul Watson is one of those people. There was a petition going around to try and plead with the government that arrested him to say, hey, you know what? Can you let him go? He's been such a huge advocate for the ocean, and we want to make sure that he's able to stick around and do all this kind of stuff. And at some point, people were like, I don't really care. like people like this is what he's done this is what he deserves so I would love to know where you fit on the spectrum like do you say hey you know what he's a great hero and he should be he should be honored for that Canada where he's Canadian Canada should be helping him out other countries should be helping him out Sea Shepherd should be helping him out but He's not part of Sea Shepherd anymore. Or are you on the side of, look, this guy has done some really bad things. He said some really bad things to indigenous people as well as other things. He's chose violence to help conservation. I don't believe that. I would love to see him arrested or he deserves this. Love to hear your thoughts. Hit me up on Instagram. Or if you're listening to this on Spotify, you can just comment on Spotify. Does Paul Watson deserve to be I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean if you want to DM me, or if you're listening to this on Spotify, hit that poll

24:46 and just say, hey, do you think Kevin Paul Watson should be arrested? Love to hear your thoughts on this, because that's what this is about. This is a podcast where I start the conversation. I want to hear how you feel about this. Because that's why I start this podcast. That's why I do this podcast each and every time I record. So thank you very much for listening. You have been listening to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day.