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Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservancy who has been fighting the whaling industry – which uses controversial methods – for decades, has been arrested in Greenland on an international warrant.
Sea Shepherd activists used the Bob Buck to attack a Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean in February 2013. They wanted to stop the whalers from refueling their ships.
Paul Watson threatens to catch up with a series set 14 years ago. In January 2010, a ship from the Japanese whaling fleet rammed a Sea Shepherd speedboat in Antarctica. The speedboat sank. The six crew members survived. However, the whaling ship was able to continue sailing.
The fight against whaling, which Watson founded, culminated in a multi-year campaign by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to capture whales in Antarctica’s frigid waters under the guise of research. The annual quota is just under 1,000 whales.
Sea Shepherd’s aggressive and spectacularly destructive behavior is having an impact. Japan has begun restricting hunting to its own territorial waters, as have Iceland and Norway.
The captain of the speedboat, Sea Shepherd member Peter Bethune, later boarded the whaling ship in a motorboat. Apparently to give the captain an invoice for the sunken speedboat. But Bethune was defeated and captured. Born in Tokyo in July 2010 Sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, suspendedbecause he boarded a Japanese ship without permission.
After the Antarctic incident, Japan also issued an arrest warrant for Paul Watson, chairman of the Sea Shepherd Society, who was an accomplice in the operation. In 2012, Japan issued an international wanted warrant for Watson.
Paul Watson, 73, has spent his life fighting the whaling industry.
Arrested in Greenland
Watson has evaded arrest for years. He has hidden at sea. Or stayed in countries where he was not threatened with arrest because those countries’ interests aligned with his fight against deep-sea fishing.
Watson, 73, was arrested in Greenland on July 21. He faces extradition to Japan. The Japanese Coast Guard has charged him with aiding and abetting bodily harm and unauthorized boarding. If convicted, Watson could face several years in prison in Japan, according to his organization.
Watson, a father of three, is currently being held in Nuuk, Greenland, until August 15. As Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, Danish justice authorities are currently deciding whether he should be extradited to Japan. He has been denied bail due to his alleged flight risk. Watson’s organization called on Denmark to release him and not comply with the “politically motivated” detention request.
This is not the first time Watson has had a conflict with the judiciary. The Canadian has been fighting against the killing of whales and other marine mammals for fifty years. He was first a member of Greenpeace, where he had been a member since its founding in 1971. But after a dispute, the organization expelled him. His methods were too radical for Greenpeace. Watson, on the other hand, found Greenpeace too bureaucratic and harmless. He criticized their approach several times as ineffective.
After breaking up with Greenpeace, Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Conversation in 1977. The first ship was purchased a year later. The organization quickly attracted attention for its controversial actions.
Two Sea Shepherd members throw bottles filled with butyric acid onto a Japanese whaling ship in the South Pacific in March 2008.
Shipwrecks and stink bombs
Watson and Sea Shepherd’s methods include blocking loading docks on whalers so that animals cannot be brought aboard. Or they prevent ships from refueling. Stink bombs, bottles filled with butyric acid thrown onto whalers, are also used time and again. Watson describes this method as “aggressively non-violent.” These actions target only property and do not endanger people. However, his opponents call him an “eco-terrorist.”
The whaler was sunk several times. In Iceland in 1986 or in Norway in 1992. A court in the Lofoten Islands sentenced Watson in absentia to 120 days in prison for actions taken in Norway. Since the Netherlands did not extradite him, he did not have to be served in person. However, he spent 80 days in prison there.
In 2012, Watson was arrested in Frankfurt am Main. Costa Rica issued an arrest warrant for an incident in 2002, when Watson used water cannon to attack a shark fishing boat off the coast of Costa Rica. Even so, Japan filed an extradition request with Germany. Watson was released on bail and fled Germany a few days later.
Watson ponders the power of images during his daring actions on the high seas. “If it’s not caught on camera, it didn’t happen.” He told “NZZ am Sonntag” in a 2021 interview. Sea Shepherd’s fight against whalers in Antarctica was documented in the reality television show “Whale Wars,” which aired from 2008 to 2015.
Japan’s New Whaling Ship
Shortly before his arrest in July, Watson was on an anti-whaling mission. He stopped his boat in Nuuk, Greenland, to refuel. He was tracking the Kangei Maru, the new mother ship of the Japanese whaling fleet. The ship began its maiden voyage in May. Japan withdrew from the International Whaling Commission in 2019 and resumed commercial whaling.
The range of the “Ekei Maru” is 13,000 kilometers. That is why environmentalists are concerned that Japan may resume whaling in Antarctica. However, the ship’s operators deny this suspicion. It is used only in Japanese territorial waters.
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