It takes a pirate’: Sea Shepherd captain

November 20, 2008

20th November 2008, 12:45 WST

After Japanese whalers depart for Antarctica’s icy waters this week, in their wake will be environmental pirate Captain Paul Watson and his band of 40 Sea Shepherd volunteers.

Capt Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, will steer the group’s flagship vessel Steve Irwin to Antarctica to go head to head with a fleet of about eight Japanese whaling boats.

The looming confrontation comes after fiery clashes with whalers last summer, involving stink bombs, the detaining of activists and allegations that whalers fired live ammunition.

Only this year, the Steve Irwin - half of whose crew members are Australian - will be going it alone without a Greenpeace ship and possibly no Australian Customs vessel in sight.

Greenpeace has pulled out, saying it wants to concentrate on a legal matter, and the Australian government is baulking at sending a Customs vessel to monitor and record the whalers’ actions - making Capt Watson and his crew the only thorn in the whalers’ side.

That is a source of some pride to Capt Watson.

He believes it will take strong individuals, even pirates, to make a difference.

“Go back to the 17th century. It was not the British navy that shut down piracy in the Caribbean when it was out of control,” Capt Watson told AAP, during a tour of the ship.

“Piracy was shut down by Henry Morgan, who was a pirate.

“So if you want to stop piracy you need a pirate to do it.”

Sea Shepherd members love being called eco-pirates and Capt Watson - who flies the skull and crossbones flag - fits the part with a wide grin beneath a white bushy beard and a scruffy dress-sense.

“All social revolutions come from the passion of individuals and when you look at it, slavery was not ended by governments ... Women got the right to vote not because of governments but because of women who went out there and did hunger strikes and went to prison,” he said.

“The Martin Luther Kings, Jane Goodalls and Steve Irwins are the ones who make the difference.”

Capt Watson has been a prominent animal and environmental activist for 35 years and was one of three co-founders of Greenpeace before breaking away to establish Sea Shepherd, saying “hanging banners and just witnessing” environmental damage was not good enough.

His environmental activism truly began when he was a boy growing up at a fishing village on Canada’s east coast.

“There was a pond with lots of beavers, and then one year there were only 11 because of trappers,” he said.

“I got pretty angry, so the next winter I walked the trap lines and freed the beavers and other animals and destroyed the traps.

“So I really started as an activist at 11 and I have been doing it ever since.”

It’s a lifelong passion for Capt Watson, who believes his war with Japanese whalers will soon be won.

He said the whalers were close to collapse economically.

“They made a $70 million loss last year,” he said.

“We halved their quota (of kills). They are losing a lot of money.

“This will be the fourth year (of Sea Shepherd’s Southern Ocean mission) - that is three years of lost profits.

“How much longer can the whalers do this?

“I think this is really the key to stopping them, to keep making them lose profits.”

Sea Shepherds’ anti-whaling tactics made headlines in Japan for the first time last summer when two crew members boarded a Japanese whaling vessel to deliver a protest letter.

They were detained for three days, sparking a diplomatic row between Australia and Japan, before being handed over to an Australian Customs vessel.

Capt Watson has not ruled out risky boarding tactics, despite saying he was shot at after activists threw stink bombs onto whaling ships.

Japan has admitted to firing soundballs, known also as thunderflashes.

“They were throwing concussion grenades and they admitted to firing four shots, and then as soon as they heard I got shot, they told the Australian government that no shots were fired,” Capt Watson said.

“When we got back, the Australian government didn’t want to look into it.

“I was wearing a bullet-proof vest but the bullet hit my badge (an anti-poaching badge) so I had this bullet and I jokingly gave it to the guy who played Grissom in CSI (actor William Petersen) - he’s one of our supporters - and said ‘Hey, take a look at this because no one else will.’

“We have all the laws, treaties and regulations we need to protect the oceans, but the problem is nobody is enforcing them.

“So we are out there doing the job of what governments should be doing.”

Also joining the operation this year to make a splash about whaling will be Hollywood actor Daryl Hannah and a film crew for the Animal Planet series Whale Wars.

The Steve Irwin will depart Brisbane for the Southern Ocean on December 1.

AAP