Elementary Watson
Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson tells Bridget Jones why he is not afraid to take on big business to save the planet
There’s a scene near the beginning of his new documentary where the camera watches the Paul Watson pottering away in his office. He’s pulling out knick-knacks, showing off souvenirs, and rustling through papers and artefacts of his life.
It seems like a perfectly nice spot, full of memories and achievements, framed global citizen awards and photos with the Dalai Lama. But it’s not the office Watson wants, simply the one the 69-year-old founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is stuck with.
He is a seadog unable to sail. A pirate with no ship to pilot. In a world where we are all, currently, slowing, reckoning with border controls and what it means to be stuck, unable to travel wherever and whenever we want to go, it’s a lesson Watson has long been grappling with. For us, it is the threat of illness that keeps the world still; for Watson, it has been an attempt to evade the law.
Captain Paul Watson was raised on the ocean. One of six children growing up in St Andrews, New Brunswick — a small town on Canada’s east coast — he says his earliest memories are of water and the people who lived for it.
“As far back as I can remember I was on the dock — I used to go down and have lunch with the crews — so I’ve really been brought up along boats all my life,” he says from his home in Vermont. “I ran off to sea when I was 18 and have been there ever since. I feel at home there. I’ve never felt afraid being on the sea.”
Afraid? No. In danger and dangerous? It’s hard to see it any other way.
From peaceful beginnings learning the importance of respecting and defending animals in the sweetly named Kindness Club, Watson is now regarded by some governments — and Interpol — as a real threat, because those childhood lessons never stopped, instead ramped up in intensity. What started with summer holidays spent freeing trapped beavers eventually saw Watson chaining himself to whaling ships, going hand-to-club with seal-hunters and sacrificing his freedom for the animals of the ocean.
During six decades, he has built a career and cult following by crashing into whaling boats in the name of eco-terrorism and never apologising for it. As the founder of marine conservation group Sea Shepherd, his singular approach to conservation has seen him arrested, criticised and hated as much as he is beloved. But his mission and the intensity in which he tries to complete it, has never wavered.
Now, his fight is the subject of Watson , a new documentary by Lesley Chilcott, the Academy Award-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth.
Watson has long understood and played on the power of the media and celebrity, using film stars and reality television to broaden the reach of his message. And while he maintains he only took part in the film because Chilcott asked, he almost certainly won’t mind the exposure it brings him and his cause.
He was still a teenager when, in 1969, he became an early member of Greenpeace during rallies against nuclear testing on Amchitka Island. He claims he was one of the organisation’s cofounders. Greenpeace, officially, disagrees.
This “he said/they said” situation has dogged Watson throughout his life and activism, where his version of the past is often mismatched or in dispute with others’. He’s the type of man who pays little mind to it — his version of the truth is all that matters.
Regardless of who is right, Watson didn’t last long on Greenpeace’s books. After chaining himself to a sealing ship, his fellow board of director members deemed his actions to be violent and forced him out. Watson says it was the best thing that could have ever happened.
It spurred him into action and in 1977 he transferred his energies into what would eventually become Sea Shepherd, a not-for-profit organisation that is anti-poaching and uses “aggressive non-violence and interventions” to end the destruction and slaughter of the ocean’s wildlife.
While Greenpeace hung banners and took pictures, he was more interested in spotting illegal actions and going after the perpetrators — no matter how big or small. Saving the environment can be a heavy, political game but
the diplomacy side of things isn’t of interest to Watson.
“In politics, it’s all very much the same — concerns about the economy and what’s in it for us,” he says. ”[But] everything comes down to humanity. We don’t see the link to all these other species and how important they are.”
That simple idea has seen Watson put his neck on the line more times that he can count and the cost of doing what he believes is right was a lesson he learned in the early 1970s, when he was part of the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota.
“We were surrounded by 2000 troops that were shooting at us … I said, ‘The odds are against us, we don’t stand a chance” and [American Indian Movement leader] Russell Means said to me, ‘We’re not concerned about the odds against us. We’re not concerned about winning. We are here because this is the right place to be and it’s the right thing to do. And what we do today will define what the future will be.’
“It’s all summed up in a Lakota saying: it’s a good day to die. So, you have to be prepared to take a stand for what you believe in to be able to make a difference to the future.”
When it comes to taking risks, Watson has seemingly tried them all. He’s been shot at by whaling harpoons, dragged through icy waters, had hunting knives heaved at his head and attacked by an angry mob in his hotel room, all detailed in the documentary and often through incredible archival footage.
“I’ve found that during confrontation, you can’t get angry, you can’t get upset, you just have to focus on doing what you do to make the right decision. Be calm and look at the situation, in fact, you don’t even have to think, you know? Instinct takes over.
“There’s been a lot of risk. But I don’t pay much mind to it — I mean, we’re alive because of risk. But everyone has to accept one thing: we’re going to die. So, does it really matter when? It’s more important how you live. That’s my philosophy.”
While he’s been in the line of fire — literally — Watson hasn’t always been the victim. Nor has he been shy about the contentious and at times almost militant tactics he and his crews have utilised during their campaigns, which has seen
Sea Shepherd ram and sink countless whaling boats, causing a path of destruction of their own.
“I’m not really concerned about criticism. If I have any regrets it’s that I didn’t do something in a way that was stronger, more aggressive at the time. Everybody makes mistakes … you just have to learn from those mistakes. I think, overall, our campaigns have been successful but most importantly, we’ve never caused any injury.”
While the physical scars might be light, the legal ramifications of Watson’s actions have left deep wounds. The ones that have him holed up in the United States rather than roaming the seas.
In 2010, Kiwi Sea Shepherd captain Pete Bethune was arrested for boarding the Shonan Maru 2, the security vessel of a Japanese whaling fleet that played a role in the sinking of Bethune’s Sea Shepherd vessel, the Ady Gil, during a collision.
Boarding in the middle of the night, Bethune had intended to carry out a citizen’s arrest of the captain and issue a bill for damage to the protest boat. However, he was detained, arrested when the ship returned to Japanese waters and eventually sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for five years.
As part of his deal with Japanese authorities, he said it was Watson who ordered him to board the Shonan Maru 2.
“Pete Bethune was the biggest mistake I actually ever made with Sea Shepherd. He came to us, wanting to get involved, he was a bit of a cowboy,” Watson says. “He wanted to board the Japanese vessel and said he would take full responsibility for that. I’m even on camera saying, ‘I advise you not to do this.’ But he did it anyway. He got arrested, went to Japan and he struck a deal.”
When Bethune put the responsibility of the attack on Watson’s shoulders, Interpol issued a Red Notice for him, equivalent to an international arrest warrant for member countries. Watson spent time living in exile in Germany and France — albeit in an 18th century chateau. But a year after his trial, Bethune wrote an affidavit to the US State Department admitting that he’d lied to Japan, which led the US to ignore the extradition request against Watson.
“But the damage was done,” Watson, who has dual US and Canadian citizenship, says. He is still stuck, essentially, on dry land in the US. “I’m in that position because of him. I think he’s a coward. I think he made a decision to do something and he didn’t back it up.”
Watson was also on Costa Rica’s wanted list, where he was accused of intervening to stop a Costa Rican shipping vessel that was illegally finning sharks in Guatemalan waters in 2002. Those charges and the Red Notice were dropped last year.
After a dramatic career on water, figuring out life on land can’t be easy. Watson is pragmatic — “you just have to adjust to situations — that’s all you can do” — and is filling his days with writing and reflection and is still fighting the good fight from afar. He has a personal website where he sells signed photos and Sea Shepherd mementos but a career as a reality TV star on the Discovery Channel’s hit Sea Shepherd series Whale Wars has been put on ice.
“I have a 2-year-old son now and he makes me happy every day,” he says, his voice truly lightening for the first time. “I do wonder if I’ve brought a future John Connor [Terminator] into the world, that I’ll have to teach him how to be a survivalist. But all we can do is hope for the best.”
Watson isn’t confident in what lies ahead and despite his best efforts, he certainly doesn’t think the situation he started fighting against 50 years ago is any brighter now than it was then.
“I don’t think it’s getting better because there is still no initiative on behalf of governments anywhere to do anything about it. We’re down to the fact we need a teenage girl to come to us and say, ‘Hey, get your crap together’,” he says, referring to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. “We have to do right now to the oceans what everybody’s doing now in response to the coronavirus. Stay away. Leave it alone. Allow the ocean time to repair the damage that we’ve done to it.
“If the ocean dies, we die. So, if we’re not prepared to save the ocean, we’re not prepared to save ourselves.”
If the ocean dies, we die. So, if we’re not prepared to save the ocean, we’re not prepared to save ourselves.
Paul Watson