The Eco Pirate: Captain Paul Watson
By Anne Keehn
Last November, the New Yorker reported on marine environmental crusader/eco pirate, Paul Watson (photographed above, for the New Yorker by the legendary James Nachtwey). Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, patrols the oceans, meting out punishment to whalers, seal hunters and fishing vessels that target endangered species. He flies his own version of the dreaded skull and cross bones, and chases down offenders in a ship armored with a “steel I-beam that is propelled outward from the ship’s starboard side and is used to scrape the hulls of adversaries.”
In an article he penned for CounterPunch, titled “I’m Proud to be a Pirate!” Watson wrote, “Instead of cannon balls, our guns shoot coconut cream and chocolate pie-filling. We toss stink bombs instead of grenades and we are so non-violent we don’t even eat meat or fish on our ships.”
Watson calls himself a non-violent “pirate,” but his opponents call him a terrorist. He has been arrested in the Netherlands, Germany and Canada; Costa Rica has filed attempted murder charges against him; Norway convicted him, in absentia, of attempting to sink a fishing vessel; and Greenpeace—which Watson helped establish—has broken ties with him.
But the captain has carved out a niche for himself. Recently, Sea Shepherd partnered with the Ecuadorian police, giving the organization carte blanche to patrol and arrest eco perpetrators in the Galapagos national maritime park—prompting the Guardian to say, “The idea of environmental activists becoming a new green police force may develop in years to come.”