Father Of Greenpeace Tries To Save Earth’s Fish Now With Sea Shepherd, He Polices The World’s Waters

Paul Watson never has been daunted by the task of saving the Earth.

Whales, salmon, herring, wolves, bison - Watson has been on the front lines of environmentalists’ efforts to save those species.

But mostly he’s interested in saving fish.

To that end, he has served on the M/V Greenpeace and now captains the ships that sail under the flag of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, impeding and sometimes ramming ships he says are breaking international law.

Watson will deliver the first Edward Abbey Lecture at Gonzaga University’s Jepson Center at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Admission is free. The Gonzaga School of Law Environmental Law Caucus raised money for the lecture.

Watson is the father of Greenpeace, one of the most powerful environmental movements.

As an activist with the Sierra Club, Watson and others organized a voyage aboard the M/V Greenpeace in 1971 to protest nuclear weapons testing in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. A year later, he and other crew members founded Greenpeace Foundation, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia.

For five years, he served as first officer of the M/V Greenpeace, riding in Zodiacs between whaling ships and whales to prevent the ships from firing harpoons.

In 1975, Watson had an epiphany: During a confrontation with a Russian whaler, a harpooned sperm whale loomed over Watson’s Zodiac, and Watson recognized a flicker of understanding in the dying whale’s eye; he felt the whale knew what he was trying to do.

The whale slipped beneath the waves, and Watson says those few seconds of looking into the whale’s eye changed him. He vowed to spend his life defending whales and other creatures of the sea.

The same year, he led Greenpeace expeditions to protect harp seals on Newfoundland’s ice floes.

But in 1977, Watson left Greenpeace.

“All the founders left. It’s been taken over by fund-raisers, and now it’s a multinational ecological corporation that raises $280 million a year,” Watson said during a phone interview from his Venice, Calif., office.

“Sea Shepherd is Greenpeace because we are the original Greenpeace people,” he said. “The difference is we don’t spend money to raise money. Our organization is small. Two years ago, Greenpeace sent 49 million pieces of mail at a cost of $37 million. Sea Shepherd grows slowly by word of mouth.

“We are unique in that no one else does what we do: We police international regulations.”

In that capacity, Watson has captained a boat that has rammed nine ships and confiscated and destroyed hundreds of miles of drift nets. In the mid-1980s, he organized an attack on the Icelandic whaling industry, sinking half the fleet and destroying a multimillion-dollar whale processing plant.

None of these actions has resulted in arrests of Watson or his crew - or in any injuries.

“Sea Shepherd is a law enforcement group,” Watson said. “Anyone can intervene in an illegal operation …

“They call me a maverick or renegade and some label us ‘the ladies of the night of the conservation movement’ - they don’t want to be seen with us in the daytime.”

Watson distinguishes his group from other radical environmentalist groups, such as Earth First! “They have no discipline. We have to be responsible for our actions. Earth First! is anarchy run wild.”

Between voyages to save whales and seals, Watson founded Friends of the Wolf in 1984, which led efforts to stop the aerial hunting of wolves in British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska.

Watson will be flying to Spokane from British Columbia to deliver the GU lecture. He planned to participate in a campaign to prevent overfishing of herring and will return to his ship after the lecture to captain it back to Seattle where it is moored.

The environmentalist teaches at UCLA, delivers about 20 lectures a year and writes books, one of which, “Ocean Warrior,” is being made into a movie.

While acknowledging that ocean fisheries are just one of many fronts on which environmentalists fight, Watson remains optimistic.

“I don’t get discouraged because I have a sense of accomplishment. We do real intervention; I’ve seen direct results in that we’ve saved thousands of seals, whales and fish, so we see something being done,” he said.

“The bigger picture sometimes is depressing, but you can’t just give up. Being a conservationist is buying time and space until people wise up or receive a good lesson from nature.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LECTURE Paul Watson will speak at GU’s Jepson Center at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Admission is free.