Hello, friends! In 1979, one of the most dangerous whale hunting ships in the world was a ship called the Sierra. It was hunting whales in the Atlantic Ocean. And the way it hunted them was extremely scary. The hunters on board the ship took advantage of the fact that whales are intelligent and empathetic. If a whale is hurt, other whales come to help. They used a 2,500 kg heavy harpoon gun to attack a whale. As soon as it pierced into the whale’s body, it exploded like a bomb. The whale would start bleeding. It would scream in pain. Hearing the screams, other whales would come to save it. Using this as an opportunity, these whale hunters hunted the other whales too. The ship Sierra had hunted more than 25,000 whales. It was so infamous that it was banned from entry at many ports around the world. And arrest warrants were issued against most of its crew members. On 16th July, 1979, this ship was hunting whales like this, about 200 miles from the Portuguese coast. The hunters on the ship must have thought that it would be another golden day for whaling as usual. But at this very moment, suddenly, a ship collided with the Sierra at full speed. Before the hunters could understand what was happening, the ship returned and hit them again from the left. The ship that collied with them was called the Sea Shepherd. And it was headed by Captain Paul Watson. The captain of the Sierra had a rifle. He took his rifle and started firing at Paul Watson. But by then, Paul Watson’s mission was accomplished. He had permanently damaged the Sierra. Two hours later, the Portuguese Navy reached there and arrested Paul Watson. But no one came forward to claim the ownership of the Sierra. Paul Watson was released later. After this, the ship Sierra somehow reached the Lisbon Harbor in Portugal. But a few months later, in 1980, Paul Watson’s colleagues planted mines in Sierra and sank the ship. To save these amazing creatures, how far can an individual go?
This is the story of the world’s largest creatures. The whale hunters who hunt these creatures. And a pirate who hunts these whale hunters. This is the story of Paul Watson. Who was ready to go to any extent to save the environment. Paul Watson is an environmental activist. Some people call him an eco-pirate and even an eco-terrorist. He was born in Canada in 1950. And had a difficult childhood. His father was abusive. He lost his mother when he was young. But he was very fond of animals since childhood. When he was young, his best friend was a wild beaver. An animal that looks like this. He named it Bucky. One unfortunate day, Bucky fell into an animal trap in the forest and died. After this, Watson spent most of his time destroying the animal traps in the forest alone. When he was 11 years old, his uncle took him on a seal hunt. There the seals were killed brutally. This shocked young Watson and changed him forever. At 16 years old, he ran away from home and went to Vancouver. There, he met some environmental activists with similar ideologies. When he was 19 years old, in America, on Alaska’s Amchitka Island, a nuclear testing was scheduled. Amchitka was a wildlife sanctuary and in 1965’s first nuclear test, hundreds of sea otters were killed there. Knowing this, some people in Vancouver were protesting against this testing. Paul Watson was also a part of this group. This nuclear testing was supposed to test a nuclear bomb. A nuclear bomb was actually set off. This could have created huge waves in the sea killing the wildlife on a large scale. To stop this, in 1970, the Don’t Make a Wave Committee was formed. To stop the testing of nuclear weapons, this committee rented two fishing vessels in 1971. These ships were named Greenpeace and Greenpeace 2. Paul Watson was one of the crew members of these ships. Their plan was equally amazing and risky. They planned to take their fishing boats to the location where the nuclear bomb was supposed to be dropped. So that the people running the nuclear testing would spot them there and won’t be able to drop the nuclear bomb. They tried their best, but when they reached the testing site, they found out that the government had announced the wrong testing site. And the real testing site was somewhere else. When the bomb actually exploded, it was hundreds of miles away from them. But when the nuclear bomb exploded, only as a test, it was 200 times bigger than the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki. This blast killed more than 10,000 fish and about 1,000 sea otters. Even though these efforts failed, this campaign got so much publicity in the news that America cancelled all nuclear tests for the foreseeable future. The Don’t Make a Wave Committee later became the Greenpeace organisation. It was officially registered as the Greenpeace Foundation in 1972. And it is the same NGO that is famous all over the world today. Paul Watson was one of the founding members of Greenpeace. Paul Watson’s interest in whales began in 1973 when a Canadian biologist Paul Sponge met Greenpeace. He was invited to the Vancouver Aquarium to study the first captive Orca whale. There, he did several experiments on this whale. He was amazed to see the results of these experiments. This whale was so intelligent that it deliberately started giving wrong answers to Paul Sponge. He realised that the whale was running experiments on him and playing mind games with him. “And then all of a sudden, the whale switched to giving the exact wrong answer. And Paul realised that the whale was experimenting on him. And playing with his mind.” This made him realise that these creatures were much more intelligent than the scientists thought. While working here, Paul Sponge found out how whales were being hunted and driven towards extinction. Once he found out, Paul Sponge, met Greenpeace with his ideas to stop whale hunting, this issue seemed very important to Paul Watson too. And Greenpeace felt that to underline the importance of our environment, whales were a perfect symbol. Because, friends, the thing is whales are extremely intelligent. Blue whale is the world’s largest animal. Not just today, but in the history of all the animals that have ever lived, even among the greatest dinosaurs, compared to all of them, the blue whale is the biggest creature. And do you know that the sperm whale has the biggest brain? Five times the size of human brain. Interestingly, a whale’s brain has one more lobe than humans. Known as the Paralimbic lobe. This lobe helps process emotions and think. Some scientists believe that this is why whales have a higher emotional intelligence than humans. They can feel emotions like empathy, sadness, and grief. Bottlenose dolphins can even use simple tools. Like they pick up sponges with their mouths and use that to find fish hidden under sand or rocks. Whales also have their own language. It has foundational letters, similar to human languages. Orcas, also known as killer whales, call each other by their names. And sperm whales can even speak local languages. Like humans, whales live in complex societies and protect their young and old members. Throughout their lives, bottlenose dolphins depend on their social network for everything. They can identify their friends, family, and foes. Whales keep their children with them during all the activities. It is seen as a part of their culture. The behaviour of Altruism, helping other creatures, many people think that it is exclusive to humans. But this has been seen in whales too. We have seen many cases where humans were in trouble and whales came to their rescue. Humpback whales pass down their songs from generation to generation. Different dialects are noticed in different pods of killer whales which is proof enough of existence of culture among whales. Just like in humans.
Even so, there are still many secrets about whales. There’s much to research about in this field of science. Scientists haven’t yet comprehended their intelligence completely. But one thing that scientists have clearly understood is that whales play a crucial role in fighting climate change. Whale excretion contains a lot of nutrients. These nutrients become food for phytoplankton and sea plants helping them to grow properly. Phytoplankton are responsible for the majority of photosynthesis on the earth thereby removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Globally, of the total carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis 40% of it is caused by phytoplankton. Similarly, of the total oxygen produced in the world, about half of it is due to phytoplankton.
Think about it, such small creatures, have such a huge impact on Earth. The more whales there are, the more phytoplankton there will be. But despite all these, whales have been killed on a large scale for years. To protect the whales, Greenpeace started the Save the Whale campaign in 1975. In a way, it was the beginning of the modern environmental movement. First, Greenpeace targeted whale hunting near the California coast in America. Soviet Union ships used to hunt whales there. Back then, members of Greenpeace used these rubber boats, known as Zodiacs. And their method was quite non-violent. They went near the ships and appealed them not to hunt whales. Often, they would carry placards on their small boats in front of these huge ships. These posters said, “Stop Whaling.” Paul Watson was part of one of their first expeditions. When they reached, they saw that Soviet ships had hit two whales with harpoons. When you search for a harpoon on Google, you’ll find that it is a weapon like this. A rope tied to a sharp spear. It can be used to kill whales. But it has to be thrown by hand. These were traditional harpoons. But by the 1970s, the harpoons being used in Soviet ships were called explosive harpoons. They weren’t thrown by hand. It was a huge mechanical gun weighing 2.5 tones. This gun could shoot harpoons that could quickly pierce the whale’s body. And after piercing the whale, the explosive on it would go off like a bomb. Of the two whales that were killed by the Soviet ships, one of them was a baby whale. Paul Watson climbed on top of this young whale, so that others would understand its size through a photo. Watson this photo sitting on the whale eventually became very famous. Around the same time, in 1975, an incident changed Paul Watson’s life forever. They had reached a Soviet ship on their small rubber boat, when they heard a loud noise. The sound of a harpoon being shot right in front of their eyes killing a whale. A large whale saw this happen and tried attacking the man deploying the harpoons. But it was shot point-blank again. “It was like the loudest thing I ever heard. Like somebody shot a gun right by my ear.” Paul Watson was right beside the wounded whale. The whale started sinking. While it was sinking, Watson looked into its eyes. Watson says that he saw understanding in the eyes of the dying whale. It knew what the humans were doing. It knew the difference between the people who were trying to protect it, and the ones who were trying to kill it with harpoons. It could have killed Watson and his team easily. Because they were right beside it. But it didn’t do that even in its last moments. Watson says that this one moment changed his life completely. He found the purpose of his life. “I looked up past these 6-inch teeth, into an eye the size of my fist. And what I saw there was understanding. The whale understood what we were trying to do. Because it could’ve very easily come forward and crushed us or seized us in its jaws and killed us.” Greenpeace captured this whole incident on video and this footage was spread all over the world. This became the top news on all three American national networks. The truth of whale hunting was beginning to be exposed to the world. But Paul Watson was forced to ponder upon one question. Why were the Soviet ships killing whales? They weren’t after whale meat. There was no shortage of food. Upon investigating, he found that these sperm whales were being hunted because of the Spermaceti Oil found in them. This oil was used for many things. One of them was to make intercontinental ballistic missiles. Think about it, friends. These amazing creatures were being killed so that humans could make weapons of their own destruction. After this, Paul Watson said, this made him realize that humans are crazy. At least some humans are really crazy. “One of the products they were making with it was intercontinental ballistic missiles. I said, ‘Here we are destroying this intelligent, gentle, socially complex creature. For the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings.’ And that’s when it struck me that we’re insane.” At this point, he decided that he would dedicate his life to save the whales and other sea life. “I think it probably did really cement for him, that this was his mission in life.” The next year in 1976, Paul Watson and Greenpeace reached the ice fields of Newfoundland, Canada. Where hundreds of thousands of baby seals were killed every year. These seals were killed for their fur. To make clothes. This was the biggest slaughter of mammals in the world at the time. And the way it was done was truly shocking. They would find seals and their cubs there. The cubs would be slaughtered right in front of the eyes of the mother. To stop the people who were doing this, to talk to them and explain to them, Paul Watson and his colleagues went there. “So I decided to set up a base camp. And we went out to physically block the sealers on the ice.” Their excuse was that it was a part of their culture. That they’d been doing this for centuries. So it wasn’t problematic. And that Watson and his team were interfering in their culture. They tried to explain it to them repeatedly that there was no shortage of meat anymore. And clothes could be made of other materials. But if they kept killing seals, soon no seals would be left. Often, Watson and Robert Hunter would stand in front of the sealers’ ship and force the ship to turn back. Again, doing this was extremely risky because if the ship did not stop on time, they would’ve been crushed by the ship. There’s another famous photo of Paul Watson and Robert Hunter standing in front of a ship. During this campaign, seal hunters attacked Paul Watson. They tried to drown him in the water. He was beaten up. And his face was rubbed on the blood spilled across the deck of the ship. “Then I was dragged out, brought on board the ship, and dragged through a gauntlet of sealers. Who were kicking me, spitting at me, and rubbing my face into the blood on the deck.” At one point, Watson snatched the weapon from one of the hunters and threw it in the water. The hunter was on his way to kill a seal. This became a huge turning point. Because up to this point, Paul Watson had been using non-violent methods only. This was the first time he took a proactive action to stop someone. The Greenpeace Organization was based on the philosophy of non-violence, they didn’t appreciate this. This is why, in June 1977, Paul Watson was removed from the board of the Greenpeace Foundation. After this, Paul Watson formed his own organization he named it the Earth force! It was Earth force’s ship the Sea Shepherd, that collided with the pirate ship Sierra. I talked about this at this video’s beginning. Later, Watson changed the name of this organization calling it the Sea Shepherd. There was a vast difference between Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd. Greenpeace’s policy was they would record all wrongdoings, be its witness, collect evidence, and present it in the court. But Sea Shepherd believed that this approach wouldn’t make a difference. They needed to take proactive action. If a ship were hunting whales, they planned to go and crash into the ship to try to stop them from whale hunting right there and then. Most environmental organizations have logos that create positive feelings among people. Like WWF’s Panda logo. Some show a cute whale in their logo, and some show a cute koala. But Watson wanted Sea Shepherd’s logo to be a flag of the pirates. After Sierra, Sea Shefford and Paul Watson sank many ships and crashed into many whale hunters’ ships and made it their signature style. To save the whales, Paul Watson was so passionate that in 1981, he secretly went to the Soviet Union’s Siberia and documented a food processing facility. There the meat of illegally killed whales was used to make animals feed. Had he been caught; he could have been tortured. The Soviet government might have killed him. He took the risk knowingly. He evaded the Soviet Union’s secret agency KGB, and the Soviet Navy successfully. The next year, Greenpeace’s activists tried to do something similar. But they were caught. Paul Watson and his ways were so innovative that he was ready to go to any lengths to save the animals. For example, in 1983, in Newfoundland, when he stopped seal hunting with his ship, he was later arrested. But the very next year, Watson brought along a French actress, Brigitte Bardot, and ran a publicity stunt using her sweet pictures with baby seals. When colliding with ships wasn’t effective enough, he made the photos of cute baby seals go viral. Because of these photos, this issue was taken up at the international level. And seal hunting was banned for 10 years. Paul Watson’s efforts were showing results. In 1946, an International Whaling Commission was set up to stop overhunting of whales. But the problem was that only the countries involved in whale-hunting were its members. But with pressure from Paul Watson, Greenpeace, and other organizations, this commission finally banned commercial whale hunting in 1986. But Japan was against it. It’s a powerful country. So, for ‘scientific research,’ hunting whales continued to be allowed, and for research, Japan was permitted to kill 1,000 whales every year. Think about it. Is it really necessary to kill 1,000 whales every year for scientific research? Does it make sense? Not at all. Actually, ‘scientific research’ is just an excuse. Japan was killing a thousand whales every year just for its meat. Not just Japan, in the 1980s even Iceland used to kill whales in the name of research and sell the meat to Japan. This is why even though commercial whaling was banned in 1986, from 1986 to 2022, around 40,000 whales were killed. Paul Watson was fed up with all this and took his team to the only whale processing plant in Iceland. They carried hammers and cyanic acid with them. For 8 hours, they wrecked the plant. They literally broke down the plant as much as possible with hammers and acid. Resulting in a loss of $2 million. After that, they drove to Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik’s harbor. There, they opened the sea walls of two whale hunting ships to drown them. Iceland had four ships for whale hunting. And they drowned two of them single-handedly. Watson said that they would have drowned the other two as well. But there were people on them. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. So, they left those. After this attack, Sea Shepherd was highly criticized. Many newspapers compared it to a terrorist attack. But Watson was sure that they weren’t wrong. In 1988, he went to Iceland and tells them that if they believe that his actions were wrong, then they should arrest him. He surrendered to the police. And seeing Watson’s commitment, in 2000, the Time magazine included him in the list of Top 20 Environmental Heroes of the 20th century. Although they weren’t arrested in Iceland, they were expelled from the country. Around 2000, Paul Watson, along with the several governments, campaigned against the hunters of endangered marine species in South American countries. During this, he was almost jailed in Costa Rica. He was accused to intentionally hitting a shark-hunting Costa Rican ship with his ship in an attempt to kill its captain. But Watson was lucky that there was a documentary team on the ship who recorded everything with their cameras. After watching the video, this case was dismissed. Meanwhile, Watson decided to focus on Japan’s whale hunters. Because they were killing the greatest number of whales in the world. In 2005, he targeted two Japanese ships. In 2006, he took two ships to the Antarctic Ocean, to the Ross Sea. At one point, this sea near Antarctica, housed large number of whales. So many whales that this place was named the Bay of Whales. But over the previous few years, so many whales were hunted there that whales became an endangered species. Japanese hunting ships used to go there every year to hunt whales. There were two types of ships. One carried the explosive harpoons these ships were the ones hunting. And the other was their Factory Ship. The hunted whales were taken to this ship, to be cut, packed, and then freeze. This factory ship was called Nisshin Maru. The word ‘RESEARCH’ was painted in large letters on this ship. But no research was being done onboard. Paul Watson’s colleagues threw butyric acid canisters and smoke bombs on the crew of Nisshin Maru. It sounds dangerous but butyric acid is actually a harmless acid. It doesn’t hurt anyone. It just gives off a terrible smell. The purpose behind the smoke bombs was to create smoke and make it difficult to hunt whales. Every year, from December to March, would be the whaling season where Japanese whale hunters would go to hunt near Antarctica. And every year, the Sea Shepherds team would reach there and they would have a face off. Japan started calling the Sea Shepherds eco-terrorists. Between 2008 and 2015, Paul Watson’s efforts to stop these Japanese whaling ships was shown as a series on the National Geographic called Whale Wars.
The first season of this show was the highest-rated show on the channel. This increased Watson’s popularity. You might recall that it used to air in India around this time. I found out about Paul Watson through this show around 2010. Paul Watson’s hard work made it difficult for the Japanese whaling ships to work. Consequently, they could hunt only half the whales they targeted. To be more effective at what they did, Sea Shepherd bought a $2.5 million Earth Race. This amazing speedboat, is the fastest ship in the world, actually. In 2008, it broke the world record by going around the world in just 60 days. A Hollywood businessman who handled the lighting for the Oscar ceremony, Addy Gill had donated money for it. That’s why this vessel was named the Addy Gill. In 2010, during one of the Sea Shepherd’s campaigns, they shut down Addy Gill’s engine and parked it right in front of the Japanese ship Shonna Maru 2. But this Japanese ship did not stop. It went ahead and hit Addy Gill. Addy Gill broke into two. It was a miracle that no one was killed in this incident. One of the six crew members suffered broken ribs. The crew was saved by the lifeboat from another ship. But when they tried to tow Addy Gill back to the shore, it could not be possible; it sank on the way. After this incident, Japan issued an arrest warrant against Paul Watson. An American court declared Sea Shepherd a pirate organization and ordered Watson to stay 500 meters away from the Japanese whaling ships. In Costa Rica, the collision case was reopened. And on their extradition request, in May 2012, Watson was arrested in Germany. A few days later, he was granted bail on the condition that he would not leave Germany. “It’s a relief to be out after a week. This is certainly unexpected. I didn’t expect something…” But when Paul Watson found out that Japan was also demanding his extradition, he jumped the bail and secretly fled Germany. The results for Paul Watson’s efforts are there for everyone to see. Western Southern Atlantic Whales. At one point in time, they were so endangered that there were fewer than 1,000 of these whales left in the world. But today, their population is more than 25,000. Similarly, the population of Western Gray Whales is also recovering today. But to achieve these, the extents to which Paul Watson had to go, it kept on creating one problem after another for him. At the behest of Japan, INTERPOL issued a Red Notice against Watson. “INTERPOL issued a Red Notice for eco-terrorist Paul Watson.” “Anyone who know his whereabouts contact authorities.” The Red Notice is issued only for serious crimes. Like murder, sexual offences or financial crimes. But this was perhaps the first time it was issued against an environmental activist. Paul Watson was backed into a corner, and became an international fugitive. Although he was a citizen of both Canada and America, after being arrested in Germany, Canada cancelled his passport and said that if he ever went to Canada, he would be deported to Japan. On the other hand, America declared him a pirate. He would have been arrested if he went to the US. In 2022, he applied for asylum in France and began living there. Now, he cannot travel internationally because he might be arrested. Japan is still after him. At one point, to avoid being arrested, he stayed at the sea for 15 months in independent waters that wasn’t controlled by any country. “From March of 2013 till October 2013 I was in the Southern Pacific Ocean, pretty much in exile on deserted islands and everything.” Because of these issues, Paul Watson resigned as the Head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in January 2013. After giving up the command, he said that during his 9-years long campaign, they saved around 6,000 whales. He said, even though people call him violent and an eco-terrorist, he has never let any person get hurt in his 35-years long career. In 2022, Paul Watson was removed from the Sea Shepherd organization because he said that he was not happy with the new direction of the organization. In his opinion, the organization wasn’t proactive anymore. He said that Sea Shepherd was ready to pay him $300,000 to keep him quiet but he refused to take it and resigned. But even after this, his passion to save the whales did not diminish. Once again, he formed a new organization. This time, it was named Captain Paul Watson Foundation. And once again, he set out to stop Japan’s whaling activities. On 21st July, 2024, when his ship harbored at Greenland’s capital Nuuk, many police officers boarded the ship and all of a sudden, Watson was handcuffed. He was arrested. Later, it was revealed that he was arrested in Greenland based on the 12-year-old INTERPOL’s Red Notice. Initially, this notice was public but later it was made confidential and it was no longer available on the website. So, Paul Watson’s legal team had assumed that that the police wasn’t chasing him any longer, they assumed that the disappearance of the Red Notice meant that it was withdrawn. But after being arrested in Greenland they found out that the notice was actually made confidential. Now the question was, Greenland, which is a part of Denmark, would it hand him over to Japan? Protests were held in many cities around the world demanding Paul Watson’s release. The Danish government was pressured by the people of Greenland and Denmark. And finally, on 17th December 2024, Denmark rejected the request to extradite Paul Watson to Japan. After being in jail for 5 months, he was finally released. “Denmark has freed anti-whaling activist, Paul Watson, declining Japan’s extradition request.” Paul Watson says that humans are like a virus and Earth’s ecosystem is like the human body. Right now humans are treating this body like a virus treats its host. The virus kills its host as humans are killing their host, the planet Earth. He says that whales are more intelligent than humans. And killing them is equivalent to murder. The life in the oceans is being destroyed so rapidly that even scientists are not able to measure how much ocean life has been destroyed already. There are hundreds of species of animals that are getting extinct before they are discovered.
According to the United Nations, 70% of the major fisheries in the world are fully or over-exploited. If this continues, by 2048, the fisheries industry will collapse. The biggest reason behind this would be industrial fishing. Watson also says that there is still hope for humans. But we will need to change our perspective. Humans are arrogant. We need to understand that no species has been able to survive against ecological laws. Neither will humans. As Paul Watson quotes, “It’s a war to save the planet from ourselves.” They are fighting a war, to protect our Earth. From ourselves. What do you think, friends? Is Paul Watson’s approach of protecting the animals, right? Let me know in the comments below. Whatever your opinion is, one thing is for sure. This story tells us that how can an individual bring about a positive change in the world. An individual can save the lives of thousands of whales, seals, and dolphins all by himself. Look inside yourself. Perhaps you too have the courage to achieve something like this. Today, Paul Watson is 74 years old. But he isn’t willing to stop. He says that in June 2025, he will begin his next attempt to save the whales.
