“If the ocean dies, we die with it.”
Captain Paul Watson is a Canadian/American marine conservation activist who was one of the founding members of Greenpeace and then founded the direct action group, The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He’s one of the world’s most determined, outspoken, and forceful defenders of the ocean, and has authored many books on the subject, including, most recently, Orcapedia: A Guide to the Victims of the International Orca Slave Trade, Death of a Whale: The Challenge of Anti-Whaling Activists and Indigenous Rights, and Urgent! Save Our Ocean to Survive Climate Change.
From Watson, we learn that orcas, in particular, are so popular at sea aquariums because they are extremely big, very beautiful, and are “formidable.” They are a draw for sea aquariums and, under the guise of “education,” aquariums are reluctant to give up their big attraction. Yet, Watson says, “There is really no educational excuse for marine aquariums. Everything we need to know about them is available through documentation—everything from video games to documentaries, David Attenborough, and so on. There are so many ways of teaching people about nature instead of this artificial environment. Studying an orca in a marine aquarium doesn’t tell you anything about orcas at all.”
“With 3D projections, the technology is so advanced now that sea aquariums are archaic,” he adds. “Any pretense that they are educational is no longer valid. We have to face the truth. The only reason [orcas] are there is for amusement. It is a side show. A circus. It is the only reason they have ever been there. It is a slave trade in sentient, socially complex, intelligent living beings. They are being bought and sold for profit. That is what it is all about. As a consequence, 162 orcas have died in captivity and 56 remain enslaved. It really needs to be shut down.” Plus, he notes, not a single orca has ever attacked a human in the wild. They may be ‘killer whales,’ but it is humans who kill orcas, not the other way around.
Humans would not be able to handle the torturous life orcas are forced to live in aquariums. Lolita, for example, at Florida’s Miami Seaquarium, lives in a pool only eighty feet long; this, for an animal who was born to swim a hundred miles in a day. Most pools at aquariums are not much bigger. Even worse than the size of the tank is the concrete construction which, for an animal who uses echolocation to navigate, makes just staying alive a nightmare, equivalent to a human living in a house of mirrors. The sounds of human voices, clapping, and everything else, bounces off the concrete walls in a constant reverberating cacophony of noise. A special tank called the “Tilikum Tank” was constructed to show humans what it is like to live in that environment. “People cannot take it for more than ten minutes,” Watson says. The tank lives in France. Pamela Anderson, Sea Shepherd Director, was the first to step in the tank in 2016. She lasted three minutes (see the Tilikum Tank).
There is lobbying for not only the illegalization of capturing and holding marine mammals, but releasing those already in captivity back into the wild. There are organizations (such as The Whale Sanctuary Project) working right now to free captive orcas. Some argue that release is impossible. Watson suggests that, “There are ways of doing it. Sea pens, for example, can climatize orcas, even ones born in captivity. They’re highly intelligent creatures. We have shown this with Keiko. He was successfully rehabilitated back to sea.” He says Keiko’s death was not due to his being released, but to illness from being confined in the first place.
“I think our audience really should be children. Children will listen. When people ask me what should we teach our children, I tell them don’t teach them. Listen to them. They already know the answers.”
When he’s asked how we can be a voice for the animals in captivity when people are so reluctant to listen, he replies, “Well, they will listen. But I think our audience really should be children. Children will listen. When people ask me what should we teach our children, I tell them don’t teach them. Listen to them. They already know the answers. They have intuition. They have imagination. Cultivate and encourage their intuition and imagination.”
There are so many threats to our oceans, including overfishing, plastic pollution, dead zones, illegal fishing and whaling, discarded fishing nets, trawling, and the list goes on and on. What is the biggest threat? “All of these are serious threats and all of them must be addressed,” Watson says. “In addition, there is noise pollution, chemical and radiation pollution, invasive salmon farms and fecal pollution. We need to overcome all of these threats if humanity is to survive.”
Additionally, the ocean plays a major role in climate change. “If you want to address climate change, the solution is simple,“ he surmises. “Leave the ocean alone! It will repair the damage that we have done to it.”
At the Cop 21 conference in Paris in 2015, Watson’s advice was to call for a 50-year moratorium on all industrialized commercial fishing to allow the ocean to repair itself. He still believes this is something that should happen.
“There is no sustainable fishing industry anywhere,” he explains. “The problem, of course, is not people out of Africa or India going out in their little canoes and catching the fish they need. But that is what the fishing industry wants you to think. Because they always come back with this argument, ‘There’s a billion people who depend on fish to survive.’ Yeah, we are not talking about them. We are talking about the factory farm problem, we are talking about giant super trawlers, giant drag nets, industrialized corporate fishing. That is why I said at the 2015 conference, ‘shut it all down for 50 years at least and see how it works.’ That is the only thing that is going to protect [the ocean].”
There are companies claiming that they sell only fish that has been “sustainably caught.” Yet there actually is no definition for sustainable fishing. How are these companies getting away with claiming something they cannot explain, and therefore, misleading consumers? “There is no such thing as sustainable commercial fishing,” Watson says. “The word ‘sustainable’ has been abused for decades and now simply means business as usual under another name. Unless you live in an impoverished third world coastal village and fish from a canoe or a small boat, you should not eat fish.”
He reminds us that plastic is also a significant threat to the ocean. “Plastic is a major design flaw. It should not exist. Recycling is a short-term remedy. What is needed is biodegradable alternatives.” Only 9% of plastic even gets recycled. Watson says that Sea Shepherd removes tons of plastic from the ocean every year, as do other organizations. They also work with Parley for the Ocean, researching real and viable alternatives to plastic.
Watson contributed an article that we featured in The Animals Voice Magazine about the problems of plastic in 2006. In it, he wrote, “We live in a plastic convenience culture; virtually every human being on this planet uses plastic materials directly and indirectly every single day. Our babies begin life on Earth by using some 210 million pounds of plastic diaper liners each year; we give them plastic milk bottles, plastic toys, and buy their food in plastic jars, paying with a plastic credit card. Even avoiding those babies by using contraceptives results in mass disposal of billions of latex condoms, diaphragms, and hard plastic birth control pill containers each year. Every year we eat and drink from some 34 billion newly manufactured bottles and containers. We patronize fast food restaurants and buy products that consume another 14 billion pounds of plastic. In total, our societies produce an estimated 60 billion tons of plastic material every year.”
His perspective about how he remains positive when he has presented the facts, year after year, and people refuse to heed the warnings, remains on point. “I don’t get depressed, pessimistic or frustrated,” he says, “because I focus on the present. What we do in the present defines what the future will be. We do what we can within the boundaries of the laws and practicality. We are just a small part of a diverse and interdependent movement, but I firmly believe that the answer to an impossible problem is to harness passion to courage and imagination to find an impossible solution. You have no power of the future. You have total power over the present.”
In the past fifteen years, we have gone from 300 to 500 dead zones in our oceans—yet another major threat to ocean habitats and fueled, in part, by global animal agriculture. “The animal agriculture industry is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions,” Watson argues, “the single largest contributor to groundwater pollution, the single largest contributor to dead zones in the sea, and the single largest threat to human health. I should add, however, that agriculture in general, including the mass production of crops, is a major contributor to dead zones due to the use of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, germicides, and chemical fertilizers.”
In describing his formidable organization, Watson says, “Sea Shepherd is not an organization. It is a global movement and is registered in numerous countries as independent entities that work cooperatively under the umbrella of Sea Shepherd Global based in Amsterdam. Currently, we operate the following ships:
(1) Sam Simon and (2) Bob Barker, both presently patrolling the waters of West Africa. (3) The Sea Eagle and (4) The Conrad, both presently doing patrols in the Mediterranean Sea. (5) The Emmanuel Bronner, patrolling in the Baltic. (6) The Ocean Warrior, presently operating out of Peru and doing investigations into the operations of the Chinese fishing fleet in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. (7) The White Holly, working with Panama to protect Coiba Island National Park’s marine reserve and with Colombia to protect Malpelo Island National Park. (8) The John Paul DeJoria, patrolling in the Caribbean. (9) The Sharpie and (10) The Farley Mowat, both working with Operation Milagro to prevent the extinction of the Vaquita porpoise. (11) The Martin Sheen, doing research on whales in the Pacific waters of Mexico, and (12) The Jairo Mora Sandoval, working with the NGO Biosphera to patrol the waters of Cabo Verde.
We also have turtle protection programs in Papua, New Guinea, and on Mayotte Island in the Indian Ocean. Remote beach cleanups at Cocos Island (Costa Rica), Cocos Keeling Island (Australia), and the remote beaches of Northern Australia. In addition, we organize dozens of beach clean-ups worldwide.
“We have intercepted and seized some 65 poaching ships in West African waters over the last two years and we have working enforcement partnerships with the nations of Tanzania, Namibia, Gabon, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Sao Tome, Cabo Verde, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia. Additionally, we have enforcement partnerships with Peru, Colombia, Panama, Mexico, and The Galapagos Islands (Ecuador).
“Our many years of campaigning to stop illegal whaling in the Southern Ocean resulted in the Japanese ending their Southern Ocean whale campaigns. National campaigns are selected by the individual member nations. Global campaigns are selected by the Sea Shepherd Global Board of Directors. We intervene where we can make a difference and when invited in by national governments.”
The Galapagos, considered one of the treasures of the earth, are a haven for diverse and endangered species, but is this very important ecosystem sufficiently protected? “There are absolutely no marine reserves or sanctuaries anywhere in the world that are sufficiently protected,“ he says. “Marine sanctuaries are where the poachers go to easily find fish.” For example, 300,000 sharks a year are taken out of the Galapagos Marine Reserve every year. The sea animal most in danger is “the vaquita porpoise. They have only one habitat and there may be fewer than 10 vaquitas alive now.”
“We will only be able to see significant change when we abandon the anthropocentric perspective, this attitude that we are all important and dominant over all other living things.”
When asked what the single most important thing a person, on an individual level, can do to save the oceans, Watson simply says, “Reduce or eliminate single use plastic and don’t eat fish.”
“Every single plant and animal on this planet has value,” he added. “We are not a keystone species.” Phytoplankton provide 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere and there has been a 30% reduction since 1950. And without phytoplankton, everything else dies. Watson reminds us that humans have to remember we are not the most important species. Phytoplankton, worms, and bees are more important because they can live without us—but without them, humans die.
“I think we will only be able to see significant change when we abandon the anthropocentric perspective,” Watson concluded, “this attitude that we are all important and dominant over all other living things. We need to embrace biocentric thought, to understand that we are a part of everything and, if we do not learn to live in harmony with all other species, we will not survive. If the ocean dies, we die with it.”
Read more about Captain Paul Watson at Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
