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Paul Watson The Steve Irwin has departed from Barcelona, Spain bound for Fremantle, Australia in preparation for Operation No Compromise. Our crew in Taiji, Japan continues to monitor the activities by the fishermen in the Cove.

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Paul Watson doesn’t care what you think. The captain of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been putting himself between whales and harpoon ships for more than 30 years, preventing the killing of countless cetaceans. He’s been called a terrorist, a greater threat than Al-Qaeda, a liar. None of it bothers him.

“I am here to say things people do not want to hear and do things people do not want to see. I am here to piss people off – that is my job,” the 59-year-old Watson says in Ron Colby’s 2008 documentary Pirate for the Sea.

A Canadian, Watson was a co-founder of Greenpeace and instrumental in the campaign to ban the clubbing of Arctic fur seals. He has gained wider notoriety as a central character on the Animal Planet show Whale Wars, which chronicles Sea Shepherd’s skirmishes with Japanese whalers. He was also spoofed last year in a South Park episode called “Whale Whores.”

“Being lampooned on South Park is hardly something to complain about,” he says. “They brought the issue of the dolphin and whale slaughter by the Japanese to a very large audience. I could not really care less how I was portrayed.”

So where are you coming back from?

We got back from Antarctica about the seventh of March. We’re heading to the Mediterranean now to go against bluefin poachers. We took three ships down to Antarctica and lost one. For the first time we managed to save more whales than were killed, so that was a successful campaign. They have a quota of 935 minke whales, and they have 50 humpbacks on their permits. So 520 whales were saved, and 507 killed.

Let’s go back to your early days of eco-activism.

I was raised in an eastern Canadian fishing village right on the Maine border, called St. Andrews. I used to swim with these beavers in a beaver pond when I was 10. I went back when I was 11 and found there were no more beavers. I found that trappers had taken them all so I became quite angry and that winter I began to walk the trap lines and free animals from the traps and destroy the traps. So that was really my first venture into activism.

You’ve talked about a whale you made eye contact with as it bled to death after being harpooned. Tell me about the connection you felt with that whale.

That was in June of 1975. I was with Greenpeace and we had found the Soviet whaling fleet about 60 miles off the coast of Eureka, California. We came up with this idea to put our bodies between the harpoon and the whale to prevent them from killing the whale. I was reading a lot of Gandhi at the time. Bob Hunter [a Greenpeace founder] and I found ourselves in a small boat and behind us was a 150-foot Soviet harpoon vessel bearing down on us. In front of us were eight sperm whales that were fleeing for their lives. Every time they would try to get a shot we would block the harpoon and then the captain of the whaling vessel came down the catwalk and screamed into the ear of the harpooner, then looked at us, smiled, and brought his finger across his throat.

A few moments later there was an incredible explosion. The harpoon flew over our heads – the line from the harpoon slashed down on the water right beside us, just nearly missed us. Then the harpoon struck one of the whales in the back. She screamed and rolled over in a fountain of blood. Suddenly the largest whale in the pod hit the water with his tail and disappeared and swam right underneath us and threw himself out of the water straight at the harpooner.

But they were waiting for him and with an unattached harpoon at point-blank range he fired and that whale screamed, fell back on the water and was rolling in agony on the surface when I caught his eye. Suddenly I saw him dive and a trail of bloody bubbles coming towards us real fast. He came up and out of the water at an angle so that the next move was that he would fall right down on top of us and crush us. As I looked into that eye, I saw something which really changed my life. That whale had the power to kill us right there and I could see understanding. I could see the whale really understood what we were trying to do. I could see him pull himself back and his muscles move and instead of coming forward he fell back and I saw his eye slip beneath the surface and he died. He could have killed us but he chose not to do so, so I feel personally indebted to that whale. That’s one of the reasons I’ve dedicated my life to protecting whales.

Do you feel that the whale consciously put itself in front of the harpoon to protect the other whales?

I think he was defending his pod and allowing the pod to get away. The pod of course did get away. I don’t know what a whale thinks. But what I saw in the eye was pity – pity for us, that we could take life so ruthlessly and mercilessly. I began to think: Why are the Russians killing these whales? They were using sperm whales for spermacetti oil, a high-heat resistant lubricating oil. One of the things that they were making with them was intercontinental ballistic missiles. So here we are destroying this incredibly beautiful, intelligent, magnificent creature for the purpose of making a weapon meant for the mass extermination of human beings. That’s when it occurred to me that we as humans are insane.

From that moment on, the change in my life was that I never did anything again for people – I did it for whales and other creatures of the sea. So that pretty much puts us beyond criticism from people – because when people disagree with what we’re doing, I say: I don’t care. Our clients are the whales, sharks, seals, fish, whatever. We don’t give a damn what you think. Find me one whale that disagrees with what we do and maybe we might reconsider, but until then we’re going to do what we do. And I think we do it responsibly; we’ve never injured anybody. I find it interesting that some of the larger organizations condemn us for being violent but we’ve never injured anybody. We’ve never had anybody seriously injured, we’ve never been convicted of a felony, and we’ve never been sued. And we get criticized by organizations that have been sued, have had people killed, and have had people convicted of felonies. I just find it a little bizarre.

Hypocritical?

Completely. I was doing a talk show in Vancouver and somebody called in a bomb threat to protest my violence, which I thought was pretty strange. We had to evacuate. A reporter threw a microphone in my face and said, ‘Greenpeace has condemned you as an eco-terrorist. What’s your response?’ I said, ‘What would you expect from the Avon ladies of the environmental movement?’ They’ve never forgiven me for that. But they called me an eco-terrorist. I was just responding.

Do you think the attitude of “I don’t care – I work for the whales” possibly makes your work less effective?

I think it’s irrelevant. I don’t care if I put people off. After we sank those whaling ships in Iceland, half their fleet, John Frizell from Greenpeace came up and told me that what I did was reprehensible and irresponsible and an embarrassment to the movement. And I said, ‘Well you know John – So?’

And he said, ‘I think you should know what people in this movement think about you.’ I said, ‘Really John, I don’t give a crap. We didn’t sink those whaling ships for you or Greenpeace or anybody else. We sank them for the whales.’ The whales are dying – they’re being slaughtered in horrific ways, so I don’t have time for people to say, well that’s not the way to go about it. All I know is that there are 528 whales that are swimming in the ocean right now that would be dead if we had not gone down there and intervened. That’s the only thing that really matters to me. That and the fact that we did it without injuring anybody.

In terms of your relationship with the Japanese, not just the whalers but the people, do you think there’s something in their culture that says, “We will determine our culture, our actions. We will do what we want to do and the more that people try to stop us, the more we want to do it.” That might be human nature.

Even if the majority of Japanese people were opposed to whaling, that doesn’t mean it’s going to end. The majority of Canadians are against sealing but [the clubbing] keeps going on. I don’t think governments really give a damn what their people think – it’s all corporate interests.

We decided to speak the language they understand, profit and loss. It’s economics, all of it comes down to economics. The fact is that they’ve lost money for five years – how long can they continue to do that? That’s the key. Every year a whaling ship gets sunk in Norway. Why? To keep the insurance premiums high – we have to make them pay.

Why is killing a whale worse than killing a pig, for example, when a pig is intelligent, too?

I get this question from the Japanese a lot, and I find it offensive. How can anybody compare the killing of a pig to the killing of a whale? First of all, our ships are vegan. Forty percent of the fish caught from the oceans is fed to livestock – pigs and chickens are becoming major aquatic predators. The livestock industry is one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions ever. The eating of meat is an ecological disaster.

Are you a vegetarian or vegan?

Yes, but we’re promoting veganism not for animal-rights reasons but for environmental conservation reasons.

You cannot compare the killing of animals in a domestic slaughterhouse to the killing of a whale. What goes on with those whales – or dolphins, say, in Taiji – would never be tolerated in a slaughterhouse. Those slaughterhouses would be shut down. It takes from 10 to 45 minutes to kill a whale and they die in horrific agony. That would be completely intolerable and illegal in any slaughterhouse in the world.

Also they’re an endangered and protected species – pigs and cows are not. They’re part of an ecosystem, which pigs and cows are not. It always bothers me that that comparison is brought up. And especially when it’s brought up by the Japanese, who eat more pigs, cows, and chickens than all people of Australia and New Zealand combined. Only one percent of the Japanese people eat whales; for the most part they eat cows and pigs and chickens. It’s a ridiculous analogy.

How do you view protest versus intervention?

A couple of years ago 60 Minutes Australia did a piece in which a Greenpeace spokesperson said he was opposed to Sea Shepherd because we were violent and that Greenpeace’s approach was to bear witness. I was just appalled. Bearing witness – you know, you don’t walk down the street and see a woman being raped and do nothing. You don’t walk down the street and see a kitten or a puppy being stomped to death and do nothing. You don’t walk down the street and see a child being molested and do nothing. And you don’t go down there and watch whales die and hold signs and do nothing. I just find this bearing witness another word for cowardice. So that really offended me that they would say that.

We’re an interventionist organization, not a protest organization. Protest is very submissive – it’s like saying, “please please, please, don’t kill the whales.” Then they go and kill them anyway – nobody cares. The fact is, you gotta stop them – you’re dealing with ruthless people, and you have to stop them. But you have to do it in a responsible way, which just means you don’t hurt them.

Do you see any situation where it’s okay to hunt a whale, say Indigenous people who have for centuries been living off whale meat and blubber?

You know, everything has changed because we have a population of seven billion people on the planet right now, and the oceans are dying. The oceans have been so severely diminished that there’s a good chance we could kill them. And if the oceans die, we die. In light of that prospect I find it very difficult to be sympathetic to any cultural needs in order to destroy endangered species. Yeah, sure, it isn’t the Inuit’s fault that the whales have been diminished, but they can finish the job. When you get right down to it, it’s all about human beings. I don’t divide them into groups – the human species has been an extremely destructive species and has the potential to destroy the life support system for humanity. So this traditional stuff really gets to me – anything that involves killing an endangered species or destroying a habitat, if that involves tradition, I say ecology comes before tradition. I’d rather be ecologically correct than politically correct.

What can people do to support your work?

Stop eating the ocean. Don’t eat anything out of the ocean – there is no such thing as a sustainable fishery. If people eat meat, make sure it’s organic and isn’t contributing to the destruction of the ocean because 40 percent of all the fish that’s caught out of the ocean is fed to livestock – chickens on factory farms are fed fish meal. And be cognizant of the fact that if the oceans die, we die. Therefore our ultimate responsibility is to protect biodiversity in our world’s oceans.

So do you have any quiet time?

I do what I want to do. I don’t really understand this quiet time thing. Every time I see a movie, I see people sitting on the beach with a drink – to me that seems like one of the most boring things to do. The perfect job is a job where you’d do it whether you’re getting paid or not and you’ll never retire from it. That’s what I have.

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Long-time earth and animal liberation activist Rod Coronado has plenty of street cred, but apparently he wasn’t hip to the perils of Facebook. In early August, the seasoned activist was sentenced to four months in prison for violating the terms of his probation. The charge: “friending” a figure the FBI describes as, “a well-known environmental activist who has a history of condoning direct action and violence as a means of protest or demonstration.” That activist is Mike Roselle, the author of Tree Spiker, a confrontational and outspoken opponent of destructive environmental practices, from mountaintop removal to deforestation, who claims to have been arrested at least 50 times.

According to the Missoula Independent, Coronado’s probation officer, Rhonda J. Wallock, reported that the activist violated the terms of his supervision by becoming Roselle’s “friend” and for using an unauthorized computer. “In monitoring Mr. Coronado’s Facebook account,” the court document reads, “this officer found Michael Roselle to be a “friend” of Mr. Coronado.”

Well, yes. But apparently it was Roselle who asked Coronado to be his friend and not Coronado who approached Roselle. Moreover, they had been friends for some time, just not Facebook friends. As Roselle explained, “I sent him a friend request because someone had suggested that I friend him and given that I’ve known Rod for quite a while, I did. I guess he hit the accept button.”

The irony is that a couple of monkeywrenchers, each with a long list of arrests and convictions, have now been nabbed as friends. For Coronado, it is without a doubt the most prosaic charge he has ever faced.

For years, Coronado was the unofficial bad boy of the radical environmental movement. As a teenager he cut his teeth with the now well known Sea Shepherd Society and, in 1986, participated in a risky act of eco-sabotage: taking aim at Iceland’s refusal to conform to an international ban on whaling, Coronado and a partner destroyed the Hvalfjordur whaling station and sank two of the country’s whaling vessels, causing some $2 million in damage. Coronado went on to wage an underground war against the fur industry, targeting research facilities and fur farms across North America. (His story, and the story of the modern American environmental movement, is told in Dean Kuipers recent book, Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado’s War to Save American Wilderness).

Coronado was a divisive figure: his use of arson and increasingly radical stance alienated even those who sympathized with his views. In 1995, Coronado was arrested for his role in an arson attack on research facilities at Michigan State University. Since then he has moved back and forth between prison and some form of house arrest or parole. He has done time for allegedly demonstrating the use of an incendiary device, dismantling mountain lion traps, and destruction of government property. In 2006 he distanced himself from the direct action tactics of his youth and said, in an open letter that, "no longer do I personally choose to represent the cause of peace and compassion in that way."

If Facebook "friending" seems too tame for such a serious list of protest-related arrests, Roselle has an edgier way of looking at it: "When friends are outlawed, only outlaws will have friends."

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A record number of viewers - 1.12 million P25-54 and 1.07 million P18-49 - tuned into the season finale of WHALE WARS on Friday night. The episode helped Animal Planet rank #1 among all ad-supported cable networks in the 10 PM hour on Friday evening among P18-49, P25-54, and M25-54 based on ratings and delivery, making the finale Animal Planet's most-watched regularly airing telecast ever among P18-49 and P25-54. Animal Planet was also the #1 ad-supported cable network in Prime overall on Friday in terms of P18-49 delivery (excluding movies).

The finale, entitled "To the Ends of the Earth", witnessed Sea Shepherd crewman Pete Bethune held on the whaling vessel Shonan Maru #2 as it sailed away to Japan with his fate unknown. An all-day Labor Day marathon of the series will conclude with a new special on Pete Bethune called "From Pirate to Prisoner," featuring his first-ever extended interview after spending months in jail, and premieres on Monday, September 6 at 10 PM (ET/PT). Bethune has become a fan favorite since coming on board the third season of the series.

At the conclusion of WHALE WARS last Friday, the network premiered the mini-series BLOOD DOLPHINS, featuring Ric and Lincoln O'Barry's international fight to stop the slaughter and trade of dolphins, which netted 517,000 P25-54 viewers and 853,000 P2+ viewers in its debut, exceeding Animal Planet's year-ago timeslot average by a respective 73% and 57%. BLOOD DOLPHINS takes over the WHALE WARS timeslot Fridays at 9 PM (ET/PT) beginning September 10.

The third season of WHALE WARS exceeded season two levels by double-digits among all key demos, including P2+ (+29% to 1.38M), P18-49 (+29% to 797K), P25-54 (+27% to 789K), M25-54 (+35% to 468K), and W25-54 (+16% to 321K). Animal Planet had its most-watched Friday night ever among key demos, including P2+ (1.33M), P25-54 (778K), P18-49 (755K), and M25-54 (466K).

"WHALE WARS is the epitome of the kind of storytelling we want to do at Animal Planet," noted Marjorie Kaplan, president and general manager of Animal Planet Media. "Its high drama, high stakes and real importance make it - now along with BLOOD DOLPHINS - riveting television."

Animal Planet also had its best August Prime delivery ever among P25-54 (290K), P18-49 (287K), and M25-54 (148K). In August, the network exceeded Year-Ago by double-digits among key demos

P25-54 +21% (290K vs. 240K)

P18-49 +25% (287K vs. 229K)

W25-54 +19% (142K vs. 119K)

M25-54 +21% (148K vs. 122K)

For the past several years, Captain Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society crew have taken to the high seas in an attempt to stop Japanese ships from hunting whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. WHALE WARS documents the ongoing battles in the icy Antarctic waters in each adrenaline-fueled season as the conflict between Sea Shepherd and the whalers grows more intense with each engagement - each pushing the other to the limit to fight for what they believe. Watson and his eclectic group of international staff and volunteers - labeled activists and heroes by some, eco-pirates by others - take a hard-line approach to eradicate whaling and what they view as ocean-law violations.

WHALE WARS follows a masterful match at the far end of the globe as both Sea Shepherd and the Japanese whalers engage in an environmental showdown with millions of dollars at stake. The team of oceanic crusaders join forces and set out to risk it all to save the whales, even if that might mean not all crew members make it back to port togethe

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognized WHALE WARS in 2009 for exploring issues of concern to our society in a compelling, emotional and insightful way by bestowing the series with a Television Academy Honor which identifies it as "television with a conscience." The series has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy� for Outstanding Cinematography in a Non-Fiction Series (twice) and Outstanding Picture Editing for a Non-Fiction Series. Seasons one and two of the series are available on DVD at AnimalPlanetstore.com.

WHALE WARS is a production of The Lizard Trading Company for Animal Planet. Liz Bronstein is the executive producer for The Lizard Trading Company, and Jason Carey is the executive producer for Animal Planet. Charlie Foley is the vice president of development for Animal Planet.

Animal Planet Media (APM), a multi-media business unit of Discovery Communications, is the world's only entertainment brand that immerses viewers in the full range of life in the animal kingdom with rich, deep content via multiple platforms and offers animal lovers and pet owners access to a centralized online, television and mobile community for immersive, engaging, high-quality entertainment, information and enrichment. APM consists of the Animal Planet television network, available in more than 96 million homes in the US; online assets www.animalplanet.com, the ultimate online destination for all things animal; the 24/7 broadband channel, Animal Planet Beyond; Petfinder.com, the #1 pet-related Web property globally that facilitates pet adoption; and other media platforms including a robust Video-on-Demand (VOD) service; mobile content; and merchandising extensions.



Read more: Breaking News - ANIMAL PLANET HAS RECORD-SETTING CONQUEST DRUING SEASON FINALE OF "WHALE WARS" WITH MOST-WATCHED REGULARLY AIRING TELECAST EVER | TheFutonCritic.com http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2...#ixzz0yFKoSrEJ

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