The anti-Ahab

>> Poachers would love to see the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society’s Paul
Watson at the bottom of the ocean

HAVING A WHALE OF A TIME FIGHTING FISHING INDUSTRY: Watson

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

There’s something you have to admire about a captain who rams his ship against an enemy, the way it embodies the final, fanatical single-mindedness of mad Ahab’s “from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee” quote in Moby Dick.

But Captain Paul Watson is no Ahab—rather than be caught in a harpoon line and follow the white whale to his doom, he finds himself wrapped in legal proceedings, the odd jail and in the line of fire of whalers and poachers. As head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and a fiery defender of ocean life, Watson gained international notoriety and applause for his brazen, confrontational methods. It’s earned him the ire of the commercial fishing industry and governments, but the 56-year-old sea dog sees no other option in the fight against illegal fishing.

Ramming speed!

“What we do is intervention,” he says. “I was never much for protests. These people are criminals, so we oppose them in an aggressive manner in order to shut down their operations. There’s no difference between what they are doing and poaching elephants or robbing banks.”

Watson and the Sea Shepherd crews aboard the ships Farley Mowat and Robert Hunter have been called everything from eco-terrorists to pirates—and his combative approach against whalers ultimately led to his split with Greenpeace, the organization he co-founded, in the late 1970s. But he shrugs off the accusations by countering that, if governments won’t protect whales from hunters, someone has to. An incident this past February involving a collision between the Robert Hunter and the Japanese whaling vessel Kaiko Maru—in which both sides claimed the other had rammed first—resulted in no arrests. One reason he thinks he gets off the hook for this and other past actions—like the 1986 scuttling of two whaling ships in Iceland, even after he turned himself in—is the culpability of governments in the whale meat trade. “If they put me on trial, they’ll be putting themselves on trial,” he says.

The recent International Whaling Commission meeting in Anchorage, Alaska upheld the 25-year-old ban on commercial whaling (Japan claims its annual whale quota catch of close to 1,000 around Antarctica is for scientific research), although some high diplomatic drama saw both the pro- and anti-whaling countries recruit new members to their side. Iceland also said it would allow the killing of several dozen whales. Nevertheless, as whale-watching grows and demand for whale meat declines, the debate surrounding the hunt is becoming more about national pride than economics.

What he’d ultimately like to see though is a complete moratorium on all commercial fishing. “If you want a fish, go out and catch it,” he says.

Sailing on

Which is not the case for sharks. In Canadian filmmaker Rob Stewart’s recent documentary Sharkwater, Watson plays a prominent role, and he introduced the movie at the Seattle film festival last weekend. He says there is an “incredible illegal trade” in shark fins, which is overwhelmingly targeted at the Chinese market.

“Chinese consumers are eating this completely non-nutritious product [shark fin soup] and are just wiping out the species for a status symbol,” he says. Public relations campaigns involving Chinese stars like Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh and Yao Ming are helping curb the demand, he says, and so is international pressure leading up to next year’s Olympics. But it’s estimated that over 100 million sharks are caught annually for fins and other parts—and about a third of China’s shark fins are supplied by Europe.

So Watson is still busy. He’ll be sailing shortly for a re-supply mission to the Galapagos Islands, where the SSCS has a full-time patrol presence to discourage poachers, then up through the Panama Canal to Iceland. Along the way, they’ll be “dropping about 100 giant net rippers to discourage bottom trawling off the Grand Banks.” It will be outside Canada’s 200-nautical mile limit, so the Canadian Coast Guard (which he is a former member of) won’t be hassling him. “It’s something that should’ve been done a long time ago,” he says.

Not that he has any faith in the Canadian federal government. “The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is the most incompetent and mismanaged ministry there is,” he says. “They killed the cod fishery. They should just abolish it. Or give it back to the First Nations.”

The First Nations might even thank him. He says he doesn’t object to Inuit hunting because they depend on whale meat for subsistence, and the Kahnawake Mohawks will present him with a flag for the Robert Hunter, since its Canadian flag was revoked by the federal government last year.

Paul Watson will speak on Tuesday, June 19 at John Abbott College’s Casgrain Theatre (21,275 Lakeshore, 7:30 p.m. $10). On Monday, June 18, he will be honoured at the Longhouse Up the Hill in Kahnawake at 1 p.m.