Captain Paul Watson's Response to Whale Wars Critics - (BTW- Whales Wars Tonight on Animal Planet!)

November 14, 2008

I just LOVE his style. A cooler guy I haven't seen in a long time!

The overall response to Whale Wars received by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been about 75% positive and 25% negative. Not bad considering that we are supposed to be a controversial, extremist, radical organization of pirates and eco-terrorists.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is really not overly concerned with the opinions of critics who don't like what we do, who we are, or how we do things. Our clients are the whales and what matters to the whales is results, and we have delivered the results in the form of over a thousand whales saved from the harpoons of the outlaw Japanese whaling fleet. We haven't heard a single criticism about our methods from the whales.

I would like to address a couple of the criticisms in general for the benefit of our supporters. We appreciate constructive criticism but we have little use for the ranting, anti-nature ramblings and whining of the holier than thou anti-environmentalist wing nuts who have been convinced by the likes of people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity that anybody of substance really gives a damn about the opinions of dittoheads who waste their time listening to talk radio and watching FOX pseudo-news entertainment shows.

One mentally challenged whacko compared me to Pol Pot, Hitler and Idi Amin. That was amusing. Another critic who claimed he was with the Canadian Navy said that we had no idea what we were doing, we had no experience and we should not be on a boat.

Hmmmm let's see, Since the days of World War II, Sea Shepherd ships and crew have sunk more ships, rammed more ships, boarded more ships, blockaded more harpoons and engaged in more high seas confrontations than the Canadian Navy

And we did it all without suffering any serious injuries or causing any injuries to our opponents unlike some of the mishaps by the Canadian Navy. And as for incompetence, this last week-end saw a major accident onboard a Russian nuclear submarine where more than twenty sailors died because of a lack of supply of gas masks. We seem to be better equipped than the Russian sailors.

I've seen far worse examples of things going wrong during my days with the Canadian Coast Guard and any real sailor can tell you that mishaps, accidents and surprises happen all the time. What is important is that the officers and crew are ready for them.

For example when our inflatable crew were thrown into the ocean, they were wearing wetsuits under Mustang Survival suits and we fully prepared for just such an accident. That mishap actually helped with our training program because it gave many of the crew a much needed dose of reality. By the time we reached the Japanese fleet, the kinks had been worked out and we had no repeat accidents.

We did take that mishap seriously and the crewmember responsible was fired and left the ship on our return. He deliberately disobeyed an order to not load the ship with crew as it was being lowered.

In 31 years of operations on 8 different ships, Sea Shepherd has not experienced any groundings, unintentional collisions, any oil spills or accidents. We did have one fire during a fueling operation in the Netherlands that was extinguished promptly by the engine crew. We've never lost a person overboard nor have we damaged any piers while docking. That's a pretty damn good record and it speaks for itself and it must be added that Sea Shepherd operating during this time in some of the most hostile seas in the world including the coast of Labrador, the Gulf of St. Lawrence ice-packs, the Antarctic icepacks, the Bering Sea, the North Sea and the Caribbean. We have transited the Panama Canal a dozen times and weathered hurricanes and tropical storms. I'm very confident of our skills and

abilities and although always open to improvement and suggestions, I have no regard for hostile condemnation of our methods, tactics, strategies and experience. Our unblemished record speaks for itself.

A few of the more hysterical responses compared us to Al Qaeda and called us terrorists. This has become the approach of choice for the mentally restricted who appear to be limited in their imaginations. The word terrorist is thrown about so freely these days that it has lost any meaning it once had. In fact because of FOX, most of these flamers have never heard the word "terrorist" in any proper context.

It does not matter these days if you are defending whales or running for President, you still get called a terrorist by those treading water below the average intelligence level.

One somewhat constructive criticism was that many of the crew were inexperienced.

Of course they were. That is the point of this exercise. People who care, people of passion are doing this because they want to make a difference. They are learning and by the time we reach the whalers they are pretty much ready.

We have been doing this for 32 years without a serious injury and without injurying anyone else, without being convicted of any felony and without being sued.

Some of the people who have crewed with me as novices are now commanding container ships, positioning oil rigs and one of them is now managing one of the largest drydocks in the world. You have to start somewhere and in a world where getting a start is becoming more and more difficult, we are proud to say that we take on inexperienced crew and show them the ropes.

Some criticisms were that we are breaking the law.

If we were we would be arrested. We are upholding the laws, specifically international conservation law in accordance with the principles established by the United Nations World Charter for Nature that allows for non-governmental organizations to intervene to enforce international conservation law. We have never been convicted of a felony nor have we been sued in our entire 32 years of operations. For this operation we were not charged with or even questioned by any authorities. We did meet with our registry in the Netherlands and they did not see any infractions. If they had, we would have been charged and we would have lost our flag.

Another less constructive criticism is some people don't like the way we go about doing what we do.

My answer to that, is then do it yourself instead of playing Monday morning quarterback. We're not interested in what people like or don't like. We're interested in saving the lives of whales.

One particularly nice guy said he hoped we would get shot (hmm I thought we had been shot at) and he said that he hopes the show ends with us being sunk by the Japanese.

We hate to give away the ending to the show but hey, we win. We prevented them from taking half their quota and we cost them $70 million dollars.

The positive assessment of Whale Wars was that it was dramatic, exciting, visually stimulating, entertaining and it was educational.

We agree.