Anti-Whaling Activist Captain Paul Watson talks from his home in Paris about his time in the Greenland prison where he was kept 5 months on an Interpol Warrant by Japan

We talk in early January 2025 with Captain Paul Watson in this 21st episode about his captivity in Greenland (we covered his July 21, 2024 arrest in episode #1 with the President of Sea Shepherd France Lamya Essemlali). We discuss what happened, why this all came down, how he got the notice December 17 that he'd be freed, and what he and the Sea Shepherd France and Brazil, along with the Captain Paul Watson Foundation will be doing next. He became a total rockstar during his 5 months of captivity. We touch on all the support he received during that time, from Presidents like French President Macron to actors like Martin Sheen and Pierce Brosnan, to environmentalists, like Dr. Jane Goodall and Dr. Sylvia Earle. Captain Paul talks about Japan, Denmark, the US, Canada, the Faroe Islands and more, particularly about the Interpol "red notice" which was used as a political tool against this well-known anti-whaling activist, a founder of Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, and star of WHALE WARS, a reality TV series that aired on the Discovery Channel for many years. Japan did NOT like that media attention, and thus this story unfolded from our very first episode where we talked with Sea Shepherd France President Essemlali when she was en route from Paris to visit him in his Greenland jail cell last August. This is a story for the ages. Listen in as we uncover insights about this fascinating and inspirational human being - Captain Paul Watson. He now lives in Paris France with his wife and 2 young sons, one of whom is a chess champion...must be learning a few moves from his dad! Bravo, Captai

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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:52:04
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Resilient Earth podcast, where we talk with speakers from the United States and around the world about the critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking from the tiniest of actions to the grandest of gestures, so that we can continue to thrive and survive for generations to come. I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, producer and host, along with co-hosts and co-producers Scott and Tree Mercer of Mendonoma Wale, and Seal Study located on the South Mendocino and North Sonoma coast.

00:00:52:06 - 00:01:14:02
Speaker 1
The music for this podcast is by Eric Allaman an international composer, pianist and a writer living in The Sea Ranch, North Sonoma Coast, CA. Discover more of his music, animations, ballet, stage and film work at Ericallaman.com.

00:01:14:04 - 00:01:48:03
Speaker 1
You can find Resilient Earth on Spotify, Apple and Amazon podcasts, iHeart radio, YouTube, SoundCloud and wherever you find your podcasts.

00:01:48:05 - 00:02:24:05
Speaker 1
On December 17th, 2024, anti-whaling activist Captain Paul Watson was released from his Greenland prison cell after five months in custody when Denmark rejected a Japanese request to extradite him. Watson, 74, was detained by police when his ship docked in Greenland's capital Nuuk last July on its way to intercept a Japanese whaling vessel in the north Pacific. In this episode, we catch up with Captain Carl Watson from his home in Paris, France.

00:02:24:07 - 00:02:58:17
Speaker 1
During the first part of January 2025. The very first episode of Resilient Earth was in fact about his arrest in July of 2024. And back then we spoke with the president of sea Shepherd France, Lamya Essemlali who was en route to visit with him in prison. That episode we released September 1st. Essemlali described what had happened when the John Paul Dejoria ship captain Paul Watson and crew were on when they stopped to refuel.

00:02:58:19 - 00:03:31:23
Speaker 1
We discovered while talking with him during the zoom conversation how all that went down, how serious it was, how long he remained in jail, what that was like, and how many were on his defense team. In the beginning, he was held until the first week of September. Then it was October all the way through December. Things kept getting delayed as it was being decided in court whether or not he'd be extradited to Japan on that red notice by Interpol.

00:03:32:00 - 00:04:11:17
Speaker 1
Watson's arrest has brought to light the abuse of the Interpol system, exposing how individuals can be detained based on politically motivated charges. Without a thorough review of the evidence. This case underscores the need for reform within international law enforcement mechanisms to prevent such injustices again. Watson's defense maintained throughout the past five months that the arrest was “politically motivated” and largely fueled by the negative media exposure Watson and his crew caused Japan.

00:04:11:19 - 00:04:41:05
Speaker 1
During the filming of Whale Wars, an action reality TV series that aired on the Animal Planet network. While time coded footage of the alleged incident clearly showed Watson's innocence. This footage was not allowed to be presented in court in Greenland. Captain Watson's detainment has shone a spotlight on the ongoing issue of illegal Japanese whaling, despite international treaties and regulations.

00:04:41:07 - 00:04:57:21
Speaker 1
Japan has resumed high seas whaling with the construction of the Kangai Maru, a $47 million factory processing vessel launched in May (2024) to target threatened fin whales.

00:04:57:23 - 00:05:16:24
Speaker 1
We're thrilled that Captain Paul Watson has been released. His relentless commitment to protecting our oceans and standing up against illegal whaling has sparked a global movement. Thousands of letters poured in from around the world. Numerous protests occurred during that time.

00:05:17:01 - 00:05:37:00
Speaker 2
(WION NEWS - World Is One News) Protesters outside Paris City Hall chanted Free Paul Watson, calling for his release. But all the hearings are extremely important. Paul Watson should never have been arrested. Compassion is not a crime. And secondly, we need the oceans without oceans. As he says, we will die.

00:05:37:02 - 00:05:56:18
Speaker 1
And an incredible amount of social media posts were written and YouTube videos recorded on his behalf. Here's one from Doctor Jane Goodall directly to Paul Watson, who was still in prison at that time.

00:05:56:20 - 00:06:32:11
Speaker 3
Dear Paul, I can't bear to think of you still imprisoned and I send prayers to keep you safe and to bring, you know, compassion to the hearts of those who hold your fate in their hands. I have so admired you. Everything that you've done for the whales. And I've always loved whales, of course. So I send you love and and hope against hope that the Danes see sense.

00:06:32:13 - 00:06:34:01
Speaker 4
Your.

00:06:34:03 - 00:06:36:08
Speaker 3
Courage and strength. Bye (end, Dr. Jane Goodall’s message to Captain Paul Watson)

00:06:36:10 - 00:07:07:12
Speaker 1
Host - Leigh Anne Lindsey - “this is an excerpt from an Instagram post by actor Pierce Brosnan. Legendary ocean activist Paul Watson has dedicated his life to saving our planet and oceans, as he rightfully states. If our oceans die, we die. Brosnan continues by writing that Paul Watson is a man of immeasurable character and has been a friend to my wife, Keely and myself for over 30 years.

00:07:07:14 - 00:07:32:20
Speaker 1
We greatly respect the brave, selfless and critically vital work Paul has accomplished at great risk to himself to protect our oceans and especially marine life. Defending cetaceans and the ecosystem we all depend on for survival is not a crime.

00:07:32:22 - 00:07:38:01
Speaker 1
And here is actor Martin Sheen's plea to the Danish government.

00:07:38:03 - 00:08:03:12
Speaker 5
Hello, I'm Martin Sheen and with all due respect, I'm addressing this message to the Danish government as well as the Honorable Peter Hummelguard Just imagine the healing effect on our ailing planet. If every nation on earth could produce at least one environmentalist with the courage and commitment of a Paul Watson. Now imagine our planet without the only one. Paul Watson himself.

00:08:03:14 - 00:08:36:01
Speaker 5
I'm honored to join the many hundreds and hundreds of thousands in this worldwide appeal, including French President Macron, Brazilian President da Silva, as well as Jane Goodall urging the release of Paul Watson. Surely justice is served if Paul is released with time served not only for his time served at Nuuk prison in Greenland, but his time served with Greenpeace, the sea Shepherd society and the current Captain Paul Watson Foundation, with a combined total of 60 plus years his entire adult lifetime.

00:08:36:03 - 00:09:05:10
Speaker 5
If what we believe is not costly we are left to question its value. Just imagine how much Paul's beliefs have already cost him, and imagine then how much more Japan can extract. Now imagine the unimaginable gift our planet and Paul's family receive when he arrives home safe in Paris in time for Christmas. Just imagine that.

00:09:05:12 - 00:09:16:19
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne Lindsey) And he did arrive home in time for Christmas to be with his wife and two young boys.

00:09:16:21 - 00:09:48:04
Speaker 1
We'll talk about that and more in this 21st episode of Resilient Earth.

00:09:48:06 - 00:09:50:15
Speaker 1
Welcome, Paul.

00:09:50:17 - 00:09:52:12
Speaker 4
(Captain Paul Watson) Oh. Thank you. Thank you.

00:09:52:14 - 00:10:20:11
Speaker 1
(Host Leigh Anne Lindsey) We have several threads of connections because I had interviewed for public radio a few years back. Richard Ladkani who had produced Sea of Shadows (Right, Paul says) And that was the first time I heard about sea Shepherd conservation, and all of that was happening with the vaquita in the Baja waters. And that was years ago when he had that film in the Mendocino County Film Festival in the town of Mendocino.

00:10:20:13 - 00:10:40:03
Speaker 1
Just recently, he was wrapping up a new film with Dr. Jane Goodall, who came out in such big support of you. And that's what we noticed is the amount of attention and focus on what you're doing, what your organization is doing around the world. And we wanted you to to talk about some of that.

00:10:40:08 - 00:11:00:16
Speaker 4
Well, I think a lot of the attention was because of the of the issue itself. Japan's whaling operations are highly illegal, although they pass them off as legitimate. They're not. There are against the international global moratorium on whaling imposed by the the International Whaling Commission, but also that was upheld by the International Court of Justice in 2014.

00:11:00:18 - 00:11:21:15
Speaker 4
So what they are doing, it's a criminal enterprise. So their charge against me, which is really a politically motivated, very minor accusation. What they want is revenge for the television show that we did. This has got nothing to do with actually doing anything. But they just want revenge. And I think people, understood that that was about.

00:11:21:15 - 00:11:38:16
Speaker 4
So it was an opportunity. I think every situation presents an opportunity. And my being arrested in Greenland presented an incredible opportunity to continue to focus attention on Japan's illegal whaling operations, but also to focus attention on the killing of pilot whales and dolphins in the Danish Faroe Islands.

00:11:38:18 - 00:11:44:12
Speaker 1
Right. You just posted about that today on social media. Tell us a little bit about that.

00:11:44:14 - 00:12:11:13
Speaker 4
(Captain Paul Watson) Well, we've been opposing the, what's called the ‘Grindidrap’ which in Nordic translates to the murder of whales. So every year they kill between 800 or 2000 pilot whales or white sided dolphins. This isn't done because they need to eat whale meat. It's almost inedible. It's so high in concentration and mercury. In fact, the children of the Faroe Islands have the highest level of mercury in their bodies of any people on the planet, really.

00:12:11:15 - 00:12:29:02
Speaker 4
And so they're only allowed about 230g a month, even though they're advised not to eat it. But the majority of the whales that are killed are just simply dumped at sea. I mean, they're just wasted. And they kill the entire pod. Entire families. There's no survivors when they go after this. And they do this for fun.

00:12:29:04 - 00:12:46:04
Speaker 4
It's a it's a sport. You know, they've done it for hundreds of years. When maybe hundreds of years they might have to. But now they enjoy one of the highest standards of living in Europe. So there's no excuse for what they're doing. And it's illegal. It's a violation of the Berne Convention, the European Union Convention, which forbids the killing of cetaceans.

00:12:46:06 - 00:13:03:01
Speaker 4
And they say, well, we're exempt from the EU regulations because we're a territory of Denmark. But about 85% of the Faroese hold Danish passports, which means they enjoy the benefits of EU membership. Therefore, they should be obliged to, you know, abide by the laws of the EU.

00:13:03:03 - 00:13:20:20
Speaker 1
So let's just go back to the day that they arrested you. And what was it that they were arresting you for? And then what life was like in prison during that time and the court proceedings? You had several court proceedings.

00:13:20:22 - 00:13:38:19
Speaker 4
I was rested on July 21st when our ship came in to Nuuk Greenland to refuel. To the best of my knowledge, at the time there I was not, there was no red notice imposed. It wasn't on any computers. I had traveled through Ireland and Switzerland. No problem. But the Faroese had informed the Japanese that I would be in Greenland.

00:13:38:19 - 00:13:59:20
Speaker 4
And then they for they specifically put out a red notice only to Denmark. Nowhere else, just to Denmark. When I arrived in, in Nuuk, 12 Danish police officers who had been flown in from Copenhagen came on board very serious and were quite rough, actually, when they arrested me because the Japanese described me as an armed and dangerous eco terrorist.

00:13:59:21 - 00:14:18:22
Speaker 4
And so that's how they were responding to that. So I was brought into court, and told to wait another month, before I could be brought before a court again. And I was quite confident that this, you know, wouldn't be a real problem because we had everything on camera, all the evidence was there, all they had to do was look at the evidence, but they refused to look at the evidence for two and a half months.

00:14:18:24 - 00:14:50:22
Speaker 4
They didn't even do a police interrogation until the middle of September. And so they kept putting it off and putting it off. And right at the beginning, the, attorney general of Denmark says, no problem. We're going to extradite him to Japan wants him, we're going to give him to them. But all suddenly they were hit with all the barrage of protests, including, interventions by President Macron of France, Prime Minister Barnier of France, President Lula da Silva of Brazil, the president of French Polynesia, and people like Jane Goodall and James Cameron and Sylvia Earle and so many others.

00:14:50:22 - 00:15:11:17
Speaker 4
Plus thousands of people signed petitions and suddenly they found themselves in a diplomatic boondoggle that they didn't know how to deal with. They were caught between a problem between Greenlandic law and Danish law. So the Danes were saying, well, we can't interfere with the Greenlanders. And the prosecutor in Denmark was an extremely hostile woman. I mean, she wanted my head and there was no doubt about it.

00:15:11:19 - 00:15:35:00
Speaker 4
And I found out later that she was a big supporter of the Grind in the Faroe Islands. She had signed a statement to that effect. So she was personally biased on that. But anyway, at the end in December, she made the decision and the Greenland court made the decision to extradite me, to send me to Japan. And, the Danish minister of justice said, okay, well, he made the political decision to say, no, that's not going to happen.

00:15:35:00 - 00:15:56:07
Speaker 4
And and I was ordered released. But he couldn't make that decision until the Greenland court made their decision. So he had a political decision could only follow on after a judicial decision. It was a complicated thing, but he really didn't have any choice because it would have been a violation of the European Union’s commitment to human rights, because the Japanese legal system is archaic.

00:15:56:09 - 00:16:18:01
Speaker 4
I mean, you don't go before a judge in Japan until you confess. They'll take you to an interrogation every single day for months, if need be, until they get that confession. And that's why Japan has a 99.9% conviction rate, not a very fair and legal system, and Denmark was well aware of that. But of course, Denmark can't say that because that would be a diplomatic no, no.

00:16:18:03 - 00:16:37:17
Speaker 4
They came up with a 65 page justification of why they made that decision based on all sorts of legal technicalities, but the end result was that they had to release me. I was actually quite confident that that would be the end result. Oh, and ansser to your question regarding the prison- if you're going to go to prison anywhere, I would say that, Greenland would be the place to go.

00:16:37:19 - 00:16:57:08
Speaker 4
I was in a maximum security facility, which was amazing. I mean, I had, a room with a private shower and bathroom and television and fridge and everything. But most amazingly, all was this incredible window with no bars overlooking a fiord and the mountains where it could even see whales out there during the summertime and at night, the aurora borealis.

00:16:57:13 - 00:17:18:22
Speaker 4
So that was pretty nice. And there's a lot of interesting things about that, that prison, I think I've never heard of a prison as unique as this. For instance, they don't have meals. They don't serve meals. Every Wednesday we line up and they give us, 1350 kroner, which about $200. And then we go down to the prison store, buy our own groceries, and then there's a common kitchen.

00:17:18:22 - 00:17:36:23
Speaker 4
You prepare your own meals. So it doesn't matter if you're vegetarian or vegan or whatever. You buy and cook what you feel you want to to eat. So it was right all the guards were friendly. I was the only, non-Indigenous person in the unit I was in. There were ten people there. Everybody was Greenlandic. Most of the guards are Greenlandic.

00:17:37:00 - 00:17:53:23
Speaker 4
I also found that the Greenlanders are not big fans of the Danes and that. But, they were all very friendly. They were Whale Wars fans. They wanted my autograph. Every time I went anywhere in the prison, the prisoners would be up behind the, you know, behind the wall. Say, “Paul Watson, Paul. Watson!” Whatever. So they were all, you know, these were all indigenous people.

00:17:54:00 - 00:18:11:19
Speaker 4
And I think that the, Japanese and the Faroese thought that they would be hostile to me because, Greenland, they do hunt whales. The Inuit culture hunts whales, but not in the area where I'm from. There is no whaling that was allowed there. And as I pointed out to them, what we've done over the years is intervene against illegal whaling operations.

00:18:11:24 - 00:18:32:14
Speaker 4
And I found out that the indigenous, even the indigenous whalers of Greenland and the indigenous sealers are opposed to Japanese whaling. They're opposed to the Faroese whale hunt, and they're also opposed to the Canadian seal hunt, which they think is extremely wasteful and unnecessary. They think the Faroese kill a pilot. Whales and dolphins is viciously violent and unnecessary.

00:18:32:16 - 00:18:40:15
Speaker 4
And, they think Japanese whaling is illegal and excessive. So that's their point of view on. And it was quite interesting to find their point of view on it.

00:18:40:17 - 00:18:53:03
Speaker 1
Scott, I think that you had a question too, regarding the crew members and what happened with them during the captivity time of five months that you were held there, Paul.

00:18:53:05 - 00:19:11:16
Speaker 6
(Host Scott Mercer) I'm still thinking about how how you were treated in prison, the one night that I spent in jail for civil disobedience, they sent out to McDonald's (for dinner). You had a much different experience, and I'm glad. You know, I had been wondering how, you would held everybody together. People didn't just didn't wander off to go back to another country where they might have come from.

00:19:11:19 - 00:19:15:07
Speaker 6
You know, how you held your crew together. The question I was going to ask.

00:19:15:09 - 00:19:34:03
Speaker 4
Well, the police weren't interested in the other crew members. So after I was arrested and they found that I wasn't going to be released, they actually did a sail-by in front of my window on the, and saw the prisoner, saw the ship sailed by, and then they headed down to Halifax, which, Denmark then dispatched, warship to follow them all the way I'm going.

00:19:34:03 - 00:19:51:01
Speaker 4
That's an excessive expense. And for what reason? So in the middle of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, they were 20 miles behind. But we could tell what they were because they're identified on the screen. They refused to answer any radio calls from Captain Locke, who was in charge of the ship. So he did, what we call a “Crazy Iven” and he

00:19:51:01 - 00:20:09:15
Speaker 4
He suddenly turned and went in their direction. They, in fact turned and went the other way. And then we went left. And they went left. They went right, they went right. And then they followed them all the way into, Halifax. And then they made a complaint that we, we tried to ram them, but it was pretty easy to see that they were 20 miles away, so there was no possibility of ramming.

00:20:09:15 - 00:20:31:22
Speaker 4
So that complaint didn't really go anywhere. And then the vessel, then headed off to Bermuda, where it is right now we're on standby and ready to go against Icelandic whaling. Come June. So everybody's preparing for that. We have two ships. The other one is the Bandero. It's now in Melbourne, Australia. And, it's standing guard, really, to protect the entrance to the Southern Ocean.

00:20:31:22 - 00:20:53:17
Speaker 4
Should Japan return, we know Japan intends to return to the Southern Ocean. They might have been returning this fall if it wasn't for all the publicity. I'm not really sure. But I do know you don't build a boat like the kanji Maru with that kind of range and carrying capacity to do coastal whaling, that ship was designed to return to the Southern Ocean, so we have to be prepared to intercept it when they do.

00:20:53:19 - 00:20:59:14
Speaker 1
Yes. Lamia was telling us a bit about that boat. Could you describe that boat is like again?

00:20:59:16 - 00:21:17:13
Speaker 4
Well, it's a $75 million vessel that they built with a huge cargo capacity on it. So whales are brought in, they're cut up, packaged, frozen and put into boxes and then transported to shore. And they still call it, research whaling. You know what? They've always done? They they're trying to say it's not commercial. I guess they're not.

00:21:17:13 - 00:21:39:12
Speaker 4
It's not commercial in this sense, and that it doesn't make a profit. Japanese whaling hasn't made a profit in 40 years. It exists because of massive subsidies by the Japanese government. And people will say, well, why would they bother? Why would they spend that money? Why would they do it? And it's all very political, because the Japanese whaling company is owned by the Japanese government, and the board of directors of that are all former politicians.

00:21:39:12 - 00:22:00:24
Speaker 4
They've got six figure jobs. And if they end whaling - there goes their jobs. And so that's why they keep it going. Plus the crew that work on these ships, they are supplied by unions which are controlled by the yakuza, the Mafia in Japan, which has a lot of influence. So that's the reason that this continues to go, because less than 1% of the people in Japan eat whale meat.

00:22:00:24 - 00:22:16:14
Speaker 4
And right now I think there's 8000 tonnes of whale meat in refrigerated warehouses in Japan. Now, what they'll say is that our, food security program, because, you know, if there's an apocalypse or something or Godzilla returns, I don't know, they'll have this food security on hand for that.

00:22:16:14 - 00:22:43:01
Speaker 1
Reminds me of Sea of Shadows. You know, when they described how the Mafia was involved with the Mexican authorities to and perpetuated the destruction of the vaquita there? And tell us a little bit more about Japan, how this continues. And the post that you made today was a poem that I found very intriguing, too, about their loss of face, in a way.

00:22:43:07 - 00:23:03:16
Speaker 4
Well, this is really what it's all about. The television show Whale Wars, which was like the number one show on Animal Planet for like seven years. It was extremely humiliating to Japan. Of course, it was banned in Japan, but everywhere else in the world, people saw it. So we expose the truth about their illegal whaling. And they were very, very angry about that.

00:23:03:18 - 00:23:27:09
Speaker 4
I find it actually quite, flattering that, I'm being talked about it at the highest levels in Japan. The prime minister, the foreign minister today, the foreign minister called in the Danish ambassador to Japan to dress him down about why did you release them? You should have turned them over to us. But it's interesting. Since I've come back, I'm going to be the featured speaker at the Ocean Conference in Nice in June.

00:23:27:11 - 00:23:46:04
Speaker 4
The Japanese response to that is they're going to drop out of the Ocean Conference, UN Ocean Conference. They're going to drop out. They basically gave an ultimatum - “Either he goes, or we're out of it.” And I think the mayor of Nice (France) said, “well, then goodbye. You know, we're not going to do that.” So a lot of good things. Two weeks ago they gave me honorary citizenship to Paris.

00:23:46:06 - 00:23:57:00
Speaker 4
They're going to give me an honorary citizenship to niece. And, next week I received the medal of the National Assembly at the French National Assembly. So the incredible amount of support in Japan.

00:23:57:06 - 00:24:26:05
Speaker 1
You have an incredible amount of support all around the world. I found out about Captain Paul Watson Foundation when I went to the International Ocean Film Festival in San Francisco, and there was Sammarye Lewis, and she was telling me what had happened with sea Shepherd, the organization. Could you just touch on that just a little bit? And your departure in 2000, what was it, 22?

00:24:26:07 - 00:24:44:16
Speaker 4
Yeah, it's a complicated thing because I'm still a director of sea Shepherd France and Sea Shepherd Brazil. And what happened in 2019 is that the organization was gradually being taken over by, and I was being eased off the board. They actually used this red notice against me to get me off the board saying that they couldn't get directors insurance.

00:24:44:18 - 00:25:17:12
Speaker 4
But don't worry, if you leave, you'll still, you know, be part of it. But as soon as I was off the board, then I was isolated. I was called the Watson problem. I was too controversial and too confrontational. And this was becoming a threat to their corporate sponsors. I mean, I didn't even know we were dependent on corporate sponsors, but Sea Shepherd Global, Sea Shepherd USA, they now have, corporate sponsorships with Allianz Insurance (travel), Lloyd's of London and the most, you know, concerning of all with the Yamasec security Company out of Israel, which has been involved with illegal arms dealings in Africa.

00:25:17:14 - 00:25:41:23
Speaker 4
So this kind of, affiliation with these people, also with the Austral Fisheries Company of Australia, which is 50% owned by the Maijura di chiro Fishing Company, which is the former Thai whaling company. The Sierra that I went after in 1979 was owned by that company. And now sea Shepherd Australia is in partnership with that company. And they changed their policy to now we support sustainable fishing and everything.

00:25:42:00 - 00:26:08:13
Speaker 4
Basically, it was a sellout. And the reason for this is that as organizations get bigger, people become to rely on their jobs or their job security or whatever. And suddenly all these people, people who I had known for ten, 20 years, suddenly had themselves nice jobs. And, I was now a threat to the jobs. And not only did they dismiss me without a boat, it was in the summer of 2022.

00:26:08:19 - 00:26:30:02
Speaker 4
I was dismissed by email, and none of them have spoken to me ever since, except they have taken us to court in France. Lamya Essemlali and I were charged with parasitism. That is, that we were (accused of) parasiting the logo and the name of Sea Shepherd, which I created. But we were parasites on what they owned. The judges threw it out and awarded us legal costs on that.

00:26:30:02 - 00:26:49:02
Speaker 4
So we've been winning every court case that they brought against us. And they're paying, the legal fees on that. It's a problem with a lot of organizations. They come too big and they want to go mainstream. And, and then the founders become a threat to them doing that. So there's two sea shepherds really now, I always said sea Shepherd up to be a movement, not an organization.

00:26:49:04 - 00:27:08:17
Speaker 4
And that was my mistake because I never controlled it. I never wanted anybody to control it. But unbeknownst to me, these people were filing trademarks and copyrights and owning what I had created. And then I found myself in that situation. And I can see the temptation. I mean, sea Shepherd, because of Whale Wars, is bringing in 13, $15 million a year.

00:27:08:19 - 00:27:31:06
Speaker 4
So they seized those assets. Plus they seize the ships and, scrap most of them, sold some and just got rid of all our ships. So in 22, I found myself with absolute. We had nothing. We had no assets. We had no ships, nothing. John Paul Dejoria, who was, you know, the founder of Paul Mitchell shampoos and that who had been a long time supporter.

00:27:31:06 - 00:27:44:11
Speaker 4
And we had a small boat in Mexico named after him. And he said, what happened to my ship? I said, well, they scrapped your ship, JP so he called them up. So what'd you screw up my ship for? So it was getting old. We decided to scrap it and he said, well, why didn't you just give it to Paul?

00:27:44:13 - 00:27:59:11
Speaker 4
They said, oh, well, we offered it to him, but he turned it down. I said, you know, JP, that's a total lie. I've never spoken to them. He said, okay, find me a ship. I'm going to buy it for you. So that's the John Paul Dejoria. And then we found the Bandero. So he bought both those ships.

00:27:59:13 - 00:28:02:19
Speaker 1
Oh, I wondered about the Bandero, where it came from.

00:28:02:21 - 00:28:06:11
Speaker 4
Well, that's because newest company is a Bandero Tequila company.

00:28:06:13 - 00:28:19:14
Speaker 1
Oh! So when you mentioned about the 70s, was that back when you were with Greenpeace? Because I know you were one of the founding members and directors there.

00:28:19:16 - 00:28:41:05
Speaker 4
Yeah. I left Greenpeace in 1977 to establish sea Shepherd. The difference being is that Greenpeace is a rather passive protest organization. I wanted to have, an interventionist organization. And I created a strategy which I call aggressive nonviolence. We're going to aggressively intervene, but we're not going to hurt anybody. And over the last 50 years, we've never caused a single injury.

00:28:41:05 - 00:28:59:16
Speaker 4
We've never sustained a single injury, never been convicted of a crime. So we operate within the boundaries of both the law and practicality. And also we're always consistently nonviolent. But in this day and age, anything you do, especially if you're an activist in the area of animal rights or conservation, environmental, anything you do, you're going to be a terrorist.

00:28:59:18 - 00:29:18:17
Speaker 4
You know, it's just a name they throw out there right now. And when I did the Bill Maher show one time, he said, well, you know, everybody's calling you eco-terrorist. I said, look, I've never worked for Monsanto or Exxon. I'm not an eco-terrorist (Host interjects - “Right.” as in agreement) Paul continues - But these are the names that you have to get used to. Now, back in the 90s, when people started to say, oh, you're nothing but a pirate, I said, okay, if you want to call me a pirate, I'll be a pirate.

00:29:18:21 - 00:29:39:23
Speaker 4
So that's why we got our pirate flag and everything. Because kids, especially young people, love it. Piracy is a two sided thing. It's sort of like, oh, they're bad guys, but at the same time they're very romantic. And people identified with that. And I also point out that the founder of the United States Navy, John Paul Jones, was a pirate, and he also founded the Russian Navy.

00:29:39:23 - 00:30:03:22
Speaker 4
By the way, not many people realize that. But he was invited after the revolution by Catherine the Great to set up the Russian Navy. So the founder of the two greatest navies in the world was a pirate. Other famous pirates being, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Lafeat Roger Sacof, all of these people were pirates. And when you also look at it, the pirates back at the time, they cut through the bureaucracy and got things done.

00:30:03:24 - 00:30:21:10
Speaker 4
They were the first ships on the ocean to have a democracy where they actually elected their captains, or could remove their captains by a vote. They were the first ships to allow women and nonwhite people to actually join the crew and rise to the level of their competency. I mean, that was unheard of in the 18th and 17th century.

00:30:21:12 - 00:30:34:13
Speaker 4
And so there's a lot to be learned from the pirates. But I think a lot of the so-called evil things they did has been overblown. When you really look into it. Blackbeard's first officer was an African who was the second in command on the ship.

00:30:34:15 - 00:30:42:01
Speaker 6
(Host Scott Mercer) Hey Paul, I remember when you left Greenpeace, I've been wondering, did anybody from Greenpeace go with you?

00:30:42:01 - 00:31:02:10
Speaker 4
They did actually, about most of the 12 directors of Greenpeace, eight of them actually later joined me, including Bob Hunter, who was the president. Greenpeace at the time. So yeah, they came to the same realization that I came. The reason that I left Greenpeace in 77 was I was called on the carpet by Patrick Moore, who was present, who by the way, now works for Monsanto.

00:31:02:10 - 00:31:18:13
Speaker 4
And he said the company. But Patrick Moore called me on the carpet because he said I was the leader of the seal campaign, that you're the one that brought Brigitte Bardot out to the ice floes and everything. And during the campaign, a sealer was about to club a baby seal. I rushed forward, I grabbed the club, threw it out of his hand and threw it in the ocean.

00:31:18:15 - 00:31:33:01
Speaker 4
I was accused of stealing the man's property and vandalizing his property. And I said, well, if I had to do the same thing over again, I'd do the exact same thing over again. So, you know, and they said, well, we can't accept that kind of behavior in this. I said, well, okay, well then I'll go set up my own organization.

00:31:33:03 - 00:31:52:13
Speaker 6
Yeah. I come from a line of sealers in Newfoundland myself. All right. Yeah. My grandfather and I used to have some spirited conversations. His attitude was if they live in the ocean, they're fish and they’re “just fish.” And it's interesting about you and Bob Hunter. I didn't realize that some of the people in Greenpeace had gone with you.

00:31:52:13 - 00:31:53:19
Speaker 6
I've wondered about that for years.

00:31:53:19 - 00:31:59:22
Speaker 4
If you. Bob sailed on on the sea Shepherd ships with me for many years until he died in 2005.

00:31:59:24 - 00:32:16:13
Speaker 6
Yeah. At that time I was working at the University of New Hampshire and Sea Grant, and we had a copy of the National Geographic film The Great Whales. And you guys had a pretty good piece in that film. And a lot of people became more aware of what we've been doing. And about what you were doing at the time, you and Bob Hunter.

00:32:16:15 - 00:32:34:13
Speaker 6
I took the film with me. When I do talks Out of Sea, Grant and the community, and many people were really surprised when they saw what the direct action was that you were doing with the hoses and closing in on the on the Japanese boats, and then going out on the small boats to intervene.

00:32:34:15 - 00:32:54:09
Speaker 4
There's a great film that was made in 2015 called How to Change the World, which is actually about the beginning of of Greenpeace. And what what's great about the film is, you know, Greenpeace today, they they deny that I was a co-founder because it's convenient to do it. And these people weren't even born at the time, but they deny that I was a co-founder.

00:32:54:11 - 00:33:01:09
Speaker 4
And I said, well, all you have to do is look at the film that shows exactly the evolution of Greenpeace and what happened. So that's the evidence right there.

00:33:01:11 - 00:33:29:09
Speaker 1
I love it, Scott and Tree too were in a little documentary that a couple of students from Berkeley created called Washed Ashore about the unusual mortality event, and Tree has been a teacher of biology on Long Island. And, Scott, you can talk about some of the things that you did back East and how you started Mendonoma Whale and Seal study, too.

00:33:29:11 - 00:33:54:00
Speaker 6
Yeah, I had a whale watch company that I started in New Hampshire, actually in 1978, and then, became New England Whale Watching when I decided it had to have a bigger title when we decided to come out here in 2014, it was really, no observations or accounting going on here of gray whales going by the coast here. So we started a land based operation, which was new to me.

00:33:54:00 - 00:34:18:05
Speaker 6
After decades of looking for whales out on the ocean, we started out contributing with the gray whale migration count here. And since we're here year round now, we've made the operation year round. So we're keeping track of humpbacks and other whales using this area as a feeding ground, and the migration of gray whales and just counting them as they're going by, which is, a little tougher than I thought it would be in the first place.

00:34:18:07 - 00:34:30:04
Speaker 6
The unusual mortality event here caused by climate change in the Arctic, and that has kept us quite busy just keeping track of numbers and coordinating with a few other people out here on the coast that are working, doing that.

00:34:30:05 - 00:34:57:24
Speaker 1
Yeah. And Maria Brown, who's the superintendent, the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank marine protected areas, had mentioned how important a lot of the data is that you guys gather and deliver to them, too. And so I just wanted you to know some of that, Captain Paul, because you've got some people who are very dedicated to observing and are very, very much interested in the protection of whales, as I am.

00:34:58:01 - 00:35:04:21
Speaker 4
Thank you. You know, our first confrontation with the Russian whaling fleet was only 60 miles off the coast of Mendocino.

00:35:04:23 - 00:35:05:12
Speaker 1
That's right.

00:35:05:13 - 00:35:10:08
Speaker 6
The Mendocino whale Wars. I'm trying to get Leigh Anne to do a Documentary on that.

00:35:10:14 - 00:35:25:04
Speaker 1
We've met people at the film festival who told us about their experience - they’re still here. They know it. They participated. And it's so exciting to hear, you know what it all involved.

00:35:25:06 - 00:35:30:14
Speaker 4
I think The Mendocino Whale War thing was 76. We first went 75, then we returned in 76.

00:35:30:16 - 00:35:40:03
Speaker 1
Yeah. Wow. Well, talk about the TV series. Is that now completed or are you still going to do that show or what's happening there?

00:35:40:04 - 00:36:04:09
Speaker 4
Well, we did it for seven years, but then Japan retreated from the Southern Ocean. So we don't have to do that anymore. But we're keeping a close eye on it. And I do have the cameras on our crews. So we have a lot of, footage. So we're looking at the possibility of doing another television show. We've been doing documentaries, of course, but, you know, the television show is really has a lot more power than the documentaries because you can get it on a network unless you get your documentary on Netflix.

00:36:04:11 - 00:36:09:02
Speaker 4
But, the television shows, you know, tend to reach a lot more, a lot more people.

00:36:09:04 - 00:36:21:13
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm working on a documentary I hope Netflix picks up, but it's about the healing power of horses and riding assisted therapy for special needs children. That's something that's been close to my heart.

00:36:21:15 - 00:36:24:16
Speaker 4
Wouldn't Animal Planet be interested in that?

00:36:24:17 - 00:36:32:15
Speaker 1
You know, I hadn't even thought about that before. That's a good one. How did you get connected with Animal Planet? How did that all come about?

00:36:32:17 - 00:36:47:03
Speaker 4
Well, in 2005, I went to all of the networks and I said, look, the biggest show on Discovery right now is a bunch of guys go into a very cold and remote area to catch crabs every week. I think I can give you men and women from around the world, we're going to go to a colder, more remote place to save whales.

00:36:47:03 - 00:37:09:17
Speaker 4
It's got to be more compelling than catching crabs. And, all the networks turned it down, except for, discovery animal Planet. And I said, okay, well, we'll go for that. And so we did our first pilot in 2005, 2006, and that was followed up by a yearly show that they did 2007 until 2014. It's an interesting show because it was a true reality show, because there was nothing scripted.

00:37:09:19 - 00:37:30:11
Speaker 4
They couldn't tell us what to do and we couldn't tell them what to edit. So we were completely separated in that area. So we just did our thing and they, did their thing. Although I have to admit, they did try occasionally to manipulate it like, hey, John, you know, Bob over here saying these bad things about you, you know, they're trying to get people into fights and everything, but I would warn everybody in advance they're going to try and do this to you.

00:37:30:11 - 00:37:42:15
Speaker 4
So just ignore that - because, you know, one of the reasons that Deadliest Catch is a bigger show is because they get in domestic violence and alcoholism. And I wasn't going to allow any of that, you know, in the show. So.

00:37:42:17 - 00:37:46:10
Speaker 1
Well, I bet your family is glad to have you back there in France.

00:37:46:12 - 00:38:02:14
Speaker 4
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. I was only allowed ten minute call once a week with my wife and my two sons. So. Yeah, that was my big worry. Is that I wouldn't see them for Christmas. But I got out like a week before Christmas, too. So we joined them here in, Paris.

00:38:02:16 - 00:38:06:03
Speaker 1
How did you find out about that? How did that all come down?

00:38:06:05 - 00:38:26:14
Speaker 4
Well, my birthday on December 2nd, I was in the courtroom, and at that point they said that the attorney general said a decision had to be made within 14 days. So I was ordered to return to court on the 18th. But then I got a call on the morning of the 17th from my lawyer in Copenhagen saying that the attorney general had ordered me released, and I was out of the prison within an hour.

00:38:26:16 - 00:38:29:15
Speaker 4
You know, I was expecting it, but I thought it would take a little longer.

00:38:29:17 - 00:38:48:13
Speaker 1
When we interviewed Lamya (Essemlali, President Sea Shepherd France) at that point, it was in August that we did the recording and they had said something about they were expecting. It was in the first part of September that you might be extradited to Japan, and then that was postponed. Then there was another postponement. How many were there?

00:38:48:15 - 00:39:08:11
Speaker 4
I appeared in court in August, September, October, November, and then in December, every, every 28 days that I had to return to court. The problem is, I had this prosecutor. This woman was just. She was just so hostile. I got to the point where I just decided to have fun with her, because at one point she said, well, you know, I've never heard of you.

00:39:08:11 - 00:39:15:09
Speaker 4
You're you're nobody. And I said, well, you really should read a newspaper (or turn on the TV - had to be edited out as the sound dropped out) “She didn't really appreciate that.”

00:39:15:11 - 00:39:21:01
Speaker 1
And who did you have representing you? And what were the people like around you supporting you there?

00:39:21:03 - 00:39:37:03
Speaker 4
My legal team is incredible. First of all, the good news if you're arrested in Denmark, you don't have to pay for a lawyer. The government covers all legal fees for everybody. It doesn't matter what your wealth or how much money you have. So I had the best human rights lawyer in Denmark. Jonas Kristofferson, another incredible human rights lawyer.

00:39:37:04 - 00:39:59:19
Speaker 4
Julie Stage, and then Finmanal, He was the Greenlandic lawyer. So I had three Danish lawyers. I had five French lawyers, one German lawyer and one U.S. lawyer all together. So quite a legal team, really. And the, the head of my legal team in France was the former, French ambassador to Denmark. So the prime minister was responding to people.

00:39:59:19 - 00:40:24:04
Speaker 4
I got letters or she was responding to different people, including the government of France and that Japan actually threatened the French government, too. They said, you know, we're going to do trade embargoes on you unless you, back off. And the French just said, do whatever you're going to do, whatever. And so they threatened the Danes. They actually threatened Denmark with the cancellation of, hundreds of millions of dollars of offshore wind turbine projects, unless they turned me over.

00:40:24:06 - 00:40:47:05
Speaker 4
And Denmark just didn't respond to that. But that was a threat that they were making. But what they did is actually help me, because it certainly illustrated that the whole thing was political. It wasn't a judicial thing. You don't make threats like that on a criminal case. You know, you do on a on a political case. What we're going to do next is we're going to confront Interpol, both with lawyers and in person, because their headquarters is in Leone in France.

00:40:47:07 - 00:41:10:11
Speaker 4
And so we're going to go and confront them. And not just for myself, but the fact that hundreds of people are being persecuted because countries weaponize Interpol to go after them. So they're going after whistleblowers and dissidents and whatever. I mean, the Russians especially have been really bad on this. Israel's been bad on this. So what we have to do is take Interpol to task and say, look, this nonsense got to stop.

00:41:10:13 - 00:41:32:07
Speaker 4
Interpol was set up primarily against war criminals, drug traffickers and serial killers. This is what it was set up for, but not for. I'm the only person in the history of the Red notice to be put there for trespassing. You know, nobody gets on that list for trespassing. It was funny because in 2010 to 2012, they had me on the thing called the Interpol Blue List.

00:41:32:09 - 00:41:48:15
Speaker 4
I was on the red list for the last ten years. The blue list I didn't even know existed, but I found out it existed when I crossed into the United States from Canada by car, and I handed over my U.S. passport and the immigration guy said, put your hands on the wheel. Now, sir, I put my hands up, throw your car keys out as I can't the cars keys out.

00:41:48:15 - 00:42:03:24
Speaker 4
My hands are on the wheel... So anyway, I had to throw them out and I looked out. There's six officers with guns pointed at me. I got out and they handcuffed me and took me in. And then I was a free ten minutes later, because the Interpol blue notices they're supposed to gather information when you cross the border and send it to the country that issued it, which is Japan.

00:42:04:03 - 00:42:22:06
Speaker 4
But the information from the blue notice was that I was an armed and dangerous eco terrorist. That's why the guns came out. After that, I didn't really have a problem after that. The blue List was actually a lot of fun because when I come into, say, the airport in Chicago, they all knew that I was on there, and it got me through the immigration and customs lines before everybody else (laughter)

00:42:22:06 - 00:42:23:02
Speaker 1
It got to...

00:42:23:04 - 00:42:39:13
Speaker 4
I got to the point where they're asking me because I came through there a lot. They, asking me for t shirts, and I was giving, t shirts to Homeland Security guys, and and that. So became quite, a quite a lot of fun until the Red notice came on. And I was arrested in Germany in 2012, but I had to escape from Germany.

00:42:39:15 - 00:42:59:06
Speaker 4
I had a supporter in the Ministry of Justice, and he said, the next day you're going to be sent to Japan. So I left that night and Lamya (Essemlali) arranged for a sailing boat to pick me up on the coast of the Netherlands. I had no papers, no, no nothing, actually no passports or anything. So we crossed the Atlantic and I went ashore at night in Nova Scotia.

00:42:59:08 - 00:43:22:11
Speaker 4
And then I was raised on a border town, so I know how to cross the border. So I crossed into the US, boarded my vessel, the Brigitte Bardot, off a Catalina, took it down to American Samoa to reunite with the Steve Irwin, our other ship. And, then we went down to the Southern Ocean campaign against the Japanese and then came back and I spent from - oh, seven months in exile in the South Pacific on, which wasn't very bad.

00:43:22:11 - 00:43:42:03
Speaker 4
I mean, it was like Tonga, Vanuatu, the Great Barrier Reef spent a lot of time with turtles and birds, seabirds and everything. So it was actually a bit of a vacation until John Kerry allowed me to come back. Because Pete Bethune who's these charges extend from he was arrested for the trespassing and for all the different things that the Japanese were after me for.

00:43:42:06 - 00:43:58:15
Speaker 4
But he made a deal with the Japanese prosecutor that if he said that I ordered him to do this, they would give him a suspended sentence, which is what he did. And then after he was released, he said, no, I lied to get that suspended sentence. But Japan refused to accept that. But the United States did. And they said this is bogus.

00:43:58:15 - 00:44:08:18
Speaker 4
So, you know, you can come back. Funny enough, I was actually met off Catalina Island when I came back. I was actually met by RFK Jr, who came out to help me get ashore.

00:44:09:12 - 00:44:17:11
Speaker 4
And that so it's, it was quite the drama. So I actually ended up going halfway around the world without, without any identification at all.

00:44:17:13 - 00:44:19:03
Speaker 1
How long ago was this.

00:44:19:05 - 00:44:22:01
Speaker 4
2012, 2013?

00:44:22:03 - 00:44:25:20
Speaker 1
When was it that you moved to France?

00:44:25:22 - 00:44:42:10
Speaker 4
Well, in 2014, I moved to France and that's where I met my wife. And then we, got married on Valentine's Day 2015, actually. And then our first son was born in 2016 and our second son in 2021. So they're an eight year old and a three year old.

00:44:42:12 - 00:44:45:24
Speaker 1
You have no signs of letting up and you're in your mid 70s.

00:44:45:24 - 00:44:49:07
Speaker 4
You said, I'm only 74.

00:44:49:09 - 00:44:50:08
Speaker 6
He's just a kid. Yeah.

00:44:50:08 - 00:44:57:13
Speaker 1
He’s just a kid (laughter). What do you have planned going forward? That's what we're really curious about.

00:44:57:15 - 00:45:17:16
Speaker 4
Well, Iceland in June, we're returning to Iceland because the whaling season doesn't happen the summer. We're going to be sending the Bandero to the Pacific to pick up marine debris and plastic on the gyre, and confiscate as much as we can from the ocean. But I'm also involved with protecting dolphins in Amazonia, and I'll probably be going to Brazil to work on that more.

00:45:17:22 - 00:45:37:08
Speaker 4
And we're trying to stop poaching on the island of Majorca off the coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. We're also working to protect orcas off of Iberia and stopping the super trawlers in the North Atlantic. There's a number of campaigns, but my priority campaign is stopping whaling in Iceland and Japan and also in the Faroe Islands.

00:45:37:10 - 00:45:50:17
Speaker 1
And Scott and Tree, do you have some questions that you wanted to ask right now? (Tree Mercer, Co-host) Well, I was wondering what effects you have seen the climate change? Has it affecting the whales that you're attempting to save?

00:45:50:19 - 00:46:12:18
Speaker 4
I don't think there's any sailor in the world. I mean, any real sailor who can deny that climate change is happening. You see it there all the time. The currents, the winds, the storms, everything. But I think that it is having an effect on the migration of fish populations. Fish populations are moving either further north or further south, depending on, you know, the temperature changes in the water.

00:46:12:18 - 00:46:32:21
Speaker 4
And of course, that affects the migration of cetaceans and seals and seabirds. Also, you know, to me, the biggest threat to our survival actually is about something that most people are completely unaware of. And that is that since 1950, there's been a 40% diminishment in phytoplankton in the sea. And the last article that was done was way back in 2010, in Scientific American.

00:46:32:23 - 00:46:54:10
Speaker 4
But what does that mean? I mean, phytoplankton provide 70% of the oxygen in the air we breathe. This sequesters enormous amounts of CO2. And the reality is this the phytoplankton disappears from the ocean. We die. And why is it being diminished? Because we're killing off whales and dolphins and seabirds and everything. And they provide the nutrient base for the phytoplankton, the iron, the magnesium and the nitrogen.

00:46:54:12 - 00:47:17:24
Speaker 4
That's the food for the phytoplankton, basically the whales. I guess you can look on the whales as the farmers of the ocean, and they're basically fertilizing these crops, phytoplankton for the benefit of everything, not just for our oxygen, but also they're the foundation of the very food chain in the entire ocean for everything that's above it. One of the reasons I actually set up in 2020, established a thing called the church of bio centrism.

00:47:18:01 - 00:47:39:20
Speaker 4
It's not a religion. It's more of a scientific based thing. But I'm trying to get across this idea that we have to live in harmony with all the other species. Everything is interconnected, and that the strength of an ecosystem is diversity and an interdependence. And so that's what I'm trying to get across. That is the reality of it. We don't live on the planet without being connected to all of these other all these other species.

00:47:39:22 - 00:47:45:12
Speaker 4
It's actually a philosophy that's certainly well shared by a lot of indigenous communities around the world that understand that.

00:47:45:16 - 00:47:46:19
Speaker 1
Definitely.

00:47:46:21 - 00:47:59:09
Speaker 4
Yeah, almost every single major religion is, anthropocentric. That is, it's all about us. It was all created for us. Everything's about us. We're the only species that matter. And that's what we have to get away from, really.

00:47:59:11 - 00:48:23:22
Speaker 1
Yeah. That interconnectedness does come up often during a lot of the conversations we're having. And I just want to go back to what you're saying about the phytoplankton, because one of the filmmakers that I know very well is Cynthia Abbott. She's out of Petaluma. She create an organization called Every Second Breath, and she created a film that was called Three Ocean Advocates.

00:48:23:22 - 00:48:49:11
Speaker 1
And Teresa and I went down to see it in Sebastopol. And then it came to the Mendocino Film Festival, too. But that is awareness that they're raising is how critically important the phytoplankton is to our ability to live on this planet, and how interconnected everything is. So how many activities do you have going on now? It's like spinning plates, and I'm just wondering how you keep them all going.

00:48:49:16 - 00:49:06:24
Speaker 4
I know it's a lot of writing and giving public talks and things, so yeah, it keeps me busy. That's the thing I most enjoy. I wrote one children's book last year called We Are the Ocean. I'm now working on another one called Starship Earth, so the children's books are a lot of fun to put together. I'm working with artists who do some good artwork on that.

00:49:07:01 - 00:49:24:19
Speaker 4
A funny story about, you know, about is I got a call from a reporter for the Fox network a couple of years ago, and he said, did you say that trees and bees, worms and whales are more important than people? I said, yeah, I think I said that. He said, how could you say something so outrageous that that's the most un-Christian thing I've ever heard of?

00:49:24:21 - 00:49:37:03
Speaker 4
And I said, well, I said it because they're more important than we are. And I said, because they can live here without us, but we can't live here without them. That makes them more important than we are. And he just simply didn't get it. Of course.

00:49:37:05 - 00:49:59:05
Speaker 1
One of the creations along the lines of books and things like that is a musical that the composer for my documentary, who lives here in Sea Ranch as well. But he lived in Germany. He was in the film industry for over 30 years. He's worked with a lot of TV series and Tom cruise like movies, and that's Eric Allaman.

00:49:59:07 - 00:50:26:22
Speaker 1
And he joined me on the visit that we did to David Helvarg’s Blue Frontier Organization event. They put on Celebrate the Sea event, and this is right after the Ocean Film Festival and the Goldman Environmental Awards to which Caro Dratva, who works with Doctor Sylvia Earle, invited us to. And then Doctor Sylvia Earle came and attended that event there in Bolinas in Marin County, right on the ocean.

00:50:26:22 - 00:51:04:10
Speaker 1
It was wonderful. But Eric is working and he has produced and he talked to the director of the International Ocean Film Festival there at that event, Anna Blanco, and she and David Helvarg’s executive that works there at Blue Frontier, Natasha Benjamin. So they're doing a great film on the loss of kelp along our coast. We're doing whatever we can to raise awareness about these issues and how important marine life is to our ability to survive on this planet, but creating works like that are so important.

00:51:04:10 - 00:51:11:08
Speaker 1
If we can reach the next generation, like you are doing through your books and through your talks.

00:51:11:10 - 00:51:33:07
Speaker 4
Well, why I wrote the We Are the ocean. Whatever the idea, I'm trying to get across is that most people, their idea of the ocean is is the sea, the seashore, surfing, whatever. That's the ocean. But it isn't. This is a planet ocean, and it's water in constant circulation. Sometimes it's in the sea, but sometimes in ice, sometimes underground, sometimes in the clouds, or it's in the cells of every living plant.

00:51:33:07 - 00:51:52:15
Speaker 4
And animal. That water is constantly circulating through all of those mediums, which makes us the ocean. We are the living ocean because the water connects everything, absolutely everything. And so the water in your body right now was once recently locked in ice or underground, or in the sea or in the clouds or or it was once in the body of a butterfly.

00:51:52:21 - 00:52:09:01
Speaker 4
You know, so it's constantly moving through all of these things. So I think a lot of young people that I speak to, they understand that intuitively. So, you know, we're getting there. We just have to change the way we we look at things, really, and get away from this anthropocentric idea that we're the only thing that matters.

00:52:09:03 - 00:52:22:09
Speaker 1
(Host Tree Mercer) But is it possible to do that? I know that's necessary. You know, if if we are to survive on this planet, along with all the other species, it's just such a big task, isn't it, to not think in those terms?

00:52:22:11 - 00:52:42:00
Speaker 4
It is. I mean, it's hard to get people to change. You know, I had a debate with a whaler a few years ago named George from the High North Alliance in Norway. And he says, Watson, you know, you say that whales are smarter than people. That's a stupid, stupid thing to say. How can you be so stupid? And I said, George, I measure intelligence by the ability to live in harmony with the natural world.

00:52:42:00 - 00:52:52:12
Speaker 4
And by that criteria, whales are far more intelligent than we are. And he says, well, by that criteria, cockroaches are more intelligent than we are. I said, George, you're beginning to understand what I'm trying to tell you. (laughter)

00:52:52:14 - 00:52:54:24
Speaker 1
(Tree Mercer) I like that.

00:52:55:01 - 00:53:09:14
Speaker 6
(Scott Mercer) I was going to ask...The Japanese whaling industry was organized by the United States government after World War two (Paul, “Right”) along with the Russians. If we ever had that thrown back in your face. Well, you people started this, and now you want us to stop?

00:53:09:16 - 00:53:29:04
Speaker 4
Well, no, I throw that back at the Japanese. I just say, look, you know, there's nothing cultural about you. If it wasn't for the United States, you wouldn't be doing this in the first place. They try to not Deal with that. They want to present this argument that it's part of their culture, which it never is. And the United States, that was one of the worst Whaling Nations, ever, you know, don't really when it comes down to it.

00:53:29:06 - 00:53:33:08
Speaker 4
And, it was an industry controlled by the Quakers, of all people.

00:53:33:10 - 00:53:36:19
Speaker 6
(Scott Mercer) There's a lot of attempts to stop efforts by using the word cultural.

00:53:36:21 - 00:53:44:22
Speaker 4
Yeah. Anything that involves killing or torture should not be, justified through culture or tradition.

00:53:44:24 - 00:53:53:05
Speaker 1
So what advice do you have for those that would like to participate and do what they can instead of being overwhelmed?

00:53:53:07 - 00:54:11:14
Speaker 4
Well, there are three virtues that can help you change the world -- passion, courage, and imagination. And you just have to harness those, virtues. And then you find out, what am I good at? You know, after you find something you're passionate about, what am I good at? Teaching, writing or law or whatever? Because the strength of an ecosystem is in diversity.

00:54:11:14 - 00:54:32:24
Speaker 4
Therefore, the strength of a movement is in diversity. So whether that approach be litigation, legislation, intervention or, you know, education, it's all towards the same end. And that kind of diversity is what makes a difference. And one person can make an incredible difference. Because of Dian Fossey, we still have mountain gorillas because of David Wingate. The storm petrel in Bermuda did not go extinct.

00:54:33:01 - 00:54:51:11
Speaker 4
I mean, I can't think of any other a more noble pursuit. And because you as an individual intervened, a species survived or a habitat was protected. So I think those also illustrate just how much power each and every one of us has. And we should never be deterred from criticism, ever. So if you're passionate about something, you go for it.

00:54:51:11 - 00:55:08:06
Speaker 4
And if people say you're wrong, too bad I'm going to do this anyway. I mean, look what Greta Thunberg has been able to accomplish just a schoolgirl know, she got the world's attention over, over this whole climate change thing and she had nothing to go with and everything. So it just shows you how far passion can actually take you.

00:55:08:08 - 00:55:27:03
Speaker 4
One of the things I learned a long time ago from Nelson Mandela, of all things, is that the very idea in 1972 that Nelson Mandela would be president of South Africa was impossible, was unthinkable, and yet the impossible became possible. And that's what we always have to look at. You know, the impossible becoming possible. And the other lesson is to never worry about the future.

00:55:27:05 - 00:55:42:18
Speaker 4
You have no power at all over the future, or you can't do anything about it. All your power is in the present. So everything that you do, when the present will define what the future is. So let's not worry about the future. Let's not be pessimistic. Just concentrate on doing what you can in the present.

00:55:42:20 - 00:55:52:12
Speaker 1
Being in the present. Being in the present is so important because our attention does get fragmented. How did you get down this path?

00:55:52:14 - 00:56:09:06
Speaker 4
Oh no, this is a long story. I was I was raised in a fishing village in eastern Canada. So I got a long association with with the sea. But, when I joined Greenpeace in that confrontation off of, Mendocino with the Soviet whalers and a whale was killed in front of me, a whale that could have killed me but chose not to do so.

00:56:09:10 - 00:56:26:02
Speaker 4
And that was a defining moment in my life, because not only did I owe my life to that whale, but I'm saying to myself at the time, why are we killing these whales? The Russians didn't eat them. They're killing them for oil, spermaceti oil and sperm oil. And one of the things it was most valuable for was the production and maintenance of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

00:56:26:02 - 00:56:40:03
Speaker 4
And I saying to myself, here we are destroying these incredibly intelligent, beautiful, self-aware, sentient beings for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings. And that's when it hit me. We're insane. (Host Leigh Anne, “Indeed.”) Captain Paul finishes - “So that that's been the thing that's motivated me ever since.”

00:56:40:05 - 00:56:42:07
Speaker 1
How long ago was that new?

00:56:42:09 - 00:56:43:14
Speaker 4
75? Yeah.

00:56:43:17 - 00:56:49:12
Speaker 1
(Leigh Anne) 75 (Paul) 50 years ago (Leigh Anne) Now, you grew up on a border town in Canada, was it?

00:56:49:14 - 00:56:53:16
Speaker 4
Yes. Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, Saint Stephen, New Brunswick, on the border of Maine.

00:56:53:18 - 00:56:56:02
Speaker 1
When did you become a U.S. citizen.

00:56:56:04 - 00:56:57:05
Speaker 4
2008?

00:56:57:07 - 00:57:21:06
Speaker 1
2008? Well, you've lived quite the life, and you have a lot ahead of you. And you've got a young family to boot. Hats off to you, Captain Paul Watson, really thank you so much for all of your efforts for spending five months in jail and all the attention that that did raise around the world, I mean, it what was it that you called that an informational campaign?

00:57:21:08 - 00:57:39:14
Speaker 4
Yeah, it was an opportunity to, expose Japanese whaling and everything. You know, I could have stayed there for a year if it wasn't for the fact that I had my two little boys. When this whole incident happened back in 2010, they weren't even born. So I didn't have that worry at the time. But this was the only single, only worry I was in when I was in prison.

00:57:39:16 - 00:57:48:04
Speaker 4
But they handled it really well and my oldest son is a chess champion right now, so he spends, you know, he's really occupied with that. He's number two in the U.S. for his age group right now.

00:57:48:06 - 00:58:02:14
Speaker 1
(Tree Mercer) Awesome. (Leigh Anne Lindsey) Well, thank you so much again for joining us. And we'll follow your travels and your pursuits. You're very inspirational. Thank you so much for being with us here today on Resilient Earth. Captain Paul.

00:58:02:16 - 00:58:08:08
Speaker 4
Thank you very much.

00:58:08:10 - 00:58:13:12
Speaker 4
Closing Music begins (by Eric Allaman, Castle by the Sea)

00:58:13:14 - 00:58:45:13
Speaker 1
Thanks for listening to the Resilient Earth Podcast, where we talk about critical issues and positive actions for our planet. Resilient Earth is produced by Planet Centric Media, a 501 C3 nonprofit, and Sea Storm Studios, Inc., located on the rugged North Sonoma coast of Northern California. I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, producer and host, along with co-hosts and co-producers Scott and Tree Mercer of the Mendonoma Whale & Seal Study.

00:58:47:10 - 00:58:55:03
Speaker 1
Located on the South Mendocino and North Sonoma coast.

00:58:55:05 - 00:59:49:14
Speaker 1
The music for this podcast is by Eric Allaman an international composer, pianist and writer living in The Sea Ranch. Dscover more of his music, animations, ballet, stage and film work at EricAllaman.com. You can find Resilient Earth on Spotify, Apple and Amazon podcasts, iHeart radio, YouTube, SoundCloud and wherever you find your podcasts. Please support us by subscribing or donating to our cause.