Still Saving Whales

Paul Watson’s high-seas confrontations with whaling vessels for more than five decades have notoriously landed him in trouble before with foreign agencies and governments, but perhaps never so serious as the current case playing out in a Greenland court.

Watson, 73, was arrested on July 21 when his ship docked to refuel in Nuuk on its way to “intercept” a new Japanese whaling factory vessel in the North Pacific, according to the Captain Paul Watson Foundation. He’s being detained on a 2012 Japanese arrest warrant and has been held without bail, having been deemed a flight risk. (He’s skipped bail before…)

The warrant accuses him of causing damage to a Japanese whaling ship in the Antarctic in 2010 and injuring a whaler. The court will decide whether Paul will be extradited to Japan, where he could face a prison sentence of 15 years – what effectively could be the rest of his life. His next hearing in the matter is set for November 13, 2024.

Paul, along with eco-activist/journalist Bob Hunter, co-founded Greenpeace in 1971 in Vancouver. In 1977, he established the precursor to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the world’s most active nonprofit marine protection organization, which he led until 2022. He went on to create The Captain Paul Watson Foundation.

Here we take you back to ideacity in 2007, when Paul passionately spoke about his activism to stop whaling. “We’re out there fighting a world war, the war to save this planet from ourselves.” He emphasized the importance of whales, seals, sea turtles and seabirds – and shared his moving, up-close experience being caught between a family of whales and a whaling ship on the attack. As he said, “if you want to stop pirates you need other pirates to do it, so we’re pirates of compassion, but we’re hunting down pirates of profit.”

You can sign the Foundation’s petition calling for the release of Paul Watson.