Eco-terrorist or marine savior? Whale Warrior Paul Watson speaks to campus

“Are you ready to give your life to protect a whale?” asked Paul Watson, Founding Captain of marine conservation group Sea Shepherd and a co-founder of Greenpeace, to a crowd of several hundred CC students last Thursday. Armstrong Hall was so crowded that students had to sit in aisles to hear Watson’s speech. 

Watson, internationally famous – or infamous – for his starring role in the hit television series Whale Wars came to CC on Earth Day to discuss direct environmental action with students. 

“I think I’ve become the world’s foremost expert in ramming vessels,” Watson said. 

According to Sarah Neely of the Environmental Studies Department, the Timothy C. Linneman Memorial Lecture on the Environment paid for the lecture. Timothy Linneman was a CC biology major who died in a car accident in 1990. In addition to constructing the garden on the North Side of Shove, Linneman’s father asked that an environmental event be held each year in his son’s memory. His organization paid $7500 plus travel expenses to bring Watson to campus.

The controversial captain began his presentation with self-recorded videos of some of his more recent efforts to protect whales. His hand-held camcorder caught the crackly shouts and laughter of his crew as they steered a rubber raft between a Japanese whaling ship and the mammal they were attempting to harpoon. The raft somehow managed to avoid being run over and distracted the ship long enough for the whale to escape into the sunrise. 

Watson also played images of his shipmates deliberately crashing into other boats, paintballing false “Research” markings on the side of harpoon ships, engaging in water cannon battles, and bombarding enemy decks with rotten butter and foam “just add water - grow your own crocodile” eggs. 

Students in the audience cheered enthusiastically when a Japanese whaler crew attempted to pepper spray the Sea Shepherd activists, only to have the wind blow the burning droplets directly back into their own faces. 

Despite Watson’s claims that he has an “unblemished legal record” and his determination to never hurt a person in his quest to protect whales, many people believe that his ideals are extremist and his methods too confrontational. 

One of Watson’s more controversial actions occurred in 1986 when he snuck into whaling ships docked at an Iceland whale processing plant and opened the salt water cooling systems to flood and sink several ships. This act cost the owners millions of dollars. 

Watson had hoped to be prosecuted for these actions, but the government did not want to acknowledge that it harbored illegal whalers, so he was quietly escorted out of the country.

“I’m proud to be called an eco-terrorist in a world where the Dalai Lama is considered a terrorist,” Watson said.

Watson, a founding father of Greenpeace, said he left Greenpeace after becoming frustrated with nonviolent protests and leafleting. As he waited for other people to change things, whales were dying. 

Watson left Greenpeace and bought himself a small boat. He sailed around the Pacific coast until he witnessed a Japanese ship pursuing a whale pod. He kept the whalers at bay for several hours before they managed to harpoon a whale. He described the agonizing forty-five minutes of thrashing before the whale leapt into the air, looked Watson in the eye, and died. 

To this day, Watson maintains that “whales are more intelligent than people” and even “earthworms are more important than people.” 

Watson is also known for inspiring and mentoring many of the most prominent environmental activists of our time. 

A young man on one of his first Sea Shepherd ships asked him what they could do to end animal testing. Watson replied, “Be creative.” The man left Sea Shepherd, was hired as a lab assistant, snuck a camera into work, exposed the terrible lab conditions on Sixty Minutes and went on to found PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Watson emphasized the power of individuals above governments or organizations. He recalled a man in Iceland who confronted him about the problem of illegal seal hunts off his town’s shores and asked him what he was going to do about it. Watson responded, “What are you going to do about it?” The man gathered together a bunch of his friends, held the sealers up at rifle point, and formed a seal sanctuary at the site of the massacres. Watson said that the man was impatient with efforts to work through governments and policies. 

“The hands of government officials are tied,” Watson said. “People who want to make change need to get out there and change it themselves.”

Watson repeatedly refuted claims that he was an eco-terrorist. He maintained that he had never hurt a person and that his methods were successful. 

“We’ve saved more than they killed this year,” Watson repeated several times. 

When people accuse Watson of training other, more extreme, eco-terrorists he says that their actions are their own individual choices and that their methods are confrontational but nonviolent. Watson believes that if he were responsible for such people’s actions, the U.S. government would be responsible for the actions of Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and other U.S.-trained extremists.

Despite the enthusiastic cheering and shouts throughout Watson’s hour-long lecture, students’ reactions were mixed. 

“I think it’s a bit simplistic to say let’s all be like this,” said Sarah Velez. 

Lisbet Rattenberg said that she appreciated Watson’s techniques and his point that we need to work through direct action.

“You have to have extreme things to pull people with you,” said Rattenberg. 

Daniel Kidney shared similar sentiments. “We have plenty of people working for the government. We need more people working outside of it,” he said.

During the question and answer session after Watson’s talk, a student in the audience shouted, “Shouldn’t you be more diplomatic? Not so ‘with us or against us?’” 

To the wild applause of most of the audience, Watson replied simply, “Nyeh.”