The Whale Warrior

Japan's whaling industry calls him a terrorist. But for many illegally hunted whales, he is their last hope

Captain Paul Watson is one of the founders of Greenpeace, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the star of the hit Animal Planet television show Whale Wars. Last week, he was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Animal Rights Conference in Los Angeles.

"Thirty years ago this week, we found, pursued, rammed and destroyed the pirate whaler Sierra," said Watson, to cheers and applause. "At that time we were told that kind of action was not going to achieve anything; it was only going to end up getting people hurt and I was told that I was going to get somebody killed or get someone on my crew killed.

"That was thirty years ago. People are still telling me I'm going to get somebody killed. And I haven't gotten anyone killed. We've never had anybody injured. We've never been convicted of a felony crime. And the simple reason for that is we're not protesting anything. We're simply upholding international conservation law.

"The problem is that the governments and the corporations we fight have no respect for the law. They are the criminals. And in a lawless world, the only way you can enforce the law is by being a pirate."

GET INVOLVED

• Watch Paul Watson's full keynote address
  
• Support Sea Shepherd
• Sign a Greenpeace letter to Iceland's prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir urging her to cancel Iceland's five-year commercial whaling quota
  
• Sign the Whale's Revenge petition urging the International Whaling Commission to close the loophole that allows whaling in the name of so-called "scientific research"
  

RELATED POSTS

• Denmark: Humpback Whales Are Tasty (June 23, 2009)
• Silencing Whale Songs (May 31, 2009)
• Illegal Whale Meat Still on Japanese Menus (April 14, 2009)
• Bloody Waters in the Faroe Islands (February 19 , 2009)
• Gray Whales, Meet Big Oil (November 22, 2008)
• Palin Rebuffed As Unique Alaskan Whales Score Major Victory (October 18, 2008)
• Whales Get New Sanctuary in Chile (September 30, 2008)
• First-Ever Whale Songs Heard in New York Waters (September 20, 2008)
• Greenland's Request to Kill Humpback Whales Denied (July 1, 2008)
• Greenpeace Activists Jailed in Tokyo (June 22, 2008)
• US Condemns Iceland's Whale Hunt (May 26, 2008)

image: Witty Iama, Wikimedia Commons