Captain Paul Watson is director of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
and the world's most widely recognized and controversial ecology activist.
One of the founders of Greenpeace, he is famous for the sinking of two
Icelandic whaling ships in the early eighties and has continued since
that time to fiercely oppose all those who would annihilate
endangered marine species for profit. Paul Watson is truly an
archangel of the sea. Arrested many times, he has never been
convicted, and continues to hold the philosophy that all
species on planet Earth deserve our respect and protection. He is
the author (with Warren Rogers and Joseph Newman) of Sea
Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals (1982), and Ocean
Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas
(1994). Paul's activism carries certain risks. In the spring of
1995 he was attacked and severely beaten by a mob of several
hundred sealers in a hotel on the Magdalen Islands, Quebec. He
survived the attack and continues to fight for ecological sanity.
His New Book: Seal Wars : 2003
Is available through:
SEASHEPHERD:
www.seashepherd.org
ALEXANDER BLAIR ‑ EWART : Environmental activism has increased
dramatically over the last decade. Is that due to the frustration that is felt
because people aren't waking up fast enough?
PAUL WATS0N : Yes, that's a problem. Things are happening too fast, and
education is certainly no longer a viable solution because by the time you
educate this generation as to what is happening, it will be too late, For
instance, by the time we educate the Japanese to stop killing whales, there
will be no more whales left. Lobbying has certainly proven not to work
because you can get new rules and regulations, but they're overturned again.
For example, environmental groups spent hundreds and thousands of dollars
and a lot of energy to get the United States Congress to vote for sanctions on
countries that were killing whales illegally, and when a moratorium was set
by the International Whaling Commission in 1986, those sanctions could
have been applied, thus effectively ending all whaling worldwide, but
President Reagan chose to discriminate on the application of those rules and
so whaling continued. So all the work to get those rules and regulations were
for naught because the president just could not do it. I look on activism as achieving two objectives. The most satisfying part
is that you physically save lives in the moment. So we go in, interfere and
harass, intimidate, halt whaling or sealing operations. And you get an
instant gratification in what you are doing. The other objective is that it's
the best form of education, because we use the drama of the situation to
publicize the issue, so that, for instance, the sinking of the ships in Iceland
was a very viable educational program, because what happened there is that
you had everybody across this country and throughout most of the Western
world talking about the issue. People were in Moose Jaw or Medicine Hat,
wherever, in the local bars, talking about Iceland and whaling. They might
not have agreed with what we did, but they were talking about the issue.
ABE : How do the people who are the direct object of your activism feel?
PAUL W : When we sunk the Sierra, the first mate on board the vessel was
interviewed by NBC. They asked him what he thought of it and he said, "Well, it
was the only way we could have been stopped." And they asked, "Well, what do you
think about it?" and he said, "Before this I never really thought about killing
whales, whether it was good or bad or whatever, and then I saw people who were
willing to risk their lives and freedom to protect them, and I'll never kill a
whale again. In fact, if the Sea Shepherd wanted me as a crew member, I would
join." So I feel that if we are able to actually convert whalers into
anti‑whalers, then that proves that we're an effective educational organization.
ABE : At the same time you're sailing close to the wind ‑ pun intended ‑ in
relation to the law, nationally and internationally.
PAUL W : Well, the amazing thing about it is that we really have never
broken any laws. It's just what people perceive. In the United States and
Europe we get a lot of support. In Canada we don't get as much, the reason
being that Canadians have this, I think, "healthy respect for law and order."
That is, whatever the government tells them to do, they do. And so what
Canadians do is perceive that we break the law because we act on our own,
independent of any authority.
First of all, everything
is well researched in advance. We don't go into anything half‑cocked. So in 1985
the first move I made against Iceland was to bring the Sea Shepherd into
Reykjavik harbor to hold a press conference. We were on our way to the Bear
Islands to protect pilot whales at the time. And I told them that we had no
intention of taking action against their whaling fleet that summer, but at the
moratorium on commercial whaling that had taken effect in 1986, we advised
Iceland to abide by the regulations or we would enforce the regulations against
them. We don't do anything covertly; we always announce in advance what we are
going to do.
ABE : That didn't really get out into the media.
PAUL W : That didn't get out, no. They just want to report what they want
to report. We have to live with that and use it to the best of our ability. What
happened is that we sailed to the Faeroes, and 1986 came along and Iceland
continued whaling. We then moved to the International Whaling
Commission. I went so far as to bring the ship right to Malamose Sweep in
the harbor to sit outside the hotel where the meeting was to take place, again
warning Iceland to abide by the regulations. Iceland applied to the Scientific
Committee of the International Whaling Commission to continue killing
whales. They were refused. We then waited for the U.S. government to take
action under those amendments, the Pelly amendments. That's when
President Reagan chose to discriminate on the application of the law, and
said, "We will not invoke sanctions against a NATO allied nation." Not only
that, but Mr. Reagan sold out the whales by authorizing an okay from the
Department of Commerce for Iceland to continue to actually up the amount
of whale meat it could sell to Japan in return for having Reykjavik host the
summit conference with Mr. Gorbachev. So the price of the summit
conference were the lives of the whales.
So we watched this and we said, "Okay, the lobbying effort didn't work, the
law is not being upheld, and that seems to be the end of it.” That's when we took
action. I sent two engineers to Iceland ‑ Ron Coronado and David Howan ‑
and they infiltrated. They were there all through the summit in October and
into November, and they got jobs in the whale meat processing plant,
because Iceland has more jobs than people and it's a very healthy economy
in that respect. It's not that they need to kill whales. But what happened was
that Ron and David spent that time doing reconnaissance and planning.
ABE : Does your organization have any rules of conduct during, these
kinds of operations?
PAUL W : All Sea Shepherd agents in the field are free to make whatever
decisions they want to make, as long as they abide by our five guidelines for
operation. First, no Sea Shepherd crewman can carry or use a firearm.
Second, we cannot use explosives. Third, no action can be taken where there
is a possibility of an injury to the opposition. Fourth, we have to accept
responsibility for what we do. And five, we have to accept whatever moral or
legal consequences will befall. So as a result, Ron and David checked over
everything they could possibly do, and then on Sunday, November 9th, they
gained access to the whale processing plant and totally destroyed it using
sledgehammers, monkey wrenches, and whatever other implements of
destruction were lying around. And also exposing $4 million worth of whale
meat by opening and destroying the refrigerator systems. Although it was
wasteful, tactically we felt we had to deal them as much economic damage
as we possibly could.
And then Ron and David moved to Reykjavik harbor fifty kilometers away,
boarded and searched the three vessels and found watchmen sleeping
on the third one. They cut that ship loose and let it drift into the harbor, and
then, and only then, went down into the engine rooms of the other ships,
opened up the sea valves to flood the engines, and sank them. Then they
went to the airport. Now, the reason they didn't turn themselves in is that
they had two briefcases full of evidence from the whaling station on illegal
takes, and so they had to get that stuff out to us first. We turned that over to
the International Whaling Commission, which was embarrassing to Iceland.
Now, immediately we were accused, especially by Greenpeace, of being a
terrorist organization, and also by Iceland.
ABE : I found that totally incomprehensible at the time, that the term
terrorist and Sea Shepherd and Watson were being linked. I wondered whose
agenda it was, attaching the term terrorist to what you were doing, because
it was absurd. There was no terror involved.
PAUL W : Actually, the first such accusation came from Greenpeace. It was
picked up by Iceland and then it was picked up by Canada. But we tried to
defend ourselves on the grounds that no terrorist organization operates
under those rules and guidelines. It was a police action, really, arresting an
illegal operation. Then what we did was we accepted responsibility for the sinkings and made ourselves available. I wrote three letters to Iceland that
went unanswered over the next year, saying we would be prepared to answer
any charges Iceland wanted to bring against us. They wouldn't answer the
letters. Instead they just kept throwing out accusations.
So on January 20th of
1988, I flew to Iceland to demand an apology or an arrest. I was met at the
airport by 150 police officers and it was actually quite funny because they held
me for twenty‑four hours and deported me the next day, refusing to lay charges.
Not only that, but during the interrogation, I was interrogating them, they
weren't interrogating me. I said, yes, we sank those ships and not only that,
we'll sink the other two at the first opportunity unless Iceland abides by the
law. And they refused to charge me. They said, "We want to get the other guys,
not you." And I said, "Well, I'll put them on a plane and bring them here if you
want them. They're standing by ready to answer." You see, to put us on trial
would be to put themselves on trial, so we were deported. Now, the only legal
case that has come out of this entire incident is my lawsuit against the
government of Iceland for illegal deportation because they had no legitimate
right to do that.
ABE : Why do you think Greenpeace felt that it was necessary to speak of
terrorism and start a propaganda campaign?
PAUL W : We have a very strange relationship with Greenpeace, being that the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is composed of some of the founding members of
Greenpeace. A lot of our people left Greenpeace out of disillusionment.
ABE : They seem to be doing quite well from the point of view of collecting
funds. It's a vast operation with lots of publicity.
PAUL W : There's both positive and negative about it. The positive part of
Greenpeace is that it is able to reach a lot of people and therefore stands as
a symbol of an environmental movement. And just its name sometimes
can sway a lot of opinions. The negative part is that it has become a
multinational ecocorporation. One year it brought in $94 million in
donations. That's way up there as far as organizations and businesses are
concerned. The problem is that it has become so bureaucratic that they
can't make a decision.
They find themselves often in a bind on issues because when it conflicts
with natural or cultural considerations, the people in that regional area
won't support it and so their hands are tied and they can't do anything. And
the organization has become a bureaucratic boondoggle. It's also so heavily
involved with internal politicking and infighting over positions, people's vested
interest in their jobs, etc. When we set up Sea Shepherd, I took to heart what
David Brower said, which is that any organization after ten years is useless,
it's become too bureaucratic, and so one must get out of it. He was forced
out of Friends of the Earth and subsequently founded Earth Island Institute.
ABE : When you talk about. becoming active, are you talking about the
individual running the risk of arrest?
PAUL W : No, I don't expect the average person to go out and spike trees or
strangle Exxon executives or whatever. What I expect people to do, really, is
shift their attitudes so that they're no longer working for themselves, for
their own material self‑interest; they are now working for the Earth and for
the environment, and therefore they should do what they do best. If you're a
journalist, if you're a communicator, if you're a teacher, do it for the Earth,
not for yourself. That's all you have to do. I really don't think that
everybody should be an activist. In fact, I'm working on a book now which is
a guide to strategy for the environmental movement, and I divide this into
different ways, such as the way of the educator or the communicator, the
way of the artist, the way of the infiltrator, someone who infiltrates a
government and works for the Earth from there. There is a way of the
catalyst which is somebody who can focus on issues, or the way of the
warrior, which is a more activist, more militant approach. You have to pick
the way that is going to make the best contribution.
The most important thing is to serve the Earth, and to take a biocentric
viewpoint, not an anthropocentric viewpoint of things. I think this is the
only salvation for the Earth, which involves a complete revolution in
consciousness, economically, spiritually, politically, and culturally.
Everything has to be shifted from an anthropocentric to a biocentric point of
view. If that happens, then I think that there is real hope for our species and
for the Earth.
ABE : I gather that you have been an animal lover all your life. Are you a
vegetarian?
PAUL W : Yes. I was raised in New Brunswick in a fishing village and I
became a member of the Kindness Club which was set up by Ida Fleming,
the wife of Hugh Armstrong, who was the Conservative premier in New
Brunswick in the fifties. But when I was nine to twelve, my brothers and I
became hit men for the Kindness Club. That is, we would disrupt trap lines
and duck hunts, that sort of thing. And later when I ran off to sea I was in
the Merchant Marines and in the Coast Guard and then got involved with
Greenpeace.
This gave me an opportunity to put maritime skills together
with what I really wanted to do, which is protect wildlife, in this instance to
protect marine wildlife. I'm first and foremost a wildlife conservationist.
ABE : Are we close yet to a place where the politicians and the system as a
whole are going to wake up?
PAUL W : No, we're in a situation right now where politicians and the
system are still co‑opting the movement.
ABE : I'm very concerned about that because there's a "resource ecology" lie
that I hear all over the place, which means "business as usual." And we
recognize this attitude when we hear the words "resource ecology" and hear
talk about "sustainable growth," whatever growth is supposed to mean in this
situation. How can we avoid having environmentalists co‑opted by politicians?
PAUL W : I don't know if it can be avoided because they have the power
and they have the influence. I think that that's where the activities of a small
active organization come in, which is to constantly rock the boat and yell out
that "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" As long as
there are people making waves then people can he shifted away from that
pie‑in‑the‑sky attitude adopted by these corporations. I find it amazing that
there are environmental organizations supporting "ecologically positive"
disposable diapers. No disposable diapers are ecologically positive. After all,
you're putting raw human sewage into dump sites, which is illegal. With my
daughter, we went to the trouble of finding ‑ and it worked out brilliantly
these diaper services. They take the real cloth diapers, wash them, and
return them to you so you don't have to clean them yourself, which is
probably a better alternative.
ABE : How is it that these illegal activities are abided?
PAUL W : Somehow or other the entire society looks the other way because of
the multimillions of dollars made with the sale of disposable diapers. It's
almost like we've developed a schizoid attitude towards things, where we can, as
environmentalists say, "You shouldn't do this, this, and this, but really, you
know, everything is so big and I'm so small, it really doesn't make much
difference." It's a very frustrating thing. The hope that I have is that we will
be given a rude swift kick in our collective rear ends by, hopefully, a minor
environmental collapse, not a major one. Chernobyl is a good example of that.
Chernobyl didn't work because it will in the end kill about a million people,
slowly, out of sight and out of mind. If it had left a million radioactive,
bloated bodies on the streets of Kiev, that would have been the end of the
nuclear industry. But it didn't, and it's killing them the way we've come to
like it, quietly and out of sight. And never mind that the reindeer population
was totally destroyed, that 74% of the lamb population in Scotland had to be
destroyed, that there is a shortage of birds in Europe. Never mind that. That
seems to have been totally glossed over, and it's business as usual.
ABE : You are doing the utmost that you possibly can to wake people up. I'm
doing what I can. It seems like a drop in the bucket, though. What is it that
we're not doing? What is it that we haven't understood about collective
psychology here in this crisis?
PAUL W : How do you sway a runaway train if what is tempting people
into the track is material wealth, short‑term satisfaction? I think Leonard
Cohen actually put it best in one of his songs: "We're locked into our
suffering and our pleasures are the seal." And we can't throw off the
pleasures, even though we know it's leading us at one hundred miles an hour
into a stone wall. We can't get rid of this because it's so momentarily
gratifying. I don't know if that's even possible, to get people deflected away.
ABE : It's like we've all got addictive psychologies at every level of society,
and we're not able to break these lifestyle habits and wake up.
PAUL W : I see that in myself. There are things that I do which are
environmentally unsound, but I do them. For instance, I fly in airplanes. It's
almost like you're locked into the structure and you can't even function if
you don't drive a car or don't do such and such. So I don't know if it's
possible for us to change unless there is an environmental motivation for us
to do it, and what worries me now is people are becoming more and more
environmentally aware, and the media is telling them to be more
environmentally aware, but it's the politicians and the establishment who
are turning that into profit and into power. I'm not that optimistic, but all I
do know is that as long as there is life, there is hope.
ABE : I go through cycles with it, and lately I've been feeling reasonably
positive. On the one hand you have this terrifying and terrible sense of loss
for this beautiful thing, the Earth, realizing that it's disappearing and that
you feel totally powerless to do anything about it. But at the same time, you
feel stupid about feeling grief because you think: Don't do that! Don't hold
the funeral before you've done absolutely everything you can possibly think
of to avert that disaster.
PAUL W : Yes, I don't allow that to get me down. I take kind of an Eastern
view of it, in the sense that you have to do what you're doing because it's the
right thing to do, and whether you win or lose, whatever the ultimate end
result is, don't be swayed by the way it's going, just fight it right into the
ground if you have to. And that way I find that by being detached from it, I
don't find myself emotionally drained by the issues that I'm involved in, and
also I'm able to function in situations where, for example, whales are being
killed in front of me without becoming emotionally traumatized.
ABE : You've worked with people who couldn't handle the emotional
impact of watching whales being slaughtered and wildlife being destroyed?
PAUL W : I've known people who have become depressed and have
committed suicide. People who can't operate objectively are in serious
danger of doing something technically negative. You can't lose your temper,
because if you do then you're going to do something that's going to backlash
on you. It's very easy to kill people. If you allow that anger to overcome you,
somebody could get hurt, and if you kill somebody on the other side, no
matter if they deserve it or not, it's going to come back and it's going to hurt
you more than ever.
ABE : It seems that outspokenness and directness, particularly in Canada,
are almost forbidden in this very apathetic nation. We're so used to being
paternalistically watched over by our overlords, but our overlords are
leading us horribly astray and it's time for us to wake up.
PAUL W : The authorities aren't used to that attitude.
ABE : Exactly. And people look at you as if you're insane when all you're
doing is exercising your rights as an individual.
PAUL W : Actually, after the Iceland campaign I appeared on talk shows
where people called up and said, "Who do you think you are? God?' And I'd
say, "No, the job's taken. All I'm doing is saving lives by enforcing
international regulations. Also, I don't have much use for any government
that defends its authority through violence and who maintains an army
telling me that I'm violent. What kind of hypocritical stance is that?"
ABE : So you get accused of arrogance?
PAUL W : The human species is incredibly arrogant. When you point out
their arrogance you yourself are accused of being the same. You see, we're
not here to talk with the opposition. We have nothing to say to them. We're
here to give them a swift kick in the ass and then the moderate groups can
work out a solution with them. We're the bad guys, we're the unpredictable
guys. When we go into a confrontation, they never know what we're going to
do. They think we might blow them out of the water. We don't care. They
think we're crazy. That works to our advantage. We're really going in as a
blitzkrieg, and in many ways that has helped to soften up the opposition,
and also it can delay things. As a good example, Earth First occupied a
forest area in Texas. It took the Sierra Club thirty days to get an injunction,
but in the meantime, Earth First's legal victory came through, and that's a
good example of the two approaches working very well.
A B E : It sounds as if what we're looking for here at this stage, then, is some
sort of coordinated infrastructure.
PAUL W : Yes, but I don't know if it has to be coordinated. It may be even
better if it is uncoordinated. The wolf campaign worked beyond my wildest
expectations because what happened is that I started it in 1984 at the end of
the wolf hunt, and in 1985 it started to expand. By 1987 the wolf campaign
was perfect because I had so many groups that were opposing it. I had
Friends of the Wolf in Bellingham, Washington, Friends of the Wolf Montana,
Friends of the Wolf California, B.C., and Alberta. Totally uncoordinated. One
group was occupying the minister's office; another was occupying John
Elliott's office, the wildlife office in Prince George. Another group was
dropping parachutists into the area. Another group was taking them to
court, and everybody was working towards the same objective completely
independently and on their own.
ABE : There are people out there who would like to do more but are
frightened that they might end up in prison for God knows how long if it
went badly. You're involved in educating people how to do it right, not
hurting anybody while they're at it, and how to stay free while they're
getting on with the job.
P A U L W : It takes calculating your plan in advance and building a strategy
before you go into something. Say you've decided to go out and spike trees,
for instance. Spiking trees is a very complex operation. We started tree
spiking originally in Vancouver, which was the first place it ever happened.
But there are things that you have to know first. You find the lots that the
trees are going to be on, say Lot 555, which is going to be sold. Then you
document exactly what you have got in that lot, so that the loggers know,
because you want the spikes there as a deterrent. You're not there to destroy
the equipment. You are there as a deterrent. So, for instance, spikes should
be put in on a specific angle. If you put them in on a downward angle,
moisture then moves down the spike and you could then cause rot inside the
tree, which would kill it. The spike should be vertical, at even a slight angle,
so that any moisture will roll down the spike and not into the tree. That can
protect the tree. There is no sense saving trees by killing them.
So you send off your press release announcing that Lot 555 has
got 40
six‑inch spikes, 2,003 twist nails, 200 teflon nails which are undetectable
through normal means, and 100 ceramic spikes, also undetectable. This way
they know what they're dealing with, and then they can compute whether or
not it's economically advantageous for them to go ahead. They can actually
work out what kind of damage is going to be caused. And that should be
enough to stop them from going in. Now, if they escalate, you escalate. For
instance, in California, they said, "We're going to cut down all those trees
that are spiked just for spite and leave them on the ground." My response to
that was to tell the Earth First people, "Fine, tell them to go ahead and do
that, but then you're going to spike every log in a log boom heading into
the factory." If they' want to escalate, you escalate and go right for the
equipment. It's not so much the damage that can be caused to the blade as it
goes through, it's the downtime which can mean twenty to thirty thousand
dollars. Blades are only worth one thousand dollars.
Now, when they try to throw at you that spiking trees is terrorism, you
can reply that, first of all, nobody has ever been injured, and the reason
nobody is injured is that every chain saw that goes into a tree has a chain
guard in it. If the chain breaks, which it can do in normal use, of course, the
person is protected. On a sawmill, there's a plexiglass shield between that
saw and the people working. It has to be there, and if it isn't there, their
union will be asking why it's not there. So it shouldn't cause any injury, and
if any injury does result, it's because of irresponsibility on the part of the
company that hasn't taken proper precautions. And also, metal things can
be found in any tree; it doesn't have to be put there deliberately.
ABE : Where did the idea for tree spiking originate?
PAUL W : I got the idea originally when my father cut down a tree in our
backyard when I was a kid and we found it had a horseshoe in it. He broke
his chain saw on that horseshoe. And the horseshoe had been nailed in there
perhaps one hundred years ago. The other tactic I developed recently for
pulp mills is that you get a drill with a 11/2 " or I " bore on it, and first of all
you knock a cork out of the tree with one of those chisel tools, and then you
drill into the tree, pad plastic bags or Styrofoam in there, and then put the
cork back in. Now, what happens is that then moves into a pulp mill and the
plastic will melt inside the pulp equipment and can bring the whole thing to
a halt. Again, that would be a deterrent because you tell them in advance,
"You have three hundred trees in there that are stuffed with plastic bags."
Then there are different strategies. On Mere's Island, when the Indians
spiked the trees, the loggers came in with metal detectors, found the spikes,
and put fluorescent X's on the trees so that they would know which ones
were spiked. Well, the next day the Indians went in there and put fluorescent
X's on every single tree in the forest. So those are the kinds of tactics used. I
think it's really important that you use your imagination. For example, in
Seattle somebody finds out that the mayor isn't recycling. Well, how do we
focus attention on that? We go get the mayor's garbage and hold a press
conference with all his garbage on display. It's a small thing, but it"s a media
thing and gets people's attention.
ABE : Can you talk about the Japanese situation? Every time they are
criticized for their actions they counter with racist propaganda.
PAUL W : I was confronted with this at the International Whaling
Commission when I gave a press conference and the Japanese president
accused me of racism. In fact, he said, "Anti‑whaling is nothing more than a caucasian plot against the yellow peoples of the world." My answer to him
was, "My wife is Chinese, and she is part of this, and I don't think she has
any plot against the yellow peoples of the world. A lot of our members are
Japanese Canadian or American, and the Japanese are the last people to
point the finger of racism at anybody." Anybody who refers to the Koreans
as garlic eaters and refuses after generations to give them rights in Japan,
anybody who can do to the Chinese what the Japanese did to them... and, as
a Canadian, I would like to point out that the three hundred Canadians who
were marched off the cliffs in Hong Kong in World War 11 were marched off
because they were white, not because they had done anything reprehensible.
So I just throw it back in their face.
ABE : How do you get the Japanese to stop killing whales?
PAUL W : The only way to really stop the whaling is to sink their ships, and
I've already made it a straightforward promise that if we were to get a
million dollars, which unfortunately we don't have, we could end whaling
worldwide. All I would need to do is put people in positions to waylay the
fleet. What happens is that the ships are irreplaceable. It's economics; there's
not enough money in whaling to build new whaling ships. Every whaling
ship you sink is a whaling ship permanently out of commission. I asked the
Japanese whaling commissioner in 1983 at the conference in Britain, "When
are you going to stop whaling?" and he said, "When it is no longer
economically viable to continue." I said, "What if that means the extinction
of the whale?" And he said, "Well, what good are whales if there is no
whaling industry? We'll get the most return out of our original investment in
fleets and equipment before we pack it in." So they're looking for the most
return. If you wipe out their equipment, just from a purely logistic point of
view it's not in their interest to replace it.
ABE : Do people offer financial support to your organization?
PAUL W : Yes they do. But one thing that I discovered when I speak to
people who are interested in helping us out financially, is that when they go
talk to their lawyers they're often told, "If you give this group money, you're
going to be held responsible for their actions," which they're not. It should
be pointed out that nobody is. What we are doing is in fact enforcing the
law, and none of our supporters have ever suffered because of that.
ABE : What is Sea Shepherd engaged in ongoingly these days?
PAUL W : One of our objectives is the seizing of a Japanese/Taiwanese drift
net, worth about $1 million each. We'd like to seize one, put it in the hold,
bring it back and string it up somewhere so that people can see the immensity of
the problem. There are about 1,700 of them in use. Second is to destroy as many
nets as possible. All we have to do is take a couple of barrels of concrete,
attach it to one part of the net, and throw it down. The concrete brings the net
down, and as soon as the net reaches sixty fathoms the floats are crushed by
water pressure. On the bottom there are small creatures that can live in and
around it, so they don't have to worry about that. It may take something on its
way down, but that is preferable to the incredible loss of life on the surface. Two barrels of concrete can take out a $1 million net. Also there
are at least fifty pirate ships out there, totally unregistered, totally
illegal. Our plan is to take those ships, just seize
them and arrest them on the high seas. The difficult task is to come up with a way to do it without carrying weapons. They might have some weapons and
although we do have defenses ‑ bullet‑proof vests and things like that‑we have a
record of having never hurt anybody, and we want to keep that record intact.
Copyright © A.
Blair-Ewart 1995-2003.
SEASHEPHERD:
www.seashepherd.org
