Live Interview with Captain Paul Watson (Director, Founder Sea Shepherd Conservation Society)

hi I'm captain Paul Watson and I'm pleased to be talking to you here on Facebook live and I started the sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977 as an interventionist organization to stop illegal activities on the high seas we were the subject of Animal Planet's Whale Wars for a number of years and on the 22nd Animal Planet we'll be featuring Watson a documentary by Leslie Chilcott about about myself and the first question I have here is what made you want to take part in the Watson documentary well Leslie Chilcott who did Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore approached me on this and I was quite impressed with a Inconvenient Truth so I said well yeah that'd be a great of great project she did a wonderful job in putting this together and I think people will really like the documentary not just really because of me but because of incredible beautiful scenes on the ocean and also the I believe that the film will inspire people especially young people to understand this one thing that each and every one of us can change the world we can make a difference and you just have to have three virtues and that is passion courage and imagination and you can really change things we're seeing that with a lot of young people today who are who are champion various causes and more so than probably any time in the past and for a very good reason because there's a need for that right now the future is not as rosy as we would like it to be everything from species diminishment to climate change there are a lot of obstacles and they have to be addressed and the only way to address that is through passionate people having the courage to act and that's what we're hoping to hoping to inspire and the second question is do you miss being out on the ocean with the sea show of what the sea Shepherd vessels sea shepherd now is an international it's a global movement and we we are the largest marine conservation Navy in the world we have 14 ships out there they're all over the planet right now we have about 200 or so volunteers from 25 different nations that are on board those vessels and what I'm doing right now is helping to to coordinate the activities I guess I'm more in a position of being an admiral than than a captain in that respect but we've got we have some terrific captains and officers and really courageous crew members right now we have an activity going on in the Sea of Cortez where therefore the six year if it wasn't for those the efforts of our crew there the poquito porpoise would now be extinct and so we're there battling the cartels to stop the trade in toto alva bladders these bladders self in China for a hundred thousand dollars a kilo so you can see the kind of motivation there is to go after Toto Ava unfortunately the vaquita and there's only about 17 of them left are the bycatch in that so our job is to patrol the Paquita refuge keep those nets out and so far we've confiscated well over a thousand nets it's a hundred and fifty thousand meters of nets all told and we have been very successful in doing that and it's an ongoing thing and we're working in partnership with it with the Mexican Navy on that respect and the next question is what has been the most intriguing moment at sea well that's that's a very difficult one to answer because there's been so many experiences over the last 40 42 years I think the most exciting campaigns were certainly down in the Southern Ocean when we were confronting the Japanese whaling fleet which I'm happy to report this year they are no longer down there they have they have retreated from the Southern Ocean and for the first time the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is truly a sanctuary and no whales will be killed in fact this year is the first time that whaling in pelagic waters that is in international waters has been shut down there is no no whales are being killed in international waters and that's a tremendous victory now I know the lot of people are saying well Japan is a return to commercial whaling well the fact is is they never stopped commercial whaling and the whaling that they're doing right now is in their own territorial waters so the only whaling nations left are Norway Japan and Iceland in that order and I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to shut them down within the next few years when I started doing what I was doing when I had one really strong ambition that it was to eradicate whaling and I think we've done 95% of that job and we're gonna continue to pursue it I hope before I die that whaling has been abolished on this planet what has been the most frightening moment at sea that's a difficult question because I really haven't really experienced any frightening moments at sea I've experienced frightening moments when I'm not at sea because we're up against some very ruthless politicians Rupp's against Barry ruthless criminals and the threats we get in doing what we're doing are significant but you know you can't be deterred by the by those threats what I'm really frightened of is the ocean dying and if the ocean dies we all die and it's as simple as that since 1950 we've seen a 40% diminishment in phytoplankton populations in the world's seas phytoplankton provides over 70% of the oxygen that we breathe if I phytoplankton goes extinct we all go extinct that's how important this connection is we have to protect the ocean if for no other reason than to protect ourselves and the next question what has the whaling industry been impacted since Whale Wars as I just explained on that whaling is a dying industry and we're hoping to see it completely die out at least in my lifetime there's a lot for us to learn about whales how ecologically important they are every day one blue whale defecates three tons of whale manure now why is that significant because that is an incredible rich source of iron and nitrogen which is the food for the phytoplankton the whales are literally the farmers of the ocean they are there to provide phytoplankton with the nutrients say that they need when whales are diminished phytoplankton is diminished and when phytoplankton is diminished as I mentioned we are diminished the next question outside of whaling what are the biggest issues plaguing our oceans the biggest issue I think right now is one that we're concentrating very heavily on that now is illegal and unreal egg unregulated and unreported fishing IUU fishing and right now we have two ships operating off Africa both the East Coast and the west coast and we're going after poachers we've arrested 50 to poaching vessels off the coast of Africa in the last year one of our vessels - Sam Simon right now is up in the Bay of Biscay off of France trying to stop the killing of dolphins by the French fishing fleets we have another vessel in the Mediterranean that is seizing ghost nets and other illegal nets we're we're closely with various authorities there to stop poaching in the Mediterranean we're also doing the same thing in the Caribbean and off the coast of Mexico and in the end in the South Pacific poaching is a real problem and it has to be eradicated and here's the problem in national waters we have partnerships with Mexico with Peru with Benin with Tanzania Aetna Nivea all these countries and that's great and we can do some good work there but outside of the 200-mile limit what we're looking at is the Wild West people can do whatever they want and unfortunately we're the only Authority up there and people say well what gives you the right to intervene well what gives us the right is the united nations world charter for nature which was ratified in 1986 and it states that any nation state any individual any organization is empowered uphold international conservation law and that's exactly what we're doing Sea Shepherd is really an enforcement body and we can be called vigilantes I have no problem with that but really what we're doing is upholding the law you know a few years ago I was given the opportunity to to address the the FBI at their Quantico headquarters they wanted me to give them a lecture and I did so and one of the questions one of the FBI agents said is uh you know Sea Shepherd's walking a pretty fine line when it comes to the law and I said yeah well who cares how fine it is as long as you don't cross the line we don't cross that line we've never been convicted of a felony we've never caused an injury to anybody we never sustained an inch in injuries well I call what we do is aggressive non-violence and our most powerful weapon is the camera that's what we go to see with two cameras to document these illegal activities for example we found a Chinese fishing fleet in the Indian Ocean using drift nets which have been illegal since 1997 we documented and we chase them we chased them all the way to China and when we got to the Chinese waters there's two Chinese warships and the fishing boat said we're being pursued by these pirates meaning us and so they the the Navy the Chinese Navy contact us so what's going on here I said well well we caught these people illegally fishing we have all the documentation the Chinese Navy's said to us bring him in we brought him in they were all arrested two captives lost their licenses and the companies were fined so if you can get that body of evidence you can get country - actually up hold up hold their own laws and that and that's what we're trying to do so we try to work with authorities where and when we can but if we can't we're gonna go out there and get that evidence ourselves next question what is something that the average person can do to help a lot watch what you eat watch how what you consume you know I know this is a radical thing to say but don't eat fish there's simply not enough fish in the ocean to continue to feed eight billion people on this planet and by 2048 there won't be any fishing industry because it won't be any fish we need a moratorium on commercial fishing for at least 50 years in order to allow the ocean to repair itself because even when you're eating meat you're actually eating fish 40% of all of the fish that's caught is converted into fish meal to be fed to chickens and to pigs into domestic salmon and to fur farms and to cat food 40% so we have to stop that we have to allow the ocean to repair itself and it can repair itself and the ocean is the key to addressing climate change the ocean regulates climate and temperature if you look at if you look at the earth for what it really is we're spaceship we're traveling around the Milky Way galaxy of this incredible speed and every spaceship has a life support system and that life support system provides everything we need warmth and food and regulates climate and temperature and every life support system has to be run by a crew and that crew well we're not crew we're we're passengers they're having a great time in amusing ourselves but we're killing the crew and there's only so many crew members you can kill before the machinery begins to fall apart the phytoplankton the worms the bees the trees those are the crew members that maintain a light on spaceship earth and we have to learn to recognize them live in harmony with them and help them as much as we can if bees disappear or in trouble if trees are or disappear we're really in trouble and if I - phytoplankton disappear as well we're dead it's as simple as that so we have to take a more of a bio centric approach and disregard this anthropocentric sort of mentality that we've had for so long that everything revolves around us it doesn't we're part of the whole we're not independent or dominant over it and that's the kind of attitude I think that can change and if everybody could adopted by eccentric attitude it would make a very significant difference we also have to remove plastics you know from our consumer base there's going to be more plastic in the ocean than there then there are fish it's something that breaks down into micro plastics which is killing incredible numbers of sea birds and fish and is even affecting the plankton in the ocean phytoplankton I mean plastics are poison and it's a design mistake that has should never come into being instead of trying to recycle plastic we need to find alternatives to plastic and we have to do that we have to do that very soon for instance when people say what about plastic straws you know what are we gonna do instead why is it called a straw because originally it was a straw so there are all sorts of alternatives to a metal straws paper straws bamboo straws and straws doesn't matter we don't need to use plastic that whoops we're not getting a movement on my questions here getting little marks and that okay when did you realize you had to act oh that is a difficult question I began doing what I'm doing when I was 11 years old when I was 10 I spent the entire summer swimming with a family of beavers where I lived in eastern Canada and the next summer when I was 11 I went back to find my beavers and found out they were not there anymore trappers had taken them all during the winter and I became very very angry that winter I began to walk the trap lines free the animals from the traps and destroy the traps so that's really how I started and then in 1969 that was the the youngest founding member of the Greenpeace foundation then I left Greenpeace in 77 to set up the sea Shepherd Conservation Society so that's something that I've been really doing all my life I really super had to make a decision on it it just came very naturally and I learned a lot of lessons during that time I think one of the most significant lessons that I ever learned was in 1973 I volunteered to be a medic for the American Indian Movement sakya patient at Wounded Knee and at that occupation we were surrounded by about 3,000 you know federal troops they're shooting at us 20,000 rounds at night and everything and I went to Russell Means who is the American Indian Movement I said Russell the odds are against us we don't have any hope of winning what are we doing here and he said something to me that stayed with me for the rest of my life he says we're not concerned about the odds we're not concerned about the winning or losing we're here because this is the right thing to do the right time to do it in the right place to be doing it and don't think about the future act in the present that will define the future and that is stayed with me forever another thing that I've learned over the years is that if you want to solve a seemingly impossible problem you have to look for an impossible solution and impossible solutions can be found if you use your imagination and you have the courage to pursue that in 1972 the very idea that Nelson Mandela would be president of South Africa was unthinkable it was impossible and yet the impossible became possible and that's the kind of thing I'm trying to encourage people to understand is we can find impossible solutions to seemingly impossible problems what is something oops what is something that you wish was common knowledge regarding Ocean Conservancy I wish what was common knowledge would be for people to understand what the ocean is the ocean is not the sea that's just a body of water the ocean is a planet this is the planet ocean it's water in continuous circulation sometimes it's in the sea sometimes it's underground sometimes it's in the atmosphere sometimes it's in ice and it's sometimes in the plant in the cells of every living plant and animal the water that's in your body right now was once in the sea once locked in ice once underground once in the sky it's continuous circulation so we are the ocean and that's what we should understand that everything is interdependent we're all part of this one thing which is the ocean we can't really separate ourself from it because the ocean is life and life is the ocean and so this is a one message I really am trying to get across to people is this connection that we have to to what this planet is really really all about you know I find it incredible that we're spending billions and billions of dollars searching through the universe trying to find intelligent life when we have life right here that we're not protecting we're not conserving you know people go crazy if the possibility to find them bacteria on site Titan or on Mars and yet look at everything that we're losing all the time we're living right now in what is called the six major extinction it's even got a name called the Anthropocene now what have I learned over the study in those five earlier major mass extinction events is this the last one being 65 million years ago and we lost the dinosaurs the other one the most worst one being the the Permian extinction which killed 97 percent of everything and what I learned there was you know this isn't about saving the planet it takes 18 to 20 million years for a full recovery from a major extinction event so 20 million years from now this is gonna be a really nice planet we're just not gonna be here so what this movement is really about is saving ourselves from ourselves you know if we want to survive then we have to learn within to live within the the laws of ecology the law diversity that the strength of an ecosystem lies in the diversity of species within it the law of interdependence that all of those species are interdependent with each other and the law by night resources that there is a limit to growth a limit to carrying capacity and when we exceed that we diminish diversity we diminish interdependence and we don't want to go there that that has no future for us unless we learn to live in harmony in accordance with the basic laws of ecology we will go extinct and you know I have children many of you have children and we want them to have a future then we have to take this very very seriously we have to understand just why we are here I asked a fisherman in Alaska one time I said look for no other reason protect the oceans protect the fish so at least your children are involved in the same industry this guy looked at me says you know what five years my mortgage is paid after that I couldn't give a damn why does somebody like that have children well it's what you do but if we really loved our children we would be fighting for their future and we would do it with every fiber of our being and that's the kind of thing that I think we really need to address I want my son I want my daughter to have a future and we're robbing up them of that there are species that were on this planet when I was born that are no longer here hundreds and hundreds of species and you know the real tragedy is we forgotten that they existed that they used to be belugas in Long Island Sound there used to be walrus on the coast of Maine there used to be bison in New England there used to be wolves Labrador ducks parakeets pigeons all of these species hundreds of them gone gone forever and we've forgotten that they were ever here do we want in 50 60 years ago to be saying the same thing about elephants and tigers and whales I don't I don't want that kind of future so that's why we do what we do and we have some pictures here and this one here is a back in December 7th of 20 of 2007 and that's when we launched the Steve Irwin and the reason that we called it the Steve Irwin was Steve was supposed to join us on that voyage and unfortunately he died just months before that and so I asked Terri Irwin if we could take his name down at the southern ocean and she she agreed and she came down and she launched the Steve Irwin which has been our flagship for for many years and this of course is a humpback whale off the coast of Queensland we called our first campaign in 2007 we called that operation mega loo and mega Lewis an albino humpback that lived off the coast of Queensland to focus attention on that I believe that whales are like dolphins probably the most intelligence species on this planet their brains are certainly bigger and more complex than ours but we associate intelligence with manipulation we're able to hand eye coordination with tools basically you know whales don't need tools so you know when we really look at it from their point of view we don't have the abilities that they have and so we should really appreciate that kind of intelligence in fact all species of everything our intelligent relative to their position on this planet and this is a portrait of Peter hammarstedt who joined us when he was 18 as just as a deckhand and now he's captain and overseeing our a Perkin fleet he's been with us for many years the other person in that pitchers Oona loyal who's also one of our our captains and this is a over the years so many people have come to us and have risen up through the ranks and become captains and officers on our ships and this is our vessel the bob barker along with our vessel to Steve Irwin down in in the Southern Ocean this is I believe operation zero tolerance when we forced the Japanese whaling fleet to to retreat from the Southern Ocean I know the Bob Barker there that one in the foreground got beaten up quite badly but it was uh it was well worth it for what was achieved and just about a month and a half ago we had the opportunity to be to light up the Empire State Building and the the white and blue really this is really to me sending a beacon out to the ocean turning the Empire State Building really into a lighthouse for for that evening to send a message of just how important it is for us to think about address and and to to resolve all of the problems that we have facing our oceans so we're certainly very appreciative of the management of the Empire State Building for allowing us to to send that signal and I think that's that's it for now thank you for her up or listening to me and I hope you tune in and watch Watson on at eight o'clock on Sunday the 22nd and also we'll be running a Whale Wars on on Animal Planet throughout the week

Channel: Konstantin GN/SSCS

Views: 4,441

Rating: 4.7731957 out of 5

Keywords: #CaptainPaulWatson #WhaleWars #SeaShepherd #AnimalPlanet #Ocean

Id: hE9OEfxNzeY

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 21 2019