In His Own Words: Captain Paul Watson

in 1975 I was with the Greenpeace Foundation and we came up with this idea of how to protect whales which was to place ourselves between a harpoon and the whale and we were reading a lot of Gandhi at the time and we thought that that was all it would take in order to protect them and so in June of 1975 I found myself in a small little zodiac inflatable with Robert Hunter and behind us was a hundred and fifty foot Soviet harpoon vessel bearing down on us at at full speed very rough waters and but in front of us were eight magnificent sperm whales that were fleeing for their life and every time the harpooner tried to get a shot I would block his harpoon and we were feeling really good about this until the captain of that whaling vessel came up the catwalk and he screamed into the ear of the harpooner then brought his finger across his throat like that and smiled at us and that's when I realized Gandhi wasn't going to work for us that day a few moments later there was this incredible explosion this harpoon flew over our head and slammed into the back side of one of the whales a female in the pod and and she screamed was a very woman-like scream it was like a you know a human in pain and and she rolled on her side and a fountain of blood and suddenly the largest whale in the pod hit the water with his tail and disappeared he swam right up underneath of us and threw himself out of the water straight at the harpooner to protect his pod but but they were waiting for him and he had another harpoon loaded an unattached one and at point blank range pulled the trigger and that that harpoon struck the whale in the head that whale screamed and fell back rolling an incredible agony on the surface and as he rolled about in his own blood I I suddenly caught his eye he looked straight towards me and then he dove and I saw a trail of bloody bubbles coming at us really fast and then the whale came up out of the water at an angle so that the next move was to just come forward just fall down on top of us to crush us and as that head rose up out of the water and I looked into this eye and I the size of my fist what I saw in there changed my life forever because I saw understanding the whale could have killed us but I could see as his muscles move and tense and pull himself back and I saw his head slide beneath the surface as I disappeared beneath the water and and he died it could have killed us and he saved her life so personally I feel indebted to him but I saw something else in that and then I and it was it was pity and and not for himself but for us that we could take life so thoughtlessly so mercilessly and for what sperma Ceti oil is what they are after the Russians used it for high heat resistant oil for machinery and one of the things that they were building with sperma Ceti oil was entered a continental ballistic missiles and I said to myself here we are destroying this incredibly intelligent socially complex wonderful being the sentient beam and for what to make a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings and that's when it struck me we are insane and from that moment on I said to myself I'm not going to do what I do for people I'm gonna do what I'm doing for the creatures of the sea they are our clients we represent them and so quite frankly that puts us above criticism because people can say whatever they want about what we do but we don't do it for people we do it for our clients [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Views: 21,581

Keywords: Sea Shepherd USA, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society USA, SSCS, SSCS USA, Sea Shepherd

Id: YYZnaSr3TII

Length: 4min 0sec (240 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019