Beyond the UN Ocean Conference: A Captain's Call to Action - Captain Paul Watson, from Paris - Resilient Earth Radio & Podcast

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Leigh Anne Lindsey (00:05):
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(00:26):
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(01:50):
In this episode, we catch upwith Captain Paul Watson, who is
talking to us from hishouseboat across from the Louvre
in Paris, france, about histime at the recent UN Ocean
Conference in Nice, france,where he met with several island
dignitaries and FrenchPresident Emmanuel Macron, and
we ask him about a few things,such as the whaling efforts that

(02:13):
have halted in Iceland, histhoughts on deep sea mining, an
update about the High SeasTreaty that occurred during the
Ocean Conference and aboutoverfishing of krill around the
planet.
Captain Paul is a renownedmarine wildlife conservation and

(02:33):
environmental activist who'sbest known for co-founding
Greenpeace and founding the SeaShepherd Conservation Society.
In 2022, he stepped down fromSea Shepherd to co-found the
Captain Paul Watson Foundation,with ongoing support by Sea
Shepherd France and Brazil, tocontinue his lifelong dedication

(02:56):
to protecting marine life andtheir habitats.
He's authored several books,the most recent a children's
book called we Are the Ocean.
He has two young children wholive with him in Paris, along
with their mother and his wife,jana Rusinovich, whom he married
on Valentine's Day in 2015.

(03:17):
The last time we spoke wasJanuary of this year, just after
he'd been released from aGreenland prison near the end of
December 2024.
You can hear all about thatexperience from that January
episode.
In this one, we're talkingabout more recent events and
what's on deck next for thisintrepid ocean warrior.

(03:42):
Thanks for listening toResilient Earth Radio and
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Leigh Anne Lindsey.
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Welcome back , captain Paul.
It's really wonderful to seeyou again.
Well, thank you, and also Scottand Tree Mercer are here.
Hello, paul, good morning.
We were very impressed with theattendance.
That happened at the UnitedNations Ocean Conference.
You gave a talk, you hadseveral meetings with

(04:54):
dignitaries, including PresidentMacron, and we want to hear
about that.
We want to hear about what'shappening in Iceland with the
pause on whaling, and we'd liketo hear, too, about the
overfishing of krill and alsowhat can be done about deep sea

(05:15):
mining.
Deep sea mining is a topic thatwe actually have covered
recently, so why don't we getunderway with how it was to be
at the conference in Nice,france, and what transpired?

Captain Paul Watson (05:30):
in Rio de Janeiro in 92 and the COP 31 in
Paris.
And generally I'm not veryenthusiastic about these UN
conferences because they neverreally seem to accomplish much.

(05:50):
Every promise they make nevercomes true and it's usually just
a photo opportunity for worldleaders to pretend that they're
doing something.
So I have to this one here.
I didn't go into it with a lotof expectations, but I was
encouraged by a couple of things.
One is that the mayor of Nice,who's a very big supporter of

(06:11):
ours, and he came up with theidea of inviting mayors from
around the coastal cities of theworld, and then we had this big
dinner with all these mayors,because he believes that's where
real, effective action takesplace is on the local level, on
the municipal level, more thanon state and federal levels.
And so that was very successful.
And at that dinner I wasactually sat down between they

(06:34):
put the mayor of Reykjavik rightbeside me and it was really
funny because at first they weretrying to get me to sit at
another table because theydidn't want to sit me beside her
, but then she said no, it'sfine, and so she sat there.
She's very, very enthusiastic,very supportive and she's very
much against whaling, so thatwas good.
And then the next day she did atour of our ship, which is in

(06:56):
the harbor.
Less than 50% of the people inIceland support whaling.
So in the government, both inReykjavik and the government
nationally in Iceland as opposedto whaling.
So in the government, both inReykjavik and the government
nationally in Iceland, asopposed to whaling.
So you know we've come a longways over the years, so most
people in Iceland are nowanti-whaling.
So she certainly was areflection of that.
I had lunch with the presidentof French Polynesia, who had

(07:22):
been very supportive when I wasin Greenland, and we talked
about different conservationissues that have to be addressed
in the South Pacific.
I had an hour-long meeting withthe environment minister for
Brazil and a half-hour meetingwith the first lady of Brazil.
I guess President Lula was alittle busy, but then I did the

(07:44):
TV show with President Macron.

Here's a quick clip from that French TV
show during the United NationsOcean Conference, where he sits
down with President Macron andother dignitaries, along with a
couple of news channel crew, andwe see him walking across the
stage and being introduced tothe president.
They shake hands, they sit downand then the question is asked

(08:11):
if Captain Paul has met Macronbefore.
To which he replies yes, yes,we have.

Vous connaissez Emmanuel Macron, paul
Watson, oui, oui, matt, yes,oui on s'est rencontrés.

oui, and then we see Macron engaging,
very friendly with Captain Pauland talking into the mic and to
the audience.
This back-and-forth engagedconversation went on for about
12 minutes and now we get backto the conversation with Captain
Paul.

That reached about 4 million people.
So we did about 15 minutes onTV during that where we talked
about all these issues.

Captain Paul also met with Panama's
Environment Minister, JuanCarlos Navarro, and they focused
on issues like deep-sea mining,overfishing and the High Seas
Treaty.

So overall it was.
You know, this is the firstmeeting where I actually got to
meet some of these people,talked to them, but the most
important thing out of theconference was the fact that
when the conference began, therewas only 28 countries that had
ratified the High Seas Treatyand they needed 60 for
ratification, and by the end ofthe conference they had secured
64 countries that had ratifiedit.

(09:21):
Of course, the United Statesdidn't ratify it, but you it,
but major countries like Franceand Chile and Brazil and others
did.
Japan no, australia no.
But that's good because theHigh Seas Treaty helps us.

(09:42):
We already have the UnitedNations World Charter per Nature
to help us when we intervene,and this also gives us further
justification and legitimacy tointervene.
So that was probably the bestthing that came out of the
conference.

And what exactly will this high seas
treaty actually accomplish?
Do you feel Well?

it's supposed to mean that there's
going to be enforcement of theinternational laws and
regulations.
I don't know if that's going tobe enforcement of the
international laws andregulations.
I don't know if that's going tohappen.
But what it does mean is thatif we go in and intervene, then
we can use that as a defense forour intervention, say in a
court of law.
Now, back in 1993, when I chasedSpanish drag trawlers off the

(10:20):
Grand Banks of Newfoundland andI was put on trial in Canada for
a week and my defense was theUN World Charter for Nature, and
at the trial Canada brought inthey spent $3 million trying to
convict me on this thing.
There's three counts ofmischief.
Mischief is what they chargeyou when they can't figure out
anything else real to charge you.
I didn't damage any property, Ididn't hurt anybody.

(10:43):
I didn't steal anything.
It was just you could have hurtsomebody, you could have
damaged property.
That's what mischief is allabout.
But anyway, I cited the UNCharter for Nature and they
brought in a law professor fromthe University of Toronto to say
, well, the UN Charter forNature has no application under
Canadian law.
And the judge said, well, didCanada sign this or not?

(11:03):
And she said, yeah, but Canadasigns a lot of things.
And so he said, well, to thejury, well, you're going to have
to take that under advisement.
And so that was my defense andI was acquitted on all of those
charges.
So the High Seas Treaty willgive us an even more additional
defense, for if we go in and wedisrupt something, we get
arrested, we go to court, eitherwhether a civil or a criminal

(11:25):
thing.
We can use that as a defensefor intervention.
More and more judges arebeginning to realize and
understand and to make decisionsthat people have a right to
intervene as a form ofself-defense, really on
environmental issues, and that'sgoing to become more and more
of a case.

And what was that meeting with the
Polynesian president?
What were the types of thingsyou discussed?

Well, the president of French Polynesia is
a Tahitian and his party is onethat's seeking independence
from France, so he's like youknow, so he's very popular for
that reason.
Well, we talked because FrenchPolynesia has created all these
marine protected areas and sohe's interested in seeing that's

(12:12):
enforced.
We're very concerned aboutillegal fishing by foreign
fishing operations off theMarquesas.
In fact, last year I wasinvited by people in the
Marquesas to do something aboutit, so he was very supportive of
that, of us getting involved.
So basically, we'll have thesupport of the government in

(12:33):
Tahiti for anything that we doin the future.

What do you think will really come from this
conference and describe.
Let's go ahead.

Honestly not much.
But you pick what you can outof that you can use it.
But they spent 38 million eurosa whole hostess conference
which they talk a lot.
I think Greta Thunberg thumbedup the climate change
conferences with this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That's really all.
But we are looking at going atthe COP30 conference, which the

(13:12):
only reason I'm interested indoing that is that it's going to
be held in Belém in Brazil, andI've been invited by Chief
Raoni of the Kayapu people andalso by President Lula da Silva.
So you know that's worthwhilegoing there.
We're going to bring our shipthere on our way to doing the
krill campaign, so we'll go toBalem and then go from there

(13:33):
down to do the krill campaign.
We're also looking at thepossibility of going up the
Amazon for a thousand miles toManaus and bringing many of the
native chiefs back down theriver.
But that's a little up in theair because the pilotage fees to
do that is about $300,000.
So that might be a little toomuch, but the government's

(13:57):
arranged for us to have a freebirth in Belém, so it's
worthwhile doing that.
And, on the way, we're lookingat intervening against illegal
fishing or poaching off of inthe waters of French Guiana, and
so that's just something to doon the way, and then when we
leave, we want to show up andoppose the seismic testing off

(14:19):
the coasts of Uruguay, and thenfrom there we'll go down to the
Southern Ocean.

And what year is that?

At the end of this year.

Oh, end of this year.

Good yeah, the COP30 conference is in
November.

Okay, we just had a recording with
Michael Stalker of the OceanConservation Research, who
studies sounds inhuman-generated sounds in the
ocean and seismic testing.
That is such a huge impact onmarine life.

(14:52):
I'm glad that you guys will bedoing going now.
Where was that again thatyou're going to be doing that
part?

Off the coast of Uruguay, south of
Brazil.

Yeah, now who is doing that testing?

Oil companies.

You know, we've been really following this
offshore drilling for oilcompanies here in the United
States.
Our the reasons behind that,the companies that are getting
heavily funded now, like themetals company out of Vancouver

(15:32):
and one out of San Jose,impossible Metals, among many
others, who are just gearing upto go plunder the
Clarion-Clipperton zone, and Iknow that you've said some
things about that, so I want totouch on that.

But I want to get back to the krill part as
well we do want to interveneagainst deep sea mining and
looking at this and specificallythe metal company and
specifically in the clippertonarea, but they're not going to
be doing anything until nextyear.
So, uh, we'll be ready to uhintervene next year when they
show up, excellent.
You know, this is interestingwith deep-sea mining because,

(16:10):
strangely enough, I've beeninvolved in it since 1977.
I was there in Honolulu whenthe Stedco 245 arrived with the
first cargo of manganese nodulesand INCO had brought them up
for the deep, and so I was thereto watch these manganese
nodules and Inco had broughtthem up for the deep.
And so I was there to watchthese manganese nodules and I
interviewed the president of themining company at the time and

(16:32):
actually I was quite encouragedat the time because they said
they had no intention ofactually going after them and he
predicted nobody's going totouch these things for at least
50 years.
Well, that was 50 years ago.
But the reason that he saidthat was because he said they
didn't want the competition fortheir mining operations on land.
And the other thing that was inopposition to it, strangely

(16:55):
enough, is the Pentagon, becausethey're concerned that the
sediment, you know, thepollution from deep sea mining
will have an adverse effect onsonar for the submarine
operations and that, so they'revery much opposed to it.
But I don't think people reallyunderstand just how damaging
this is, because you know you'regoing down one, two miles to

(17:18):
the seabed floor to pull theselittle potato-sized rocks.
Now how those potato-sizedrocks were formed is from over
200 million years of particulatematter falling down into the
bottom and then it all sort ofcrystallizes into these things,
and so what it's doing is it'sleaching.
Gold, manganese, nickel, cobaltall get in there.

(17:41):
So what they want to do is pullthese up and then melt them
down and get those traces ofmetal.
But we need a lot to really geta substantial return on that.
But okay, you go down there andyou're starting to mess up with
an incomplete ecosystem, whichis there's a lot of various
species that are involved inthat ecosystem.
So you're going to screw thatup on the bottom floor.

(18:02):
You're going to put lights intoan environment where none of
these living things even knowanything about lights Incredible
noise where they're not going.
You know it's going to be verydisruptive on the benthic level,
but once you get those nodulesup to the surface and you start
loading them on.
That means washing all thesediment off, all that mud, and

(18:23):
that goes back into the ocean.
All the sediment off, all thatmud and that goes back into the
ocean.
Now, oceanographers haveestimated it could take anywhere
from three to six years forthat mud to reach the bottom
again, because it would slowlyand it would spread out in
clouds over hundreds of squaremiles.
Now, as it's doing that, it'sgoing to be leaching oxygen out
of the ocean water and, ofcourse, suffocating fish

(18:44):
populations as a result.
And when it does reach thebottom, it's going to be a
blanket of silt that's justgoing to cover the benthic life
that's down there.
So it's an extremely, extremelydestructive industry, but most
people aren't really aware ofhow destructive it is.
And, of course, trump made hisannouncement that oh yeah, I'll
give you the green light on deepsea mining.

(19:05):
But you know he has no idea.
It doesn't care, all he'sconcerned.
Hey, might kill a bunch ofsharks.
That's good news, isn't it?
That's the way he thinks.

Anything to be extractive and make money,
and that's a 3D column of life.
That's another aspect of itthat richard charter has really
pointed out and a lot of thetimes we've talked with him and,
and it's true, it impacts theentire column of life the
sediment spreads across theentire ocean wow, and the lights

(19:39):
, and the noise that that too isso, so disruptive of that life
down there.
I think Dr Sylvia Earle hastalked about that too.

That was the other thing at the Ocean
Conference.
I spent a bit of time withSylvia Earle at a couple of the
conferences, especially on deepsea mining.
We did a conference together onthat.

That's great .
She's in that documentary thatthe Ocean Foundation did on
Defend the Deep.
They did that last year inadvance, so it's like very
apropos now.
And so let's shift gear just asecond and go to krills,

(20:23):
overfishing of krill and what'sbehind that, and also I want to
include how the seabeds arebeing trawled and scraped.
So I'd like to get yourthoughts on both of those things
.

Well, the one great thing about David
Attenborough's film is that itreally showed that the trawlers
and how destructive they were onthe bottom.
I actually went to see thatfilm at UNESCO's office here in
Paris and I had an opportunityto question the director because
I was a little concerned aboutthat film.
Because David, for all the goodhe's done, he actually said

(21:01):
well, a great success story is amoratorium on whaling in 1986,
and the whales are, and I had topoint out you know 50,000
whales had died since thatso-called moratorium that was
put in there and whaling stillcontinues.
And the other, but they didn'treally mention seabed mining in
the film either, and they didn't.

(21:22):
You know there's a lot ofthings that weren't there.
But you know, to be fair,there's only so much you can put
in a film, I guess.

I noticed that too about what he said.
I watched it just the othernight and saw the same thing.
But David Attenborough, I haveto say when I studied him in
college he's the one who firstgot me down this path to really
look at the environment andunderstand it better.

Well, he's a great educator.
I mean, in the footsteps ofYakusto, they were both great
educators and you know thatcertainly has a very important
role in this movement.
So, yeah, it was great.
It was good film in thatrespect.
I just had a problem with thewhaling issue because he was
tending to give this idea thatwell, the whales are saved, we
don't have to do anything.

Well, at least in Iceland right now there
is a pause, which is good tohear.
I hope it lasts.

Well, I think it's more than just a
pause, because, first of all,the day we showed up in 2023 was
the day they called themoratorium there.
Then last year, when we were onour way to Iceland, they
canceled it again.
And this year, when we were inDublin ready to go, they
canceled again.
So that's three years in a row.
I think that it's going to end.
And the other operation there'sa Mickey whale operation.

(22:40):
He just gave it up and he'sselling his boat right now, so
that boat's for sale for 60,000euros right now.
With the harpoon I'd buy thewhaling boat so I could go hunt
whalers with the harpoon.
But Lofts is the one man who'sresponsible for this and he's 81

(23:00):
years old and I don't know whyhe does this.
He's the wealthiest man inIceland, but he's very
influential.
So what you have is thegovernment of the Iceland and
the majority of people areopposed to it, but he continues
to get his permits and continuesto push it because he's got a
lot of influence.
But I think that I think it maybe over.

(23:24):
We'll watch it very closely,but I think that that's pretty
much the end for Icelandicwhaling.
It could be wrong, but I justdon't see the enthusiasm on the
part of the Icelandic people tocarry on with it.
So you know, norway is nowactually the biggest whaling
nation.
They kill more whales thanJapan.
But the Japanese are targeting,you know, fin whales and sai

(23:45):
whales and everything, and theNorwegians are going after minke
whales, which are a little morecommon.
But still the problem withinterfering with Norwegian
whaling is that it's like dozensof little small boats up and
down the coast where you knowit's not like going after a
whaling fleet.
You know, we went after them in92 and 94.
We sunk six of them and thereason we sank them was, you
know, we weren't going to bethat really effective against it

(24:08):
.
But as a result of the sinkingthem they had to get more
insurance and their insurancepremiums went up considerably,
and still are, because we'realways right there lurking
behind the scenes saying, hey,we might go after your boats and
they might not take itseriously, but the insurance
companies do.

I finally got to watch Whale Wars the
other few months ago, rightafter our conversation with you
in January.

You hadn't seen it before.

No, I hadn't , and so it was a revelation for
me and it was great to see theaction and the activity and the
time and effort that it took.
And the activity and the timeand effort that it took.
That's Captain Paul Watson,former star of Whale Wars, also

(24:58):
co-founder of Greenpeace, theSea Shepherd Conservation
Society and now the Captain PaulWatson Foundation, who's been
talking to us from his boat nearthe Louvre in Paris about his
time and talks at UNOC, theUnited Nations Ocean Conference
in Nice, france, this past June,from French President Macron to
environmental ministers fromplaces like Brazil and Panama,

(25:23):
leaders from islands like FrenchPolynesia, and he's been
reflecting on his life as anenvironmentalist for the past 50
years.
I'm Leanne Lindsay of PlanetCentric Media and Seastorm
Studios, along with my co-hostsand co-producers, scott and Tree
Mercer of the Mendenoma Whaleand Seal Study here on the

(25:47):
Mendocino and Sonoma coasts ofNorthern California.
Now back to our conversationwith Captain Paul Watson.
So Norway is doing more whalingthan Japan is, which is
actually significant, yeahthey're killing whales, but

(26:10):
Japan's going after moreendangered whales.
There's the distinction.

That's what made Iceland so egregious was.
Iceland's only target was spinwhales, which were endangered.
What vessel are you on now?
This is a Finnish which is likea houseboat.
We're on the.
Seine.
I missed the first few minutesof you, so I missed that.
You can't miss the portholesbehind you.
We're right across from theLouvre, actually on the river
Nice.

Very nice .

Which, by the way, for the first time in
100 years, there is now swimmingin the Seine.

Really, years are now swimming in the in
the same, really wow, it's onegood thing that came out of the
olympics.
There you go, there you go.
Okay, so I'm clueless why.

Why was there no swimming in the same?

well, because it's dirty, that's what
I thought.
Okay, that's my guess theycleaned it up so they could do
this, you know, the swimming,the marathon and everything they
had to do, that it was in theriver and so the mayor herself,
she opened it up by goingswimming, last May, I think.

All right.
Well, let's go back to thetopic that we were starting to
go down, and that was a talkabout krill.

These huge, huge factory ships go down to
the Southern Ocean.
They're from Norway, they'refrom Japan, they're from Russia,
and why they go after krill isbecause, first of all, they can
pull in an awful lot of it andthey're huge cloud swarms of
krill.
They're little shrimp-likecreatures but they're the basic
food for the whales and thepenguins in the Southern Ocean,

(27:47):
and they can go out and exploitliterally millions of tons of
this, bring it on board thefactory ships and then it's
converted into two things.
First it's a cheap proteinpaste to go to factory farms to
feed chickens and to feed pigsand also to feed salmon on
salmon farms.

(28:07):
So those are the three thingsthat they're targeting, but also
to make a krill oil vitaminsupplement for health food
stores.

The omega-3, right.

Yeah, they're selling them on that,
but you know, I think we'redestroying the ocean so somebody
can get their omega-3.
But it's a real problem for thepopulations of penguins, which
penguin populations are beingdiminished, and it's through
starvation, and so it has to bedealt with.
Now the organization SeaShepherd that kicked me out,

(28:41):
that is Sea Shepherd Global.
They've gone down there threeyears in a row and it's made me
increasingly frustrated andactually quite embarrassed,
because for the three years, allthey've done is gone down and
take pictures, and whichsomething Greenpeace did in 2018
, something National Geographicalso did in 2018.
And I'm going, what are youdoing?
Just taking pictures, you know,and they actually had the

(29:03):
audacity to call it AntarcticDefense, and they actually had
the audacity to call itAntarctic Defense.
So we have to go down there andredeem the name by doing an
interventionist campaign.
We have to intervene directlywith their operations, we have
to shut them down, and you don'tdo that by taking pictures.

So when will you be doing that?

At the end of the year, right after Brazil,
right after, okay, becauseDecember, january, february are
the best times to engage thesevessels down there.

Is there no organization that can also
intervene and prevent this orstop it?

We're looking to work with the Bob
Brown Foundation in Australia,but probably they're about the
only one and they're a directaction organization getting
arrested all the time down therein Tasmania, you know.
But I also I'm working togetting to getting executive
directors to do another TVseries to be called Creel Wars,
a follow up on Whale Wars.
So I need eight executivedirectors.

(30:08):
Put a quarter million dollarseach in there.
I've got two so far, so I juststarted.
So that's, it's looking goodand that.
So you know it's okay to godown there and intervene and
interfere and everything likethat.
But it's really important tohave that operation dramatized
and put on television somillions of people can see
what's going on down there.

It has the greatest impact Awareness
raising, you know.

Well, there's a difference between
what we do and what have donewith Whale Wars is that we don't
go down and just documentnature.
We go down there and documentour interventions to protect
nature.
We go down there and documentour interventions to protect
nature.
And when I did whale wars, it'sinteresting that there's only
two ways to really interferethere.
One is to block their abilityto load whales by blocking the

(30:55):
slipway, which we did.
The other one is to interveneagainst their refueling
operations and that was alsovery effective.
But if you saw the show, wehave water cannon fights, we
have stink bombs.
I just put all that in fortelevision.
It doesn't really do anythingbut it's entertaining, it's
dramatic and it got people'sattention.
But the effective interventionswere the blocking of the

(31:20):
fueling and the loading of thewhales Interesting and the
loading of the whalesInteresting.
So over that period of time wemanaged to save 6,500 plus
whales, and we know that numberbecause that's how much they did
not get in their quotas duringthose periods.
So the last year I was downthere on the 2012-2013 campaign,

(31:41):
they only took 10% of theirquota.
So we're getting better everyyear on that, and that's one of
the reasons that the Japanesecame after me and issued a red
notice.
I didn't actually do anything.
The charge is conspiracy totrespass I mean, what does that
even mean?
And also obstructing business.

(32:02):
But it's supposed to be aresearch whaling, but it's
obstructing business, and Iwasn't even there when the
incident took place that they'recharging me with.
And the thing is is it's allbased on the fact that Pete
Bethunes he had a boat calledthe it wasn't my boat, he was
working with us, but he wasn'tunder my authority but his boat
got cut in half and destroyed bya Japanese harpoon vessel, with

(32:22):
no legal consequences to theJapanese at all.
So he boarded the vessel toconfront the captain who had
destroyed his boat, and theykidnapped him, took him to Japan
and charged him withtrespassing and obstructing
business, and he was in prisonfor three or four months and
then they made a deal with himand the deal was if you say that
Paul Watson ordered you to dothis, then we'll give you a

(32:44):
suspended sentence, which iswhat he did, and he got a
suspended sentence when he wasreleased.
He then signed an affidavitsaying he lied in order to get
that suspended sentence.
And John Kerry, the Secretaryof the State, got that and he
said oh yeah, this is ridiculous.
You can come back home, which Idid, although I have to say

(33:06):
that the year that I spent inexile in the South Pacific was
kind of nice.
I didn't mind being on thesealways deserted islands by
myself, lots of wildlife andeverything, but anyway.
So the charge was obstructingbusiness.
Now John Kerry said yeah, well,there's no grounds for it.
But the Japanese said we don'tcare, you're going to be charged

(33:28):
and that's it.
But there's no evidence,because the only evidence was
this guy's statement.
But that's all.
They have to go on.
So they didn't even attempt toarrest me during the time that I
was in the United States.
They never attempted to arrestme when I was in France or
Ireland, but when I went thistime, because I stopped in

(33:52):
Greenland, which is a Danishterritory, and they're killing
pilot whales and dolphins in theFaroe Islands.
Uh, the Japanese went to theDanes and got them to um to put
in the uh, you know, toenforcement.
Now here's the interestingthing when I got into Greenland,
12, very heavily armed Danishpolicemen boarded the ship to
arrest me.
And I'm going this is a littleoverkill.
And then I found out whybecause the Japanese described

(34:14):
me in the Interpol Red Notice asan extremely dangerous armed
eco-terrorist.
And so that's how.
I remember that.

Yeah.

And so, anyway, the good news on this is
, in April, the Interpolsuspended that red notice
pending an investigation intothe political implications of it
, and on June 24th they weresupposed to make a determination
whether that would be permanentor not, but I haven't heard yet
.
But my lawyer said that'snormal.
These guys never do anything,you know quickly, but I still

(34:46):
right now, until that is, it's asuspended sort of situation.
But here's the otherinteresting thing is that a week
ago, one of the people inInterpol who was actually
involved with my case wasarrested in the UAE for bribery.
So he was taking bribes eitherto not to remove the red notice

(35:07):
or to put people on the rednotice, so that all those cases
had to be reviewed.
And I don't really know where Ifit in on that, but in 2017,
there was a EuropeanParliamentary Committee that
cited my case as an example ofpolitical corruption and abuse
in Interpol.
Now the other thing thathappened is a couple of weeks
ago was the arrest of a judge inCosta Rica, the judge who made

(35:32):
the decision to not dismiss theCosta Rican red notice against
me, and he was arrested.
He's being extradited to theUnited States on drug
trafficking charges.
This is like a federal judge onthe Costa Rican charges.
So I mean you can see this kindof corruption that's involved
in Japan's manipulations behindit the Costa Rican charges.
So I mean you can see this kindof corruption that's involved
in Japan's manipulations behindit.
The Costa Rican red notice wasdropped in 2017 with the change

(35:53):
of government and I actually gota call from the environment
minister apologizing for that.
But if you can drop it from thered notice on the change of
government, that shows more thananything that it was
politically motivated.
It wasn't judicial.

I was going to ask you how if this could be
used again.
So it sounds like it may have apermanent dismissal.

Is that what you were saying?
Yeah, we can get it permanentlydismissed, but there's nothing
to stop Japan from going toanother country and saying we
want a unilateral request forextradition.
That's why I don't dare comeback to the US as long as
Trump's president because he'svery transactional and he had a
meeting with the Japanese primeminister.
I don't know what theydiscussed and people said, well,
surely they're not going to betalking about you.

(36:38):
But in January the Japaneseforeign minister called the
Danish ambassador into hisoffice in Tokyo to berate him
and said that they wereextremely disturbed that Denmark
had betrayed Japan, and so ifthey're going to talk about me
on the highest levels of theJapanese government, I can only
assume there's a possibilitythat it was discussed with the

(36:59):
US government.

Paul, you're a little too popular.

Well, the amazing thing about it is that
the time that I was in prisonfor five months, backlash was
backfired on both Japan andDenmark, because we turned it
into a campaign.
I always think you take everysituation as an opportunity, and
we turned this into a campaignto further expose Japan's
illegal whaling operations, plusto expose the killing of pilot

(37:26):
whales and dolphins in the FaroeIslands, and neither Japan nor
Denmark really were prepared forthe reaction on that, because
interventions on my behalf fromthe president and prime minister
of France, the president ofFrench Polynesia, the president
of Brazil, the pope, actuallyintervened.
What I found out from the pope,actually his office, is that

(37:47):
Japan put an awful lot ofpressure on the Vatican.
We're making threats.
They threatened Denmark withthe cancellation of a $100
million windmill project.
They threatened trade relationswith France.
All these threats were comingthrough.
Plus, we got over a millionsignatures, plus, you know,
interventions by you know SylviaEarle and Jane Goodall and so

(38:11):
many others.
They weren't prepared for that.
So what happened?
On December 17th, the GreenRoom Court made the decision to
extradite me.
That was their decision, andthe next day, the Attorney
General for Denmark made thepolitical decision to release me
.
Needless to say, Japan was nothappy.

So they still have a bee in their bonnet
, so to speak.

Yeah, the Japanese hold grudges.
I hate to generalize, but justlooking at you know, I've
studied Japanese history andthey hold grudges.
You know, on a governmentallevel I'm not talking about the
people, I'm talking about thegovernment tends to hold grudges
.
You know, on a governmentallevel.
I'm not talking about thepeople, I'm talking about the
government tends to hold grudgesand they and what I did, my
real crime was they wantretribution for a television
show that embarrassed them andthey're still actively whaling

(39:01):
and they have that enormouswhale processing ship that just
come out, I believe.

What last year?
Is that still being used?

They built that for the Southern Ocean.
They're saying that it's notfor the Southern Ocean, it's for
coastal whaling.
You don't build a ship likethat for coastal whaling.
That's a long-range vessel thatcan carry an extremely amount
of cargo and it's also theycovered the top so nobody can
actually fly drones and seewhat's going on.
And they built it with watercannons and other defensive
things.
This thing was set up to defenditself from us, which is a

(39:34):
little flattering that they didthat.
But they spent $60 million tobuild this ship and there's no
money in whaling.
It hasn't made any money fordecades.
But I'll tell you the reason whyit goes on.
It's got nothing to do withwhale meat at all.
Less than 1% of the Japanesepublic eats whale meat.
It goes on because the companythat goes whaling is owned by

(39:55):
the government of Japan and itsboard of directors are 12
ex-politicians who getsix-figure salaries for sitting
on that board, and this is anindustry the government
subsidizes to about $30, $35million a year.
Now the other reason is thatthe union that provides the crew

(40:15):
for the ship is aYakuza-controlled union or
Japanese mafia-controlled union.
They have a lot of influencewith the government, so it
carries on because of corruption, and you know that's the only
reason.
That is.
It has no economic benefit atall.
It's the same with the Canadianseal hunt.
You know Canada's officialquota is 400,000 seals, but they

(40:38):
kill 40,000.
They only take 10%.
The reason for that there's nomarket.
That was a really successfulcampaign on ours.
We fought it from 75 on until2008, when Europe banned seal
pelts, china banned seal pelts,and but so what they do is they
kill 40,000 seals and store thepelts in warehouses.
You won't believe the name ofthe place in Newfoundland it's

(40:58):
called Dildo Newfoundland, butthat's where they store them and
subsidize it to about 20million a year.
And the only reason that theydo that is for political reasons
to keep the Newfoundlandershappy.
Because the Newfoundlanders havethis bizarre idea that seals
are eating all their fish and ifwe don't kill the seals we're
going to run out of fish.
Now I have to point out to themyou know, 500 years ago there

(41:28):
were about 45 million seals inthe North Atlantic Ocean and now
there's less than 7 million.
About 45 million seals in theNorth Atlantic Ocean and now
there's less than 7 million.
So it wasn't the seals thatkilled off the fish, it was the
commercial fisheries.
And also, if you want the fishto come back, you need seals,
you need whales, because there'sa relationship between prey and
predator there, because wethink that the seals eat the cod
, but they don't.
They eat the halibut, theulican and the herring.

(41:48):
They eat the fish, they eat thesmall young cod and that keeps
everything you know aftermillennium.
Nature keeps all this stuff inbalance.
We come like pretending to knowwhat we're doing when we never
do, and that's what sets thewhole upsets, the whole apple
cart.

That is so accurate about.
You know, if we leave nature toitself, it knows how to keep
balance of all these populations, and it is our interference
with it that's destroying itactually.

We've been talking today with Captain Paul
Watson of the Captain PaulWatson Foundation, a lifelong
environmental activist andformer star of Whale Wars.
He talked about a new TV seriesthat they are putting together
called the Krill Wars.
You were hearing from alsoTeresa Ortree Mercer of the

(42:40):
Mendenoma Whale and Seal Studythat she started with her
husband Scott, and the two ofthem and I, lee and Lindsay
created this show ResilientEarth Radio and Podcast to bring
you critical issues facing ourplanet and the positive actions
people are taking like CaptainPaul Watson.
And now back to Tree, as shefinishes up her comment.

I actually was not aware that most
of the whaling efforts were allthis corruption and I was still
assuming that people there wasa market for whale meat and
blubber, but apparently not.
That's so interesting.

Well, iceland, actually for the last
10 years, or for Iceland,lofsten had to.
He lost about 1 million a yearon that, but he's like he's
wealthy, he does this because hewants to do it, he doesn't do
it for money and that.
So in Norway they it's allsubsidized, all these things are
subsidized, so it's that's theonly, but then again subsidized

(43:46):
by the countries themselves,like Norway.
And it's even worse than thatbecause worldwide commercial,
industrialized fishingoperations exist because of
about $90 billion in governmentsubsidies From the EU, through
all these, australia, all thesecountries are subsidizing the
commercial fishing operationbecause otherwise it couldn't
survive.

(44:06):
Fishing operation becauseotherwise it couldn't survive.
In order to extract fish fromthe ocean, you need such
sophisticated technology andsuch incredibly big ships that
you know you got a hundredmillion euro.
Factory ships are out there.
You've got a hundred mile longlong lines, a hundred mile long
gill nets.
You've got giant purse seinenets.
You got these lines100-mile-long gill nets.

(44:29):
You've got giant purse-seyingnets.
We pulled one gill net from theSouthern Ocean that was two
kilometers deep.
It took 200 hours to pull it up.
It was 72 kilometers long andweighed 70 tons.
And that was one net from oneship 70 tons, yeah, so you know
this is the kind of thing we'redealing with here.
At any given time, there'senough long lining and gill nets

(44:50):
set to go around the planet 60times oh and that's one of the
things that we're also involvedwith is, you know, cleaning up
marine debris, and most, I wouldsay 60 percent of all the
marine debris is fishing gearfishing gear yep.

Gear yep, and plastics yeah.

And of course, all the fishing gear is
plastic.

That's right, it's made of plastic.

You know I try to remind people because I
was raised in a fishing villagein eastern Canada in the 50s and
60s and I could walk the beachthere for miles and never see
one speck of plastic back then.
So this is all a real new thing.
I think plastic's really adesign failure.
Nobody really thought itthrough when they came up with
it Back then.

(45:33):
My town was actually theworld's largest lobster fishery
town and all the lobster trapswere made of wood and hemp, so
if they were lost they justbiodegraded.
You know we didn't have nylonfishing lines and things like
that, so you didn't have thatkind of problem.

Well, back to Tree's point about the habits
of a nation.
If it's historical, societal,maybe just the way that they you
know the food that they mighteat, does that still play a part
in some of these things?
I remember watching thatdocumentary by Richard Ladkani

(46:13):
about the vaquita and the seashepherd several years back.
Is that still driving any ofthe demand?

Well, yeah, I mean first, the Japanese like
to say that this is atraditional thing, but it isn't.
There's about two towns inJapan that killed whales, only
two towns.
It wasn't a national thing.
So when they say it's part ofour tradition, it's not true.
The interesting thing about itit was part of the tradition of
the Ainu people.
The Ainu people are theaboriginal inhabitants of Japan.

(46:46):
They're actually Caucasians.
In fact, they're the originwhere Hungarians and Finns come
from, originally from there.
But the Ainu people werewhalers.
Japan outlawed them and forbidsAinu whaling.
So Aboriginal whaling in Japanis forbidden.
And so now they tell whatthey're doing.
They're saying that that'sAboriginal whaling when it's not
Aboriginal at all.

(47:07):
So we have so many like in theNorwegians.
They don't make any money on itat all, it's just subsidized,
everybody subsidizes it.
Now, the one place wheretradition is the main reason is
the Faroe Islands, where theykill pilot whales and dolphins
kill everything that shows up,really, because, well, their
father did it, theirgreat-father did it, their
great-great-grandfather, vikingsdid it, you know.

(47:28):
So we're going to do it andthat's the kind of thing.
But they don't.
You know, there's no money tobe made in it.
It's totally non-commercial.
But everybody gets involved init.
The kids get involved in it,they expose the kids to it.
So if they sight a pod of pilotwhales, everybody quits work,
everybody goes out of school togo down to the beach to kill as
many as they possibly can.

(47:50):
And I remember confronting theprime minister of the Faroe
Islands back in 1986.
And I said to him you know whyare you doing this?
It's a gift from God.
What do you mean it's a giftfrom God?
I said look, it says in theBible, in Leviticus you can't
eat anything out of the oceanthat doesn't have scales.

(48:11):
So therefore it's anabomination to.
You know, because we're a veryChristian nation, it's an
abomination to.
And he said God made anexemption for us.
But the pilot whale meat isunedible.
It's so contaminated with heavymetals, especially
methylmercury, is unedible.
It's so contaminated with heavymetals, especially
methylmercury, it's unedible.

(48:31):
In fact, the children of theFaroe Islands have the highest
level of mercury in the bodiesof any children anywhere on the
planet.
The doctors in the FaroeIslands are the world's experts
on mercury poisoning.
Because of this, people areonly allowed to.
They say no, pregnant women, nochildren should eat it.
But they do, but, and the adultmen should only eat and women

(48:51):
should only eat 200 grams amonth.
Well, of course they don't.
You know, and you take thenumber of whales they kill and
look at the number of people inthe population and aside the
fact that less than 40% of themeat whale meat, what happens to
all that whale meat?
They throw it away, they dumpit, and we documented that
dumping carcasses.

(49:12):
We see hundreds of rottingcarcasses on the floor, sea
floor.
They just throw them away.
They kill because they want tokill.
That's the only reason for it.
It's a blood sport.
They're only I guess they'revery bored people, but at the
same time they're these verynationalistic.
You know, we are Faroese andnobody's going to tell us what

(49:34):
to do, and that's the same thing.
But you know, we live in aworld where, you know, the
bullfighting has been banned inMexico.
It's been banned in Barcelona.
Fox hunting has been banned inthe UK.
You, barcelona, fox hunting hasbeen banned in the UK.
You know these kind of bloodsports have no place in the 21st
century.

No, they don't Not any place at all.
I agree, it's sickening.

Let's talk about what is coming up next for
your crew, for the Captain PaulWatson Foundation, for Sea
Shepherd France.
What's on the agenda for the?

John Paul DeGioia?
Well, we're working incooperation with Sea Shepherd
France and Sea Shepherd France.
What's on the agenda for theJohn Paul DeGioia?
Well, we're working incooperation with Sea Shepherd
France and Sea Shepherd Brazil,and next week the boat's leaving
from Marseille, where it isright now, to go off of Greece
and Italy to go after poachersand also to check out illegal
taking of bluefin tuna.
So they'll be doing that, andafter that we'll be heading to

(50:29):
French Guiana and then to Braziland in Brazil, Sea Shepherd is
working there in the Amazon toprotect river dolphins and
manatees.
So that's an ongoing project.
This month I'm going to Mayotte,which is a French territorial
island off the coast ofMozambique, and we're going
there.
We've got a crew there fulltime to stop poaching of turtles

(50:52):
.
On that, it's a big, bigproblem and it's actually got a
really good arrangement with theFrench government on this,
because most of the people whowork with us, the volunteers who
work with us, are illegalimmigrants coming from the
Comoros or from Mozambique orMadagascar, I mean.
So they come over there andwe've actually got them under

(51:14):
some sort of protection.
So if we tell the policethey're working with us, they're
working to—so we've got a housewe've rented for the people who
are doing this and it's had areal impact.
So we cut down on the poachingquite a bit.
That's good.
Why is it you have to go?
after the poachers and not thegovernment?

(51:35):
Good question, because thepolice?
There's actually a governmentdepartment that's supposed to
deal with it, but they don't doit.
They just don't do it.
It's like when I was working inthe Galapagos.
You know the Galapagos Rangers.
We give them a vote, we do allthis thing, but they're not
interested in doing their job,they're just interested in

(51:57):
getting paid and at the sametime, a lot of them are just
bribed, you know, to turn andlook the other way.
It's a real problem.
I just don't trust mostgovernment agencies to.
There's no enthusiasm there.
I've always said that you knowyou can't pay people to do what
volunteers do.

True, Very true.
The volunteers have passion andyeah.

Yeah, it's true.

You have a large organization.
The Captain Paul WatsonFoundation has lots of chapters.

But it's not that large.

Really it seems like it is.

It took me 50 years to build up Sea
Shepherd.
So when they took away, theytook the ships, they took the
assets, they took the membership, they took all that stuff.
So I had nothing.
It was only because I had thesupport of people like Jean-Paul
DeGioia and others who you knowlongtime supporters and people
when they find out what happens,they come and they support us,
but they control access toeverything.
So you know you can't make acomment on their socials is

(52:58):
blocked, it's deleted.
They completely control theinformation on that.
I think the thing that bothersme most about it is that they
completely betrayed ourprinciples, and the main
principle being that ofaggressive nonviolence to
aggressively intervene.
And I know when I was dismissedfrom them in 2022, the reason

(53:19):
being I was too controversialand I was too confrontational
and they wanted to go mainstream.
We got plenty of mainstreamorganization, didn't need
another one.
But I think it had a lot to dowith the fact that these guys
who I had known for some of themup to 20 years, had suddenly
now they had because of whalewars they had nice paying jobs

(53:40):
and job security.
And that became more importantthan the work to do.
They offered me $300,000 a yearto not do anything, to not give
any talks, don't talk tojournalists, don't give any
lectures and don't write anybooks.
We'll give you $300,000 a yearjust to be a figurehead.
And I said no.
And when I said no, and in factactually what happened at the
board meeting was I said, look,I can't support this Because

(54:03):
they had maneuvered me off theboard because of the red notice
and everything, and that once Iwas maneuvered off, they put all
sorts of new people on thereand dismissed anybody who
supported me.
And I said I can't support this.
And and the the new, thechairman, there, he looks at me
and he says and I hate to say,but his exact words or he says,
um, you're an employee, you dowhat you're told well, let me

(54:27):
ask you about the John PaulDeGioia.

They were painting some names on the ship
from certain donors.
I know we're hoping to seeresilient earth radio and
podcast up there.

We have a great artist and she's putting
everybody's names on the on thewall.
Her name's Adele, so thatproject's finished.
Your name would be up thereright now.
I'll get them to send you apicture.
That'd be cool.
But the John Paul DeGioia isdoing fine.
It's a former Scottishfisheries patrol boat.
But the other ship that we havethe Bandero's even more
interesting.
Right.
We bought that from theJapanese and they didn't know

(55:02):
they were selling it to us.
They were pretty upset.
Found out it to us.
They were pretty upset whenthey found out they did.
They not only sold it to us,they delivered it to Korea to us
.
So that vessel's now inAustralia.
But this is the second timeI've done that.
I bought the Sam Simon fromthem back in 2011, I think.
So they fell for the tricktwice.

Are there any last words that you would
like to say to our audience?

That everybody has an obligation and
responsibility to make sure thatwe protect life, diversity and
interdependence of species inthe ocean, because the reality
is, if the ocean dies, we die,because our entire existence
depends upon a healthy ocean.
And the other thing I tried toget across and I just wrote a
children's book about this is weall live in the ocean, because

(55:49):
the ocean is not just the sea,it's the water planet.
It's water in constantcirculation.
So sometimes it's in the sea,sometimes in ice, sometimes
underground, sometimes in theclouds and sometimes in the
cells of every living plant andanimal on the planet.
That water is constantly movingthrough all those different
mediums.
So the water in your body rightnow, which was 70% of your body

(56:09):
, was once recently in ice or inthe sea, or in the clouds, or
in the body of an elephant or ofa redwood tree or whatever.
It's constantly moving.
So when I ask children what isthe ocean and the answer is we
are the ocean.
This is the ocean planet.
Everything here is the ocean.

This is the ocean planet.
Everything here is the ocean,the ocean planet and
interdependence.

Only because we're land animals, we
call it the earth, but otherwiseit should be the planet ocean.

Agreed, agreed More awareness, too.
That seems like just a smallamount of 2D land.
Living people seem to forgetthis is a blue marble.
When you look at it from space,it's mostly ocean.
So thank you so much for that,captain Paul, and best wishes on

(57:01):
your future journeys andefforts, and and for being right
where you are right now, rightacross from the Louvre.
That is tremendous.
Oh thank you, wonderful.
And say hello to Lamia for us.

Will do, thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Resilient Earth
podcast, where we talk aboutcritical issues and positive
actions for our planet.
Resilient Earth is produced byPlanet Centric Media, a 501c3
nonprofit, and Seastorm StudiosInc, located on the rugged North
Sonoma coast of NorthernCalifornia.
I'm Leanne Lindsey, producerand host, along with co-hosts

(57:56):
and co-producers Scott and TreeMercer of Mindenoma, whale and
Seal Study, located on the SouthMendocino and North Sonoma
coasts.
The music for this podcast isby Eric Alleman, an

(58:18):
international composer, pianistand writer living in the Sea
Ranch.
Discover more of his music,animations, ballet, stage and
film work at ericalamancom.
You can find Resilient Earth onSpotify, apple and Amazon

(58:41):
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Beyond the UN Ocean Conference: A Captain's Call to Action - Captain Paul Watson, from Paris

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Beyond the UN Ocean Conference: A Captain's Call to Action - Captain Paul Watson, from Paris